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rbc_tn
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Joined: 14 December 2008
Posts: 11
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| Posted: 05 January 2009 at 12:53am | IP Logged
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I am very pleased to see that version 4.0 supports podcast subscriptions - that is, the ability to download podcasts & listen offline (this is good!).
However, the UI for the feature is obscure - from time to time a "stop downloads" item appears in the Podcasts area, but as far as I can see there's no way to know what downloads are taking place. There also seems to be no indication of which podcast episodes hasve been downloaded. There is nothing in the Settings dialog related to podcasts. (This is the ugly)
And it's truly flakey: I have subscribed to three podcasts. When I first did so, I could see the list of available episodes when I clicked on the name of the podcast. However, after connecting & disconnecting from my PC a couple of times, turning the PPC off & on and exiting & restarting PP, the lists of episodes are gone. When I go into a podcast all I see is "Refresh Feed" and "Unsubscribe". I click on "Refresh Feed" and am bounced back to the podcast list. "Stop Downloads" appears. There's no network activity through my ActiveSync connection. I go into the podcast again and still see no episodes.
Please keep working on this feature - it will be immensely useful to me. The promise of good podcast handling was the main reason I bought PP.
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defaria
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Joined: 01 April 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 05 January 2009 at 10:16am | IP Logged
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4.0? Where'd cha get that? The latest I see is 3.71.
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CraigGraham
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Joined: 05 January 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: 05 January 2009 at 2:10pm | IP Logged
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I'm disappointed in the podcast stuff too, so far- again, I bought the upgrade in the hope it'd be better.
Even if you can't see podcasts in the browse menu, if you have the popup menu enabled then playing the entire podcasts category via the popup menu brings everything into the player. Not nice but does at least let you at them.
I'm having frequent hangs as well, which I suspect are related to the podcast downloads- though it's just a gut feeling and I've no basis for saying that. Seems fine if I switch the phone on and start using it, but if I leave it sat there for any length of time apparently idle and on either the podcast list or the player screen, it eventually freezes. The program becomes unresponsive, I can't get back to the phone's home screen (HTC Touch) and the usual way out is a soft power cycle- keeping the power button pressed for a while usually still brings the shutdown prompt, though I've had to pull the battery a couple of times.
Doesn't seem to do it if the program's loaded but the phone's left on the Today screen, with the plugin showing the player's buttons.
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rbc_tn
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Joined: 14 December 2008
Posts: 11
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| Posted: 05 January 2009 at 3:07pm | IP Logged
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defaria: look at http://conduits.com/products/player/
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rbc_tn
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Joined: 14 December 2008
Posts: 11
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| Posted: 05 January 2009 at 3:18pm | IP Logged
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Craig: When you say
"Even if you can't see podcasts in the browse menu, if you have the popup menu enabled then playing the entire podcasts category via the popup menu brings everything into the player. Not nice but does at least let you at them."
...do you mean to choose Play from the popup menu when you're at the top level of Browse, or when you've gone into the Podcast section? Do you find that PP then downloads the podcasts or that it streams them?
When I choose Play on the Podcasts item in the top level of Browse, PP switches to the playlist with no tracks. When I choose Play on one of the podcasts when I'm at the Podcasts level PP just goes into that podcast within Browse.
I can stream podcasts but I haven't found a way to force PP to download a podcast and then to play it offline.
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CraigGraham
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Joined: 05 January 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: 06 January 2009 at 4:04am | IP Logged
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rbc: I choose "Play" on the podcasts item in the top level of Browse. Using the popup menu that appears horizontally and has things like "play" and "enqueue" in it. Would check but I've just discovered it's died again. I'm definitely playing locally because I'm going to flight mode a lot at the moment to make sure. And no, no usb cable :)
When you hit subscribe in a podcast it should've prompted for a directory name. Have you had a look in File Explorer to see if anything's actually in that directory?
Another problem I've seen is that it's all well and good having PP go to the podcast sites when I'm at home and on wifi, but NOT when I'm out. It then puts GPRS online and, if I don't go to flight mode and lose the phone, will probably end up costing rather a lot. It'd be nice to be able to tell it only to use wifi.
Also, although I said it seemed fine when left on the home screen with the plugin, that turns out not to be true. The phone works fine, but after a while the player dies. The plugin still appears but won't activate the player (or play anything), the player has disappeared from the task list and trying to relaunch the player does nothing. I have to reboot the phone before I can load the player again.
Is there a debug mode? Can't find one but it'd be very useful to be able to get a log file of what's going on when I try to start the player in this state and it fails.
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thx1200
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Joined: 01 December 2007
Posts: 133
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| Posted: 06 January 2009 at 9:37am | IP Logged
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CraigGraham - There's no debug mode that I know of, but since you are pretty savvy, you should contact Conduits Support. They are very helpful and can "talk techy" with customers unlike most support departments of most companies. ;-)
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rbc_tn
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Joined: 14 December 2008
Posts: 11
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| Posted: 06 January 2009 at 1:07pm | IP Logged
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Craig: My device is not a phone but a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile 2003 SE - perhaps that accounts for some of the difference in behaviour.
I do see 2 MP3 files for each podcast in the directory I specified, and the MP3s play fine. But they don't appear in the list of "songs" nor have I been able to get PP to play them using any of the items that appear under Podcasts in Browse.
I have asked Conduits support to join in this thread.
Cheers
- rick
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seansco
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Joined: 08 January 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 2
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| Posted: 09 January 2009 at 9:42am | IP Logged
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I am having the same types of issues
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defaria
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Joined: 01 April 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 09 January 2009 at 2:59pm | IP Logged
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CraigGraham wrote:
| When you hit subscribe in a podcast it should've prompted for a directory name. Have you had a look in File Explorer to see if anything's actually in that directory? |
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Yes, how would one change that setting if at first they selected the wrong directory?
Quote:
| Another problem I've seen is that it's all well and good having PP go to the podcast sites when I'm at home and on wifi, but NOT when I'm out. It then puts GPRS online and, if I don't go to flight mode and lose the phone, will probably end up costing rather a lot. It'd be nice to be able to tell it only to use wifi. |
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And it would be nice if such a setting was configurable for us people who don't mind downloading podcasts from non wifi sources. Hey I have a $15/month unlimited data plan. Why would I then wish to restrict it to wifi only. It shouldn't cost me any more than $15/month to download 10 meg or 10 gig. Unlimited == unlimited, no?
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Topic: Podcast subscriptions - good, bad & ugly
