Podcatching, as you'll probably know, is the act of grabbing podcasts directly, over the air, on your smartphone. Automatically, seamlessly and without needing a desktop or any direct manual intervention. And then sorting them, playing them back in sensible fashion, working around interruptions, and cleaning up afterwards. It's a tall order for an application, yet we have no less than EIGHT likely contenders here, all of which I've put through their paces. Is there a winner? Of course there is.... [updated]
The Coolsmartphone Podcast – Episode 45
I don't need to evangelise the need for a good podcatcher to you, gentle reader. The very fact that you're reading on means that you're a podcast fan and that you too want a decent system for grabbing them on Windows Phone.
For a mobile platform that started out with no way to grab podcasts at all - Microsoft's vision was that everything had to be synced in from a Windows Desktop and Zune - that's a lot of options in 2013, which is why I decided that a group test was in order.
Definitely the 'poster-girl' of the podcatching group test, Podcast Lounge definitely looks the part, with pixel perfect podcast art presentation, by far the best podcast directory, and intuitive panoramas. It's not great for someone coming from an existing portfolio of podcasts though (e.g. from another device or platform), nor is it that helpful in terms of the future, as you can't get your podcast portfolio out of it either.
Other than the import/export issue, my biggest issue with Podcast Lounge was that it's too much of a 'nanny'. The application will auto-update feeds and download the latest programmes, but only over wi-fi and when charging and when the battery is over 90% capacity. When you've hammered your battery over the last few hours (e.g. game playing) and want to give the device a top-up and auto-grab some podcasts, you're stuck, because of the battery charge criteria. And then you notice that the 'sync' download system is labelled as 'beta' and that it works erratically even when the above three criteria are satisfied. Sigh.
A super slick application in some ways, Podcast Lounge is designed around new podcast listeners who charge their phones overnight. Which is fair enough as demographics go. But as a hardened podcast consumer, with 20 or so shows in my portfolio, I just couldn't get on with it.
Podcast Bandit and I got off to a rocky start, to say the least. There's no way to import or sync in my existing podcast feed collection, so I headed for the 'Add a podcast' search function, as with Podcast Lounge above. Sadly, this uses just about the oldest and worst podcast directory in the world, it seems. Over half of my favourite podcasts weren't in the directory at all. Which means that I'd have to go researching their feed URLs and then typing in or pasting them from scratch.
Once in Podcast Bandit, subscribing to podcasts is easy enough and, with an appropriate check box or two in Settings, the application can be set to auto-download the latest programme for each feed when available. This not only works well, but a 'Latest episodes' list keeps track of the latest items that have been downloaded.
So Podcast Bandit redeemed itself? Nope. When actually playing podcasts, there's a misguided attempt to force everything into an auto-playlist, it seems. So you start listening to podcast A and change your mind, tapping on podcast B to try that. Up comes the artwork for podcast B and you tap on the play icon, only to have podcast A resume its audio. Gah. Over and over again I struggled with the wrong audio playing behind the wrong artwork or episode details.
Getting started with SlapDash Podcasts is easy if you're already a user of their podcast and streaming system online, since you can log in (usually with your Facebook account) and your SlapDash Radio subscriptions simply appear in the Windows Phone client. However, everybody else is out of luck, since there are no import (or export) options, and searching for the podcasts you love in SlapDash's directory online is rather hit and miss, quite a few of my favourites weren't included. You can manually paste in a feed URL, but as usual that's quite a lot of work.
Once subscribed, the artwork for each feed is displayed in a grid, annoyingly dynamic, based on the last ones you listened to - so each podcast keeps appearing in a different place in the grid. There's also no option to auto-update or auto-download anything. A feed isn't touched until you tap on it manually and then choose to stream a programme or download it for offline listen. It's all very functional, but with zero intelligence or automation.
There's a very quirky flavour to Play, Look and Listen, with no import facility but the might of Google Reader's subscriptions behind it - oh wait, not that's getting canned. Ah. Still, the developers seem pretty positive that they can carry on, so presumably a custom sync server will be set up at some point, or other subscription services connected. Actually searching for podcasts is very good, with the might of Google behind it, perhaps not surprisingly.
Nice touches include an independent volume control (so you can have your Windows Phone system volume high (for ringtones) yet have podcasts playing far more quietly, if desired. There's a lot to like in Play, Look and Listen, but there's an Achilles heel - it's completely rubbish at remembering where you got up to in a podcast. So if you get interrupted and something else uses the Windows Phone audio system for a bit (e.g. music), when you pop back to the application, you're plonked right back at the start of the relevant podcast and it's guesswork as to where you got up to.
Assuming you wanted to use it in the first place, that is. Getting podcast feeds in is possibly, but, again, hard work. Due to the limitations in Windows Phone, i.e. no file system, you have to get your OPML file (usually existing somewhere on your other phones or computers) onto something that can be accessed through a ( URL, i.e. upload it to a blog or server, which may be a pain for many users - SkyDrive is a possibility, but you'll have quite a bit of typing to do with the actual address. Searching for podcasts in BringCast's directory is erratic because the latter is so old - it's a slice of the podcast world as it was two years ago.
Once subscribed, nothing's automated, so you have to manually decide to download each programme in each feed, which is labour intensive. The 'Whats new?' pane is nicely done, bringing new subscription programme details into the one view, but it's a slog from there if you've got more than a handful of subs. Finally, once playing, BringCast does a terrible job at remembering where you'd got to in a feed, so you'll be starting each podcast from the beginning after every major interruption, as with Play, Look and Listen, above.
Finally, content has to be deleted manually, I really missed a way of deleting all downloaded content in one go. It all adds up to a competent podcasting client but one which is showing its age and is crying out for an update to bring it up to the level of Podcatcher, its nearest rival in terms of UI and ambitions.
PODCASTS! was the very first podcasting application on Windows Phone and its age shows somewhat, in some of the pop-up warnings about 'limitations of the OS', for example, and in its ambitions. Almost everything works, but almost everything is also fully manual.
Even when claiming a degree of autonomy, when you long press an episode to 'download' it, there's the inexplicable choice of two download options: 'download now' and 'download in background'. As the latter doesn't actually work properly (start a download in the 'background' and press back to carry on browsing episodes and you'll find the download fails), why confuse the user completely here? Assuming they can be bothered to manuallly download episodes in the first place.
You won't be surprised to learn that deleting downloads is fully manual too, plus PODCASTS! doesn't remember your playback position from one session to another. The one bright point here (other than the UI background!) is the excellent search to find podcasts, though I'd have liked to have seen some kind of feed import too.
Podcast Lounge and Podcatcher are the two standouts here (though WPodder might be in the mix if it had been updated since early 2012). If you're happy to either stream podcasts as needed or to strictly incorporate podcatching into your nightly charging routine then the very pretty Podcast Lounge may well suit - it's certainly got the biggest directory for finding new content.
However, for podcast fans from other platforms (perhaps refugees from Symbian or Android), run, don't walk, and get Podcatcher. It's supremely flexible in terms of getting your feeds in, everything can be automated, your playback position in each programme is remembered and you can clean up your GB of podcasts when needed. Podcatcher isn't the prettiest solution here, but it's the one I keep coming back to and it's the one that most closely matches the best podcatchers on other platforms (e.g. Poddi and Podcatcher [no relation] on Symbian, or Doggcatcher on Android). Recommended. 2ff7e9595c
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