.. and I'm hoping it is just new user syndrome.
I've a new Vibrant, saw this app. highly recommended in Market, no trial available, but I took the chance and bought it. 24 hours to try it before refund? Well I for one can't even get it to work in that time (making me feel rather badly that the 24 has now passed).
For example: set to keep 32 podcasts in global settings, delete policy is as-space-needed. All that seems straight-forward enough. Yet Doggcatcher will download only 5 of "The Moth", 1 of "This American Life", 1 of "Stuff You Missed in History Class", 1 of "Car Talk" (although it does show that a second is available and gives the option to download it [so much for the automation]), 1 of "NPR: Planet Money" (here also has the option for others), etc.
Update-update-update all I want and yet it does not download any more. I tried setting each podcast individually to some large number (and not use the global value). No go. Tried listen to and/or mark as "Done" podcasts in "The Moth", yet it does not update any more.
Did some reading in the forums/faq, one hinted at "Marking all as new" to get the older podcasts. Does not work for me. All this does is mark what I've already completed as "unlistened-to" (which is what I'd expect).
I also tried setting the "Jump to oldest unread" just in case that that somehow meant that it would pull in the oldest podcasts (yeah, a long shot .. but I'm trying anything). Did not work. Did not expect it to.
Meanwhile I've downloaded "BeyondPod" (note: nice 7 day trial). It shows lots of Podcasts in "This American Life", lots in "The Moth", etc. They are definitely there and it downloads them. :)
It's me right? So .. how can I fix this?
TIA,
- Bruce
Bruce - Thanks for the tip on BeyondPod. It has the exact features I was looking for - the ability to set 'X' number of the most recent podcasts downloaded at update and the option to keep the 'Y' most recent podcasts.
The auto-delete policy you are looking for in DoggCatcher is 'delete oldest', which is equivalent to 'keep most recent'. I think the 'keep most recent' is much more clear, I'll probably change the description to reflect this.
I know that feed configuration can be a bit confusing at first. I think I need to come up with a few common sample configurations. There are really only a handful of different types of configs (ignoring the actually number values for each setting).
I think what you are looking to do fits into one of the following two scenarios. If it doesn't let me know. I'll work on trying to get this information into the feed edit screen...may some kind of wizard that let's you pick a scenario and then sets the configuration for you.
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Scenario 1
I want to have up to 3 of the most recent items auto-downloaded and for them to be auto-deleted after I am finished listening to an item. I do not want any items to be deleted until I finish listening to them.
Auto-downloads: 3
Auto delete policy: All done items
In this configuration, if a new item arrives and you still have 3 items that are new or in progress, no new items will be downloaded until there are less than 3 items that are new and in progress.
Scenario 2
I want to always have the 3 most items auto-downloaded and for any items older than the most recent 3 to be deleted (even if they are not flagged as done).
Auto-downloads: 3
Auto delete policy: Delete oldest
Important things to remember
Eric,
Thanks for the reply!
Reading it I'm now seeing the problem: Doggcatcher is oriented only toward staying up to date, getting only the latest and greatest. I'm not looking at it this way. I see the value of that, but I also see that a lot of podcasts are timeless and it does not matter when they were produced or when I listen to them (two of which I already mentioned: "The Moth" and "This American Life").
I'm looking for Scenario 3:
A big win would be if I could designate whether the list went forward or backwards. In other words does the first n items come from the oldest available podcast and the next m move forward in time or does it start with the newest and m moves backward in time?
- Bruce
If you are ok with the media (not the items) getting deleted after you mark them as done (in bullet 2), then it will do what you want in scenario 1.
You might have to increase the 'number of items' so that the old items don't roll off the list. In this case you could re-download them or stream them whenever you want.
In the case of this american life, which only has one item published at a time, you are surely going to want to enable the 'retain expired' feed option. This will keep the item until you manually delete it, even after the publisher removes it from the feed.
Sorting the feeds individually in varying directions is on the todo list and will probably be in one of the next few releases.
Thanks Eric,
I think I understand that but am confused by the seeming lack of episodes in some of the subscriptions. For example "The Moth" only shows 5 episodes. To be fair I see that their website also shows only 5, but I've downloaded other podcast clients and they show many, many more than 5. It is with that in mind that I refer to the desire to listen to many of them and not just the "newest".
I believe that this is part of what is confusing me into thinking that Doggcatcher is not working.
So as each app is developed, we make design decision that have both positive and negative impacts on the behavior. DC accesses feeds directly from the publisher so the new content is available immediately but we are limited to the content in the feed (unless the retain expired has kept older items for us).
A decision in the other direction could have allowed access to historical items no longer in the feed but this usually comes at a price of a delay between the publisher publishes the feed and the time you can get the update.