Decent Podcast Manager/Downloader

Hey,

Basically I want to download a bunch of old episodes of podcasts and stuff just because I like having a lot of things to listen to at any point. I've tried a few things in the past such as gPodder but not had much luck.

Downloaded iTunes today and that's even worse. 8mbps max download speed which is 1/15 of what my internet is capable of... pathetic really. 10 years ago that'd have been just about acceptable but not now, not by a long shot. Was thinking of getting an iPad recently but if those are the speeds I'm going to get from that then forget it, but enough about that, this isn't an "apple sucks" thread!

So any other suggests for decent podcast downloaders? I don't intend to play them through the program just use it to download episodes. Or ideally any suggestions on how to make iTunes actually download at a decent speed.

On PC? I'm not sure.

Pocket Casts for android is pretty great though. Not freeware, but I'd say it's worth a little something for just convenience and utility.

Yeah PC. Listen to stuff on my PC a lot as well as my phone and a hell of a lot easier managing this stuff on PC and transferring it to my phone.

At the moment I just have Giant Bombcast on my phone for my walk to/from work (40 minutes each way) and I've listened to all the episodes multiple times so just want something else to listen to and need an easy way to download them.

I use Downcast on my iPhone. It's the bomb, bitch.

I'm baffled how iTunes for Windows gets worse with each update. I would also like to find a decent podcatcher for my PC. I use Doggcatcher on my phone, it works great and I wish they had a Windows client. Podfy was a browser based alternative I used for a little while, but now I'm back with iTunes.

I've been using Downcast for a couple years now after being dissatisfied with the quality of the iOS podcast app. It's been much better and I plan to continue using it. It does cost a couple bucks though.

Big fan of Doggcatcher on Droid devices, even if it can be somewhat cumbersome to search for new podcasts that aren't in their directories.

Mediamonkey.

@forcen: I tried downloading Mediamonkey, but it doesn't recognize any podcast RSS feed I give it.

@tom_omb: What happens exactly? get any error message?

@forcen:

Yes, a couple I tried have:

HTTP/ 1.0 404 Not Found

and, on a different podcast:

HTTP/ 1.1 504 Gateway Timeout

A decent RSS program gets the job done. FeedDemon works pretty well and can handle podcasts, as well as copying them to mobile devices, a set folder, iTunes Playlist. All kinds of options and pretty decent for other RSS news stuff too.

A whole podcast in like 120 seconds. oh mah gawd. The hugemanatees!

On iOS I've been using Instacast for a couple of years, and I couldn't be happier.

iTunes

When I'm trying to download a few hundred it certainly takes a while. I had it on overnight and only about half had downloaded. It's no better today either and still terrible. If I want to get into a new series that's 120 seconds x 200 episodes is a long time for something that should be done in less than 30 minutes total.

Had a problem with RSS in the past (not including every single podcast in the series etc.) but I'll give FeedDemon a try, thanks!

Tried it before and can't remember exactly what my issue with it was but it didn't work out.

Here is another one.

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

You could also try VLC, it is decent for streaming episodes. See if RSS works there.

Edit: apparently Juice is discontinued, here are some alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/juice/

I like instacast on my phone, but its expensive on computers. Like 20 dollars or something.

I'm really satisfied with MusicBee, except for the fact that it wouldn't take the MBMBaM RSS for some reason. You can stream any podcast that you haven't downloaded too. It also scanned in all my music files pretty seamlessly.