[null_pointer]

I am working on an addon for Emby that populates a directory with ListItems, this works fine however I have one problem.

If the user selects mark watched from the context menu of an item or they hit the mark watched hot key 'w' an entry in the files table will be created for the item and from that point forward Kodi ignores what I set in the ListItem playcount info label and will only show the watched status that it knows about internally from the file table "PlayCount" field.

Is there a way to stop Kodi using the File table PlayCount field for dynamically created ListItems?

[Roman_V_M]

If you use direct URLs in addDirectoryItem() ("direct" means pointing to the content directly, but not to additional plugin route that ends with setResolvedUrl()), "watched" and "in progress" marks from Kodi are not shown, so you can set your own "watched" mark by changing playcount. "in progress" mark still is not show, but continue dialog still pops out for items that are in progress.
And "Mark as watched" item from Kodi is still present in the context menu, although does not work. I still think that removing the ability to replace context menus in plugins was a mistake.

[null_pointer]

I did try using direct link to the media but then home screen widgets and the info screen would not play back and resume correctly.

Its like some places you play media from the resume and watched from the File table is used and then other times the info from the supplied ListItem is used.

I have found using the plugin playback approach gave me the most consistent playback experience with the mark watched edge case being the only thing that is causing issues.

Ultimately if I set a PlayCount of zero in the ListItem video info label then that is what should be used when displaying the listing, I have no idea why if there is a File entry with a PlayCount that that is used over the one I set in the ListItem.

Yes I agree, being able to build a context menu that makes sense for the items I am returning should be possible, I don't actually know why the decisions was made to not allow building completely customized context menus but it feels wrong.