buffering...
February 18, 2011 9:34 AM   Subscribe

It would be rad if my iPhone could stream podcasts instead of downloading them to the hard drive.

I listen to podcasts to get through the day (things like RadioLab, Savage Love, and the Nerdist). I prefer not to subscribe to and download podcasts because they clutter up my hard drive. In theory I can tap on the title of an episode to stream the whole thing instead of downloading it. In practice that never works well.

It would be nice if I could load up a big buffer while I have WiFi so that I could listen to it on my commute, however, the phone seems to only want to load up the next minute or two of the file and then just stops streaming. Is there any way to just get it to load up the whole episode while I'm in WiFi or is there a limitation due to lack of RAM or something?

Sometimes the phone will arbitrarily decide to stop streaming and then run out of buffer and just stop and lose my place. WTF? Is there any way to prevent that?
posted by cirrostratus to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I'm thinking that if you buffer the whole thing it takes up the same amount of space as if you downloaded it. Do not not want to download because you can't delete until you sync it next? If so, you can easily delete on the fly. Just swipe left over the name of a podcast and the 'delete' prompt will show up. I often download podcasts before leaving work and delete them when I get off the train.
posted by jourman2 at 10:16 AM on February 18, 2011 [5 favorites]


Response by poster: !!!

I don't know how I could have gone so long without knowing that you could delete them on the fly. Being able to do that pretty much clears this whole issue up.
posted by cirrostratus at 10:44 AM on February 18, 2011


Wow. I have this same problem and don't know why I didn't think to try to delete the old podcasts either. Thank you, cirrostratus and jourman2.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 11:59 AM on February 18, 2011


I don't think this helps when you're out of wifi range, but there's an app called AudioPress specifically for listening to streaming podcasts. In my experience, it's worked pretty well, even on my ancient Microsoft router.
posted by anthom at 1:29 PM on February 18, 2011


Stitcher will also stream podcasts to your phone, and seems to work ok when in 3G territory. Doesn't work so well if you get downgraded to edge, in my experience- and completely kicks off if you have no signal.
posted by jenkinsEar at 1:42 PM on February 18, 2011


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