[MacGyver]

Given that a lot of us now use Kodi in conjunction with our PVRs it would be nice to be able to "tag" or categorize a TV library entry as "current" or "watching" and have the library hold those items differently than the normal TV library items.
So that when you scrape your TV library and set various shows to current, you can also set that library view to "hide watched" but the normal TV library can be set to "show all".

I use a PVR and normally have my library set to "hide watched" so I know and see only things I have yet to catch up on. Because there is no way to make a distinction between things I am currently watching, and older things I might watch here and there, I am unable to scrape my whole TV library and only scrape the current shows.

If I could set a category or tell the library that certain shows are current, I could scrape the whole thing and enjoy the media info, searching and extras that go along with them all being in the library.

Some of this could be done with folder paths and smartplaylists but the watched/unwatched views can't be. And who wants to be moving huge files folders around every time a show changes its status. It also shouldn't be completely automated, in that it checks TVDB for the status and calls it current. Sometimes I like to add an old TV show to the library and watch it again, and with it set to hide watched it makes it easy, if the status was automated I would lose the option of adding older shows to a "Currently Watching" list.

I'm talking about a proper TV library category that can keep the "watched/unwatched/sow all" view set differently from the normal TV library, the same way TV and Movies can hold different settings.

[Ned Scott]

So why not use smart playlists with tags? You can mark shows as "currently airing" or "Bob is watching these shows" and that tag will then be used as a rule for the smart playlists. You can even make it a video node (wiki) (which uses the same rules as smart playlists). I know your title says "not really tags", but it sounds like tags is exactly what you want ;)

[MacGyver]

So when will nodes be able to have different watched/unwatched settings from other nodes. For instance when watching current TV I only want to see what I haven't watched, but a kids playlist is going to be played out of order and over and over, if I set the "tvshows" setting to unwatched the kids will see their shows disappear, and if I leave it set to watched, I'll have to scroll through things I've already seen to get to the new stuff.

How about a tag in the node that sets the view type <show>watched</show> <show>unwatched</show> <show>all</show>, that would let everyone have their way.

[Ned Scott]

You can use the playcount rule. Anything watched will have a playcount 1 or higher. That way watched content is filtered without using the global "hide watched" filter.

[MacGyver]

I can create a node that shows me all unwatched <content>tvshows</content>, but opening them reveals all the files if it is set to 'show All", if I create an <content>episode<c/ontent> node, it will show only the unwatched episodes, but with no tvshow structure and no tvshow name, just a long list of episode names mixed together. The only way it seems it could work is if each node could have a tag for viewtype (the way movies and tvshows seem to keep the separate). Am I missing something?

[Ned Scott]

I thought we had a group-by-show option for an episode smart playlist but I guess not.