Podcast subscription problem

[t3chnomanc3r]

I still fail to see why some are so adamant about MediaMonkey's player being bad? I'm really missing how WinAmp or MPC (Media Player Classic?) would be a better player. Is it the player or the library component?

For winamp: everything, short of tagging & organizing.
For MPC: again everything playback related. Have you not tried it yourself?

BTW, don't PM me chastising me. This is a heated discussion of opinions, not a personal attack on anyone. If it's taken that way then maybe people need to look into the difference with "being" something vs. "acting" in that fashion when it comes to "insulting" statements. I can call something/someone on something without meaning that person is in fact a certified moron in real life.

[nohitter151]

I am not the only one here asking why the podcast downloading is flawed so I don't think I am confusing anything! As to the player interface I see nothing about it that promotes it's use over most anything else. The EQ is terrible, the transport buttons leave a lot to be desired and Winamps library is much better for find what I want to play. WA weakness is cataloging & tagging which is why I bought MM. When it comes to video files I've seen nothing better than MPC in terms of functionality.

Moot, I am here to complain that the podcatcher functionality is hopelessly flawed and most recently to respond to your question & statements about fixing it pre-v4.

Sure, you're not the only one. There are a handful of users that wonder why MM can't download files that it can't support or display. I've tried to explain why, and I've also given my opinion of why it's a bad idea. In the meantime there are thousands of other users who couldn't care less.

Re: the player interface - this literally has nothing to do with the discussion. Most users use it.

Lastly, you're right, the point is moot. The whole topic and discussion is pointless because video will be supported in version 4, which is likely to be the next MM release (maybe a small 3.2.1 update before version 4). Not to mention you can easily have video podcasts downloaded now by using the MM2VLC add-on.

[Peke]

Personally, I'm not sure that I understand completely, but basically from what I read here we should wait for public Alpha of MM 4.0 and as Alpha is Alpha. We would be more than glad to be pointed to errors improvements,...

Re EQ: That is Known Issue and we have never put EQ as MM Marketing Pros.

[t3chnomanc3r]

Easily, eh? It's got a limited set of fileext it supports, none of which are what I need for my podcasts and no ability to ascociate
new fileexts! I am of course ignoring the extra baggage and issues here when all I want it DOWNLOAD what ever enclosure payload there is. God help the devs if their idea of implementing this support stays limited to what MM can "understand".

I'll look further at it later but it's clearly not what's needed, what's needed is to stop filtering what fileexts are downloaded, period!

Lastly, you're right, the point is moot. The whole topic and discussion is pointless because video will be supported in version 4, which is likely to be the next MM release (maybe a small 3.2.1 update before version 4). Not to mention you can easily have video podcasts downloaded now by using the MM2VLC add-on.

[Peke]

@t3chnomanc3r
Can you reference where you have read that MediaMonkey 3.2 support Video Podcasts?
Have you tried to use MM2VLC plugin for mediamonkey?

MediaMonkey in not filtering anything it just skips what do not recognize and in MediaMonkey 4.0 it will start to recognize Video format which should also reflect on podcasts too.

[t3chnomanc3r]

@t3chnomanc3rCan you reference where you have read that MediaMonkey 3.2 support Video Podcasts?
Have you tried to use MM2VLC plugin for mediamonkey?

It does not, I get it. Then NoHitter151 few messages back offered up MM2VLC which supports a limited list of fileext, has no "Add file types", and frankly loads way more crap into windows than I want (VC beta libraries??? come on!) to simply enable some extensions to download. Granted MM2VLC is meant to bridge video playback not add psuedo-supported filetypes for but that's not what I am doing and even if I was I'm doing just fine opening the file with VLC or MPC directly.

Not to mention you can easily have video podcasts downloaded now by using the MM2VLC add-on.

MediaMonkey in not filtering anything it just skips what do not recognize and in MediaMonkey 4.0 it will start to recognize Video format which should also reflect on podcasts too.

Whitelist or Blacklist, it's filtering by inclusion or Exclusion, filtering none the less rather than simply following the RSS standard by saving all enclosures. I care not about some subset support for video, I want all enclosures referenced by an RSS saved like any other podcatcher would do. Anything short of that leads to the same problem where some extension is not supported so the feed fails to download and we start this complaint cycle all over again.

[Lowlander]

I wonder what other players that support podcasts do? I'm leaning towards that MediaMonkey shouldn't download formats it doesn't support, unless the rest of the players do support downloading of unsupported formats. After all an option could be added to enabled/disabled the download of unsupported formats (someone mentioned PDF files in a previous post).

The way I see it, MediaMonkey is meant for audio podcasts, but is nice enough to handle other RSS feeds that contain other formats and extracts the audio formats from it (and video in MediaMonkey 4).

[t3chnomanc3r]

"Nice enough too" "Meant for", are you kidding me? Winamp has taken all the feeds I've thrown at it but that's moot since MM did not end up on my machine because it's "player" by a long shot. Read the home page, does it even mention "player" as part of the animated sales pitch or is it all biased towards "managing", hmm????

The code is there to do RSS it's simply an issue of artificially limiting it so some moron doesn't complain "why won't it play PDF files" or some such BS. V4 will broaden the whitelist but not eliminate it. Every file format I download I clearly have a player/reader/etc... for or can easily get one, so who cares what MM can/can't do with a file once the download is done????

I wonder what other players that support podcasts do? I'm leaning towards that MediaMonkey shouldn't download formats it doesn't support, unless the rest of the players do support downloading of unsupported formats. After all an option could be added to enabled/disabled the download of unsupported formats (someone mentioned PDF files in a previous post).

The way I see it, MediaMonkey is meant for audio podcasts, but is nice enough to handle other RSS feeds that contain other formats and extracts the audio formats from it (and video in MediaMonkey 4).

[Lowlander]

So you can read RSS feeds with WinAmp too and what about iTunes and WMP?

[Peke]

@t3chnomanc3r
I personally use http://www.newzcrawler.com/ for RSS download and managing. From what I have learned there is no single application that do all. Same thing is with MM this is no exception. I do not see that anyone forced to use MM.

BTW How did you managed to make Winamp read E-Book RSS Feeds (PDFs) and show them in Winamp Library?

[t3chnomanc3r]

I did not "make" it do anything. Certainly it's not going to manage/tag/launch a PDF but it does allow subscription, update, and download of whatever the feed
enclosure is.

A caveat I found testing just now was that although it did download the pdf, clicking the library->podcats->downloads folder hung WA. There dozens of subscriptions' downloads there, so I'll have to look into if the hang was result of adding a PDF feed or something else. I don't typically go into the downloads folder of the library as most podcasts I get are video & I prefer MPC to view them.

@t3chnomanc3r
I personally use http://www.newzcrawler.com/ for RSS download and managing. From what I have learned there is no single application that do all. Same thing is with MM this is no exception. I do not see that anyone forced to use MM.

BTW How did you managed to make Winamp read E-Book RSS Feeds (PDFs) and show them in Winamp Library?

[t3chnomanc3r]

Oh, looked at the link you posted. Not going to spend another $25 just to get RSS enclosure downloading. In fact I'd write my own XML parser to brute force WGET the enclosures before that would happen.

MM has podcatching, MM should support whatever a podcast encloses, PERIOD.

@t3chnomanc3r
I personally use http://www.newzcrawler.com/ for RSS download and managing. From what I have learned there is no single application that do all. Same thing is with MM this is no exception. I do not see that anyone forced to use MM.

[t3chnomanc3r]

Following up on the WA feeds & PDF example: Cleaned my feeds.xml & tested with just the below URL subscribed, worked fine & did not hang. So Now I need to comb through my XML backups to find what's tripping up WA. As before, granted WA will NOT manage the downloaded files but WILL download them and since even MP3 podcasts sometimes put extra in their feeds on other formats like PDF blindly downloading only is the job of a good podcatcher!

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/make_podcast/index.xml

To date I've been through over 5 free podcatcher clients in as many years! MM has potential if not half brain damaged; WA is one of the worst management/configuration wise; ZenCast was adeuquete (when it worked); Doppler started strong, bugged up, and now all they care about is iPooed/iPhoney crap; Juiced was not so juicy....

Seesh, read/parse/get, you'd think there'd be less hassle!

[nohitter151]

MM has potential if not half brain damaged; ...

I'm sure your underhanded insults and sarcasm will shoot this right to the top of the to-do list.

[t3chnomanc3r]

NH, whatever man, don't stray onto the Parkway during rush hour.

Fixed or not has more effect on the devs than me since I'm already out cash and won't be recommending the product to anyone soon.

MM has potential if not half brain damaged; ...

I'm sure your underhanded insults and sarcasm will shoot this right to the top of the to-do list.