My Apple TV just deleted a huge number of my shows

Question

I own 3 Apple TVs all connected to the same iTunes on my main computer. Until now I've had no problems syncing across all my Apple TVs and purchases made on one TV happily transfer over to the other ones.
Recently I ran out of space on my computer, so it is possible that not all my shows were getting backed up on to the computer. So I cleared a bunch of stuff off the drive to make room. At around the same time I added my third Apple TV to the network and told it to sync.
Today I went to watch some episodes that I haven't seen yet, and they weren't on my original Apple TV. So I went down to my computer and found all my episodes but they were gray with a little sync icon next to them.
For some reason, instead of syncing my missing purchased shows from my Apple TV on to my computer it erased the shows from my Apple TV. They are listed on my computer but the files are not there. I have paid for these shows and now I can't watch them.
This is clearly a sync bug. How do I convince iTunes to re-download them?

Answer 1

Hi Winston, thanks for the reply.
I realise that under normal circumstances Apple's policy is that you can only download purchased content once, and that it is the user's responsibility to back up any purchased media. However in this case, a clearly demonstrable bug has occurred on my Apple TV, which has deleted my content through no user error.
My TV is connected to a Mac Pro. My Mac Pro is automatically backed up over the network to a time machine capable airport extreme drive.
I'm sorry I used the word "sync" to describe the transfer from my TV to my computer, I didn't intend to muddy the issue. So here's what happened:
I purchase about $100 worth of TV on my TV every month, which is usually transferred back to my computer immediately.
On about the 16th of June, the hard drive on my itunes computer filled up, and the transfers stopped.
On abut the 17th of July, I noticed that the hard drive was full and that about 85 TV episodes were waiting to transfer to my mac. The TV had successfully reported every purchase and put the info about each episode into my itunes library, but it had not yet transferred the actual file.
These episodes appear as a line in my listing that is in gray text with a tiny gray sync icon in the left column. I am sure it is not an exclamation mark, which would indicate a missing media file, it is a sync icon (a gray circle with two white arrows circulating inside). This icon is the gray version of the orange icon that animates while downloading a file from the itunes store. This icon indicates a file that is waiting to download but is not currently downloading. In this case the download is coming from the TV, instead of the store.
When I noticed that the hard drive on my computer was full, I cleared some space on it. The files I deleted were nothing to do with iTunes, they were old Final Cut project files that were taking up a lot of space.
Instead of resuming the transfers from my TV to my computer when the space became available, the TV deleted all the files which had not yet been transferred. The iTunes library on my computer is still waiting for those files. It is still trying to get them from my TV, but they aren't there anymore.
I cannot delete the items from my iTunes library, because they haven't transferred over yet. Selecting one of these lines and pressing delete does nothing.
This is a bug. My iTunes library clearly shows the files which it is waiting for, and my TV no longer has them. The devices are out of sync, and there doesn't appear to be any way to solve the problem.
Even if I spend $170 re-purchasing all the episodes that have been deleted (I haven't even watched most of them) I will forever have two copies in my itunes library, the ghost one and the 2nd purchase.
I'm not looking for a way to find the files, they are gone forever, deleted before their time. I want to report the bug, and I want the files to be made available to download again, or $170 credited to my itunes account. I followed all instructions. I didn't use my TV as a backup device, I backed up all my systems, I did everything right. And I paid for all my purchases. This is $170 worth of stuff that just got deleted.
I'm not mad, I know bugs happen. I am a software developer, I wrote I have several hundred thousand users of my own, each with their own specialised hardware device, which I have to support. I know a bug when I see one. In this case, I'd just like to get credited for the shows that were deleted by the bug or have them made available for download again. Apple has a policy for dealing with download errors, and this is no different except that the error happened after download.