2017-12-05 23:36:50

Hi all,
I'm in search of a podcatcher for Windows which is accessible and can download multiple episodes of shows. I'm currently using QCast, and have been using it for several years. But more and more lately, I'm encountering issues with it. An increasing number of podcast feeds that I try to add are refused, saying the feed is unrecognized. Incidentally, this issue is also present in QFeed, but I'm more concerned with podcast management at this time.

The other frustrating thing that it does is that sometimes, when I click download all on a given podcast, it just throws errors, saying that the podcasts can't be downloaded. This usually results in me having to end the process from task manager, because if you've got a feed with a couple hundred podcasts, dismissing the dialog for every single one of them is tedious and annoying.

While I'm more than happy to listen to podcasts on my phone with overcast, I also like to keep offline copies of my favorite podcasts, in case my internet goes down, I don't have internet access, or I would just rather scroll through a folder and pick a particular episode that I want to listen to, which is obviously easier to do from a keyboard than a touch screen.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for me as to what podcatcher I can use that will download all episodes in a given feed, and will hopefully be more reliable than QCast? I'd write to the developer, but it's no secret that customer service isn't his strong suit, and that he never replies to inquiries, so I'm not even going to bother, as sad as that is. I did try Juice a few days ago, because I had read that it was accessible. it is, but I can't get it to download anything either. It just sits there at 0% for hours if I try to add files to its cue.

Any other suggestions? Thanks.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2017-12-07 08:46:42

I also would like to know what people prefer thesedays. I don't really want to download everithing, but it is refusing some podcast here too.

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com

2017-12-09 06:24:26

I sadly have that very same issue. It's a shame really, QCast is pretty much everything I'd be looking for in a catcher.

To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, line 1 to 4

2017-12-09 12:53:09

Have you tried Juice? It's been a very long time since I tried it, but it was decent when I used it.
I'm not surprised that QCast is acting up. I'm never buying from his company again as he doesn't maintain his software. I'm still a little annoyed I spent money on QFeed which didn't work correctly on the Mac.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2017-12-09 20:13:02

I am perfectly happy with using the podcasts app on my phone, but this might work for some people.

https://nerdoftheherd.com/tools/radiodld/

2017-12-10 05:53:28

Thanks. Do you have any experience with this program? I'm having some trouble figuring out how to add podcasts. It doesn't seem to be accessible, which is weird since many of the other buttons on the toolbars are labelled. I tried working with it with both NVDA and JAWS with no luck. The only thing I didn't try was using OCR, but I did play around with using object nav and the JAWS cursor to no avail. I'm really hoping I can get this figured out, because I actually did manage to download one podcast with it, and it was a breeze. The problem was that, since I couldn't subscribe to the podcast, if I wanted to go back and download more episodes, or a different podcast altogether, I had to manually reenter the URL.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2017-12-10 11:33:25

I use to use juice, but that thing hasn't been updated in like forever.

Then I tried accessible podcatcher, but some feeds wouldn't work with it.

Now I'm just using iTunes, even though some podcast episodes refuse to work for some reason.

It seams, no matter what application you use, there is always going to be some sort of problem with it.

If juice was fixed up a bit, and kept up to date, I would gladly go back to it.

Juice was great for its time, accessible, and opensource.

It even had a bunch of podcast directories to brows through.

I think these days most, if not all the ones for mobiles let you search directories.

Accessible podcatcher had a directory, wich was always a huge mess, seriously if I was that developer I think I would just get rid of the directory and have a nice, easy to use podcatcher.

I guess that's what you get when you allow the users to submit feeds directly from the application.

I haven't used accessible podcatcher for a couple of years now, so for all I know, things could be different.

I stopped using it around the time when the developer was breaking up his applications into separate installers.

I'm not even sure if his programs are still around.

It's the same developer that brought you all those accessible BBC apps, and I'm sure most of us still remember that accessible web browser, webIE.

2017-12-12 01:28:24

Hi guys,

for those familyar with foobar 2000 I recommend plugin foo podcatcher. It doesn't have build in database, so you need to get rss feeds by yourself, but it can load all tested feeds (also those where QCast fails). It also remembers where you finished listening, but only when the file is downloaded locally.
http://www.foobar2000.org/components/vi … podcatcher
instructions how to use it are for example here
http://loadion.com/en/how_to/Configure- … 61196.html

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com

2017-12-12 12:04:18

As someone who has used the method described in post 8 in the past, I can say it works very well. These days I don't really bother podcasting on windows though, my phone does exactly what I need it to. Failing that, iTunes on the mac. It might be a tiny bit more effort to set up foo podcatcher, but if I can discourage anyone from resorting to Q cast then I absolutely will.

2017-12-15 21:07:15

Only one thing to consider. I tryed to add FSCast and it didn't work. But when I changed http to https it loaded the feed successfully. Maybe useful also for other podcasts. No idea why firefox showed the feed as http.

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com

2017-12-16 05:32:27

Now this is what I was looking for. It seems to be working well from my limited testing so far. Thanks very much for this. I was never much of a fan of Foobar2000, but I'll keep it installed if it means a better podcasting experience. I'll use VLC for everything else, but I'm happy this saga has finally been resolved.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-01-12 05:05:48

hi, I am using SharpReader  and so far I like it. No problems ehre.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2018-01-12 18:44:38

Foo podcatcher FTW. That is all I use now. Foobar 2000 FTW in general.

2018-01-12 21:11:26

hi
this is slightly off topic...
what makes foobar different from all other media players? I've heard that many people here prefer it and I really wanna know why.

2018-01-13 07:30:33

Honestly, I'd take it more seriously as a media player if I could figure out how the heck you assign keyboard shortcuts. The options screen seems very atypical. And on the NVDA email list, someone said that you can acomplish this by editing ini files. If so, I haven't found them yet, and I looked in all the usual places where one normally finds such things.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-02-08 15:24:37

BTW, you can also use sharpreader rss aggregator as simple podcast app. But it can not play audio files. So when you click the url of the file, what happen depends on your system config. http://www.sharpreader.net/

check out my instrumental music at http://ondrosik.bandcamp.com