Downloading Podcasts

What separates a podcast from any old downloadable mp3 file is syndication. That is, a mechanism is there to allow consumers to subscribe to the content, just like you'd record a series of TV shows on your TiVo or digital cable box.

The benefit to consumers is obvious. Joey may watch 10 different TV shows regularly, but if he had to go to a website to download a video every time he wanted to watch it, he'd probably not be watching so much TV.

The same is true about podcasts. Rather than requiring Joey to constantly check his favorite websites to see if a new show has been published, and then download it, he has a program called a podcatcher which does exactly that. It goes to his favorite podcast websites regularly and checks to see if there's a new show. If so, it downloads the new shows for him so whenever he wants to listen, he can just check his local hard drive for the file.

When a human checks a website, they download HTML and read it. When a podcatcher program checks a website, it needs more structure. It needs to know what the title of the show is, the date it was published, and it needs to know the URL to download the file. This information is called meta-data. To truly publish a podcast, one must create a text file using the RSS or Real Simple Syndication format to present the meta-data so the computer on the other end can understand it.

Joey tells his podcatcher to subscribe to a show by giving it the URL to the RSS file. The podcatcher then downloads and reads the RSS file once an hour (or whatever). If the RSS file lists a newer audio file than the last one he downloaded, it downloads the file. Simple. Really simple.

That brings us to podcatcher programs. As of July, 2006 the most popular podcatcher by far is iTunes. There are lots of others out there, but iTunes is the most widely used, mostly because it comes free with the iPod, and it works. Pwop Productions has its own podcatcher called PwopCatcher and also keep your eye on InfoCenter

Some podcast providers offer RSS feeds that link to BitTorrent (.torrent) files instead of mp3 or other audio files. Using BitTorrent usually means faster downloads. The best BitTorrent program we've seen is µTorrent. All of Pwop shows are published with BitTorrent as well as HTTP.