Shows we watch on AppleTV via Home Sharing are not marked as "watched"!!!!

Agreed, I have a ton of smart playlists setup for my podcasts and this ruins my ability to have them be effective. If I watch them on the ATV2, my playlists don't update, so they stay on my iPad & iPhone.

That is one of the major reasons I went with the Apple ecosystem was the ability to watch shows and have them sync across all devices via smart playlists. That way, I only take the time and setup my shows once, then I don't think about it again, I just sync and go.

I'm seriously thinking about putting my ATV1 back in the main room, but then again, I'll have to fight my wife over it, because they didn't update the software on the old ones for Netflix.

She only cares about Netflix, I only care about Smart Playlists/playcounts. What is one to do?

Just left feedback there as this is a major issue for me. Overall Apple's products have always been spot on, but I can't believe this was missed, I thought many more people were using Smart Folders and this is exactly how it all has always worked together, from iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, ATV v1, MB's, MBP's, Windows, etc....

Very very sad right now. 😟

If I had a 1st gen apple TV I'd use it. I can stream netflix via my bluray player. I got the apple TV 2 primarily to stream my HD home movies. I've got several shared from imovie to itunes, and occasionally after several resets and turning homesharing off and back on for both Apple TV and itunes, if I'm lucky, I can watch a movie. But when I try to watch another one... "Loading library"/pinwheel. It is quicker and easier to just burn a dvd and play it. Of course the resolution suffers this way, but at least I can watch them. I would rather hook a cable between my MacBookPro and the TV than deal with this. I hope they can fix it, otherwise it's going back and we'll watch our netflix via sony bluray, and home movies via dvd or cable. Shame

Here's how to mark a show "watched" or "unwatched".

Menu down to an episode. Press AND HOLD the button. You will get a new menu that gives you the option to mark a show watched (or unwatched if it has already been watched". That's all there is to it!

Joel

I do appreciate the tip. That's kind of a pain when you just want to go to the next show and have your library update, but at least that is a "work around" for complete show watchings.

However, it still does nothing for me in regards to my video podcasts that I routinely start in one place then finish or pick-up watching on another device. I still have to remember where I was and fast-forward to that location, which really is a major pain.

Your work-around is acceptable for entire show watching, but I still would like to see this issue fixed or I should say implemented, seeing as Home Sharing does not support meta-data such as play counts, etc...

OK.... I've done a little more research, and my prior comment about it not marking the point in the show if you stopped it, was incorrect. It does keep track of where you left off, the only thing it does not do is watch the show the whole way through. Really wierd to keep track of everything but not mark it watched at the end.

The holding down the middle button to mark it watch, really doesn't take that much effort.

The only logic that I can think of why they did this with the ATV is, if you use your "Unwatched" tab a lot and fall asleep on the couch or bed watching shows a lot (I do), it will still stay there, but if you pause it, it will come back where you paused it.

The more I think about it, actually the more I may actually like this feature (or bug). 😉

Thinking more about this one.

Joel -- I hope you are not with apple. I'd hate to think that is apple's answer to this bug in home sharing. One should not have to go and manually mark something as played. Gosh I'd hate to have music streaming all day long and have to manually mark all the song tracks.

This is a bug. It's been in Home Sharing from day one. But now we are forced to play via home sharing so I bloody want this fixed. Apple shouldn't have to be asked to fix such a glaring bug. Did anyone at apple use this product before it's release?

Like others have said, I have playlists that use the "Not played in last xx days" criteria. This totally breaks them.

Apple, if you at all monitor these threads, FIX IT. And soon.

I'm having the same issue and I agree that this is a bug (and inconsistent, at that)! I've found that I have the issue more with podcasts than with movies. Podcasts end abruptly (ie: there are usually no closing credits).

If I'm watching a movie and I fast forward through the ending credits, the movie is marked as watched. If I watch a podcast and just watch it to the end, it's not marked as watched, BUT if I replay the podcast and fast forward through the whole thing, it is marked as watched.

This is definitely a bug and it needs to be fixed... In general, I am enjoying the new Apple TV 2010!

There is one feature that I miss, being able to lock the Apple TV to specific content. The OLD Apple TV could be locked to only show content that was synced to it. I understand the reason why this might not be easy to do on the streaming model, but it is a feature that I continue to use for the kid's TV (The Parental Controls just aren't adequate). No new Apple TV for the kids!

I've not been able to force the play increment on content played. It's inconsistent. For example, I listened to a playlist I have of daily podcasts, straight through. Most were not marked played, but a couple were.

Also we watch TV Shows, One episode of a show was not marked played though we let it run to the end, I even tried playing it again and FF'd through it to the end. Still not marked. But the next episode in the same series was marked first time we watched it. Very inconsistent, and frustrating.

Please join me in submitting feedback to Apple via the link posted above me. This is such an annoying issue and it seems ridiculous to me Apple hasn't addressed it yet.

Actually I find that even the manual mark-as-watched doesn't work - it crashes the ATV (which at least comes back fast).

That's strange, it works fine for me. I stream episodes of True Blood via home sharing, don't even watch the entire ending credits and it moves the episode to the Watched category. I keep my menu view on the Unwatched tab so my episode list only contains the ones I haven't watched yet. Don't know why yours don't work right.

I have this problem also but I am not using Home Sharing for my videos. These videos are on another Mac, not on my iTunes server. Will report through the feedback page, that is the only way Apple knows if there are some problems, not many Apple Engineers read these discussions.