Syncing Videos to iPhone Similar to Syncing to Apple TV

Question

I have iTunes set to sync all unwatched episodes of a TV Show I have to my Apple TV. Now, I have more episodes then can fit on the ATV, but that is not a problem since iTunes is smart enough to only sync what can fit, then when an episode becomes watched, it removes it from my ATV and replaces it with the next unwatched episode. This works amazingly.
Now comes my problem. I use the same settings for my iPhone, and iTunes suddenly becomes stupid and doesn't know what to do when all the videos won't fit. It tells me that several video files can't be synced because there is not enough space. I would have thought it would handle this the same way it does with the ATV, but apparently I was mistaken. Does anyone know of a way that I can achieve what happens with my ATV on my iPhone?

Answer 1

I have exactly this problem. I have purchased a number of TV shows from the iTunes store, plus I also have eyeTV which can export TV recordings to iTunes.
I started off setting iTunes to sync the 3 most recently unwatched episodes of about 3 different TV shows. This worked fine until I had watched all the episodes.
What I expected iTunes to do was replace the watched episodes with unwatched ones. Unfortunately, this does not occur. So eventually you just end up with the same 3 episodes of each show, all of which you have already watched.
I have used a playlist in the past, and I set one up again. I set iTunes up to sync unwatched episodes from this playlist, but now it has not sync'd any TV shows at all.
This is really frustrating as the only option is for me to maintain this entirely manually - surely this is not what Apple intended?
Russell.