How do I stop iTunes 11 marking all TV show downloads as "Watched"?

Just sent this feedback to Apple Support. If anyone's still interested:

I know that you lot have been ignoring this problem for a number of years on all platforms, but I may have stumbled onto the cause of the problem.....

It appears that the problem occurs when there is a duplicate episode name in another programme! This may be causing the index/indices to become confused?

I'll leave it to your geniuses(?) to solve the problem, but maybe this is a good place to start troubleshooting?

So, we have a major upgrade (?????????) of iTunes, removing features, but Apple still can't fix an VERY OLD bug?

All you need to do to fix this, all you Apple geniuses (genii?), is write the record back with a key of episode + program + series. GOT IT YET?

For all of us poor buggers who still have to reset our watched/unwatched status every few days, here's a very lengthy workaround:

For every program episode that has a duplicate name in another program, append the program name and series to the episode name.

For example, if program AA has an episode in series 1 named "Pilot" and program BB also has an episode in series 1 named "Pilot", change the Program AA episode name to "Pilot AA S01" and the Program BB episode name to "Pilot BB S01". Rinse and repeat for every duplicate episode name. Should only take a few weeks.

Thanks again, Apple.

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.

same thing here, and the worst...all new shows downloaded are marked 'watched' aswell !!

and funny enough it seems to be a cross-platform bug cause windows users and imac users reporting the same issue !

what a crazy bug !

Having the same issue and reported in feedback. So annoying to have the cloud shows and movies randomly show up and how it keeps marking shows watched. I also noticed that the dates are wrong on the new episodes that get downloaded. For example the new episode of "Walking Dead" downloaded last night is marked as added 10/7/12 and of course already watched.

I too am having exactly the same problem. Even worse, it has decided that many of my shows are partially watched.

I went through my whole icloud library and changed everything just to see it screw it all up again later that day!

Having the exact same problem with the Windows version. This i really ridiculous. I am going to have to go back to the previous version.

Same thing is happening to me. I have 5 season passes. I have a script that runs 2 different ways: 1) It will look for the notification email that says "A new epsisode is available" or 2) at 5am every day. The script simply tells iTunes to check for available downloads. I can confirm the download occurs, but it shows up at WATCHED.

What I have also found is that I will have previously episodes that I know I have not watched and had them marked as UNWATCHED... also get marked as WATCHED when a new episode becomes available.

Lastly, I will manually go in and get every episode that I know I have not watched or want to watch again marked as UNWATCHED. I will close iTunes and without rhyme or reason... all shows will load with the blue banner of "# New" and show the correct UNWATCHED episodes listed. But then seconds later, without rhyme or reason, some shows keep the blue banner of "# New" and other loose it and also maked the episodes was WATCHED.

I have to go in AGAIN and mark them as UNWATCHED. Its getting tougher and tougher to allow automation run the show. I am having to manually or mentally track what I have and have not watched.

So tonight, I called into Apple with my Apple Care on my iMac for iTunes support. We did the following and it has positive results thus far. Since I dont have new episodes to download, we cant be sure its completely fixed. However we were able to prove the issue is no longer present when I close iTunes and reopen iTunes.

1. Close iTunes
2. go to www.apple.com/itunes
3. click on the download iTunes and again on the next page.
4. Once downloaded, find the file and open the installer
5. follow the prompts as normal to install iTunes
6. Once done, restart OS X
7. Sign back in and open iTunes

What I noticed while troubleshooting with the Apple Care agent and later supervisor/tier 2 agent was that when (iTunes woudl first load up, I would see all the right blue banners and correct unwatched episodes.) However I also noticed the little iCloud "cloud" icon has the stripes moving showing it was syncing. When it was done, that is when the blue banners/unwatched indicators would change.

When I upgraded to iTunes 11 originally, I did do so via the Software Update from the OS X Apple Menu. For some reason downloading it off the web seems to have fixed whatever issue was present. The real test will be when a new episode comes out and downloads.

Just an update. So everything was fine until the next morning. My script must have asked iTunes to check for new downloads and it reset "UNWATCHED" shows to "WATCHED." So I did a test, I marked episodes as UNWATCHED and then did a manual store, check for available downloads. The episodes that were marked as UNWATCHED went to WATCHED. 😟 So it isnt isolated to when there actually is something to download, but when the mechanism used to get the downloads started.

I send an email to my Apple Care rep explaining that perhaps there is something in the synchronization / check that is causing the value to be changed/lost. I also directed him to this thread. So if you have additional findings, you may share.

There has to be a rhyme or reason to it.

Actually, I have seen no change in this behavior between iTunes 11 and iTunes 11.0.1 😟

@bosoxbarley - NO unfortunately the problem persists !

the longer the more i get the feeling that this is a problem with the cloud.......but it is so disapointing that

apple has these sort of flaws in major releases......

Agreed. No difference in iTunes 11.0.1.

If this is not happening to everyone, I assume it is probably a problem with our iCloud accounts rather than iTunes itself.

Funny thing is that on my Apple TV it knows perfectly well which shows have been watched and which haven't.

And still, when downloading new episodes, iTunes marks them as watched rather than new.

I still have the problem on 11.0.1 and the problem is allso there on the Apple Tv 2, so still not fixed

Apparently i cant email Apple about this, but only call them, but they say they dont support iTunes software