JavaScript for preventing iTunes from deciding to stop updating podcasts

I have gotten EXTREMELY frustrated with iTunes automatically deciding to stop downloading podcasts. After quite a bit of searching around for what was going on I have found out that if iTunes thinks you have not listened to the last five episodes of a podcast it will save bandwidth and also help reduce fees for many podcasters by automatically stopping your subscription to that particular podcast. It does this silently and does not allow you to alter what triggers this. It does mark the affected podcast with an exclamation point in your Podcast listing, and if you move your mark over the exclamation point it displays a message saying:

iTunes has stopped updating this podcast because you have not listened to any episodes recently. Would you like to resume updating this podcast?

I lost out on quite a few daily podcasts while out of town due to this, and many, particularly "Song of the Day" types are only available for 24hrs, so no way to go through any archives and fill in the gaps. http://dougscripts.com/itunes/ has many useful scripts, but only for Apple computers. He does list links to others writing Windows iTune scripts, but I was unable to find any Windows scripts which would mark iTune podcasts as having been played. After going through other scripts I was able to make one of my own that seems to do the trick. I'd appreciate knowing if anyone finds this helpful.



/*
Save this to a file named: MarkPodcastsAsPlayed.js

Author: Jim Wise

Run this Java Script to mark all unplayed Podcasts in your iTunes library
as having been played once, and marking the Played Date as the time the
script was run. This will prevent iTunes from automatically deciding to
stop updating podcasts which have five unplayed episodes, displaying an
exclamation point by the affected podcast with the message:

iTunes has stopped updating this podcast because you have not listened to
any episodes recently. Would you like to resume updating this podcast?

Be sure to run this script regularly or put it in your Task Scheduler to run
daily.

*/

var ITTrackKindFile = 1;
var iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application");
var MainLibrary = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist;
var tracks = MainLibrary.Tracks;
var numTracks = tracks.Count;
var PodcastTracks = 0;
var i = 0;
today = new Date();
todayDate = new Date()

todayDate = (today.getFullYear() + "/" + (today.getMonth() + 1) + "/" + today.getDate() + " " +

today.getHours() + ":" + today.getMinutes() + ":" + today.getSeconds());

// Step through each listing of the iTunes library
while (numTracks != 0)
{
var currTrack = tracks.Item(numTracks);
// Check to see if the current track is a podcast
if (currTrack.Podcast)
{
if (currTrack.PlayedCount == 0)
{
//Make sure file still exitsts before trying to update it
if (currTrack.Location != "")
{
currTrack.PlayedDate = todayDate;
currTrack.PlayedCount = 1;
i++;
}
}
}
numTracks--;
}
WScript.Echo ("Play count and date adjusted for " + i + " podcasts in iTunes.");

Message was edited by: JimWise