Feed update failures and download failure usually have different causes but you can use the same approach to do some general diagnosis on either.
You can also see all failures by pressing on 'Event Log' in the navigation drawer (press on hamburger at the top left). This will list all of the successes and failures for feed updates and downloads. Pressing on an event will display the details of the failure.
Alternatively, you can press on the context button for a feed/episode that is failing, and then press on 'Error'.
In the details, there are two parts to pay attention to:
1 - Details - this is the error message and will usually give a good indication of what the problem is
2 - Cause - this is DoggCatcher's guess at what the error was caused by based on past errors.
Illegal character in hostname at index...
The feed or media files are stored on a server with a hostname that is not allowed by the Android networking software.
Task killers
Some users have reported that task killers are killing DC and causing updates/downloads to fail.
If you are unable to resolve the issue, please post in the support forum. Please include the RSS URL and a detailed description of what you are experiencing.
DoggCatcher will only auto-download the media for new episodes. So DoggCatcher thinks that the episode is new.
Sometimes, feed publishers change the title of the epsidoes. By default, DoggCatcher uses the identifier called GUID (which is provided by the publisher) to determine uniqueness for an episode. So if the publisher changes the GUID for an episode, DoggCatcher will remove the old episode (deleting the media) and add the new episode. In this case the media will be downloaded again.
You can tell this is happening if you have episodes that are marked as done and then after a feed update, they then re-appear new.
Most often this can be fixed by changing the 'episode identifier' feed option for the feed to one of the other values. The GUID option is the best choice to start with, but the one that works depends on the feed.
There are some things that can cause mobile traffic with this setting.
-Audio/Video streaming
-Browsing news articles in the app - DoggCatcher will load images in the news content over the mobile network.
Some feeds include invalid characters or are in an improper form. This can sometimes cause the feed parser to fail.
You can verify that your feed is in the proper form here - Feed Validator
Getting help
If you are unable to resolve the issue, please post in the support forum. Please include the RSS URL and a detailed description of what you are experiencing.
Some feeds publish items out of order. For these feeds, enabling the 'Full fetch' feed option resolves this problem.
You may also need to set the item sort order feed option to date (newest first).
Try running the feed diagnostics in the context menu for a feed. It will display a message if this type of feed is detected.
During normal usage, one would usually want to listen to older items first. DoggCatcher will download the oldest items that are flagged as 'New', up to the number configured in the 'Auto Download' feed option.
When creating new feeds, all items but the most recent are flagged as old so that the most recent will be the first available.
You can flag any items as 'Done' that you don't want to have downloaded.
On some networks, users need to authenticate from a browser on their device to allow the device to connect to the internet. If DoggCatcher tries to download a media file prior to the authentication and the authentication proxy does not return a proper response code indicating that it was unable to provide the file, DoggCatcher will save whatever the proxy responds with. In this case, there really isn't any way for DoggCatcher to easily distinguish between a real media file and a bogus HTML response.
There are some ideas in this post that we'll probably work into DoggCatcher to work around the problem.
This can be caused by ad blocker software.
See this post - http://www.doggcatcher.com/node/1067#comment-4950
New episodes may not download because the "Auto-Download" setting is set to..."example 3 or 5" and there are already 3 or 5 (New "Blue" or in-progress "Green" or "Orange") episodes downloaded.
1. Delete/flag as done episodes flagged "Grey" or complete listening/watching the particular episodes so they can be flagged as done by the app and deleted on the next scheduled feed update'
2. Increase the "Auto-Download" setting to a higher number (DC Navigation Menu>Settings>Global Feed Options)
1. If set to “None” media files will not be automatically downloaded during scheduled feed updates......Change back to “Done Episodes’
(DC Navigation Menu>Settings>Global Feed Options) with this setting media flagged as Done will be deleted during scheduled feed updates.
(See User Guide Post: Configuring media file auto delete - http://www.doggcatcher.com/node/1751) for information on other auto delete settings
(See FAQ post "Feed updates or media downloads failing?" If you experience other download fail issues http://www.doggcatcher.com/node/851)
This usually means the feed/podcast has an issue with duplicate file names,
To resolve: From the “Episode” screen of the particular feed with the problem, press the triangle ▲ icon (Top Right of the Screen)
or from the “Feeds” tab press the context button (Three Vertical Dots/Hamburger Icon Right of Feed Title)
Select "Diagnostics" if there is a issue with the feed follow the recommendations (Press "Repair Here" Cloud Icon left of the issue description)
Feed/podcast subscriptions with the duplicate file name issue:
"The Blindboy Podcast"
“Renewing Your Mind with R.C. Sproul”
“The Worst Idea of All Time”
“WeThePeople_Live feed”
"Packet Pushers Datanauts"
"The Jim Rome Show"
"Conan O'Brian Needs a Friend"
"Darkness Radio"
"Mysterious Universe"
Various feed/podcasts published by The Economist
Various feed/podcasts published by Acast
Why I'm getting "An error occurred" notification on the app's Subscribe screen tabs
There could be a network connection issue with the device you’re using
To Resolve:
A. Disable and re-enable the device’s ability to connect to a WiFi network.
B. Reboot the router
Slow media downloads could be caused by the amount of space available in the internal memory or an issue with your router with your home or office WiFi network.
A - Internal memory is full, check the "Storage" setting (Device settings) if full - To resolve: Delete previously downloaded media
B - WiFi network, reboot the router first to see if that solves the problem, on the your device try disabling WiFi for a minute or so (In the Device settings>Network connections) then re-enable. One or both of these solutions usually resolves this issue for other users of DC.