iTunes 11 Marking downloads as watched

I was able to resolve this in iTunes 12 by making the two preferences settings below. No idea why that fixed it.

Preferences > Downloads > Always check for available downloads (uncheck)

Preferences > Store > Sync Playback information across devices (uncheck)

The same thing happened to me, so I took the time to go back and mark all the appropriate shows/movies as unwatched. Lo and behold, iTunes 11 undid all of my work, and marked everything watched again. This is such a stupid and huge bug that's almost as poor as their Maps app.

It's a biggest mees at all. It's something Apple have to solve urgently. I don't spend 1000's off $ to watch the seasons and than I have to do the maitenance of the tv-series on my one. So Apple Fix the problem. Now!

I am having the same problem. When I download a video it is automatically marked as watched. This is very annoying since I use the watched/unwatched filter a lot. For now, the only work around that I've found is to make sure that you subscribe to notices from itunes to alert you when a new video (in a season pass) is available for download. I still have to go into itunes and manually mark this file as unwatched since I set itunes to download automatically.

I have exactly the same problem. Any season pass automatic download are flagged as watched in itunes.

However this doesn't seem to sync upto iTunes in the Cloud so it you goto the store on AppleTV you will see the new episode and can stream it from there.

iTunes 11 has a number of real issues, finding and managing my media has become more difficult since the update. This is the first time a major release has degraded features and made me consider moving back to itunes 10 for the time being.

I can't imagine how this wasn't caught in Beta testing.

gkg31 is right, this is as poor as Apple maps app.

From my research, any resetting to unwatched gets switched back to watched, so until they fix this, I'm not wasting my time.

Apple - Fix it ASAP

People who haven't yet updated to iTunes 11 - DON'T DO IT until they fix this bug!

I get this too... 😟 (Downloaded TV shows marked as watched).

Other strange stuff; I still get the "This movie requires QuickTime, which is not supported by this version of iTunes." Anyone else?

Other strange stuff; when I try the delete and keep file and add back trick (for requires quicktime), the show shows as if it is only in the cloud and it sorts the TV show under Home Videos... But it plays the file though. Huh? Also downloaded shows that I have added back before iTunes 11 sometimes shows as half-watched even though they have been watched.

For me at least, this is the biggest problem with iTunes 11. I spend a small fortune on buying TV seasons from the iTunes Library and now I have to MANUALLY mark them as unwatched every day so I don't miss any episodes. This is driving me nuts and SURELY must have been noticed during testing? Unbelievable!!!!

....we need to keep this one at the top of the list so EVERYBODY please submit your replies. This is a MUST FIX SOON bug!

same bug here; driving me crash; about to uninstall itunes 11 which at least for TV is a far worse user experience anyhow.

I decided to bite the bullet and formally report this issue and so negotiated my way through six phone transfers until I ran into a very knowledgable senior support engineer (on Mac...thank goodness!!!) She then logged into my Mac Mini while I demonstrated downloading a new TV episode into my iTunes library. Fortunately the bug occurred as expected, so it has been escalated for recontact with me at 1pm Oregon time tomorrow. I will get back with any updates. Wish me luck.

How many of us with the problem have iTunes Match? Show of hands? I do.

In the preference there is a new option on the Store tab, called: "Sync playback information across devices" I'm going to turn that off; and leave the older settings "Home sharing computer and devices update play counts" turned on.

Perhaps that will solve the problem.

I have the same issue. I am going to try Bob P's suggestion too and see if it works. Stand by for a report. Downloading 3 new episodes now.

Yeah, I'm having a similar issue although it isn't marking all my tv episodes as watched just some shows. And other shows saying that I have episodes on the cloud but they are already in my library, so showing 2 episodes the same. What a mess! I contacted iTunes support and they said it wasn't in their area so should try the forums. Let's hope they fix this soon.

Yep, I not only have new episodes being marked as watched, I also sometimes fine previous episodes to the new one all get marked as UNwatched.

None of this would be so bad if the CLOUD worked properly. I use an AppleTV 3 to watch episodes downloaded to my computer instead of watching them in the cloud because the watched marker doesn't work well in the cloud. If I go to the series page (not in my purchased shows) I see a watched/unwatched dot. But if I go to the series in my purchased shows, there are no dots. Frankly, this is worthless. So I download to my library and and watch from that. But now this bug with the library is messing things up there as well.

Apple, don't make me go back to Amazon and my Roku!