What is the best Podcast Receiver?

[dogma]

Hi all

I am in search for a free podcast receiver (auto-downloader). I have just completed my annual OS re-installation (this time a factory restore), over the weekend, in preparation for the upcoming academic year. So, It's not the best time to trial software. Hence, the recommendation and experience request.

I have come across juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/), by googling, is this the premier free podcast receiver?

Do any offer auto-synch with MP3 players?

BTW I am interested in purchasing the Samsung YP-T9 Mp3 Player, so if there are any software tools that can help me to synch, download, etc with the player please let me know.

All suggestions and advice will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

P.S I know "best" is always subjective. However I am looking for the most feature rich, stable, hassle free one out there ATM.

[iceni60]

i've used juiced in the past, it does automatically download new audio files and is good. i use snarfer with vista because i use it for blogs, news, podcasts and anything else that uses RSS, it doesn't automatically download, it gives you link to download the files, i prefer that because i'm subscribed to 100's of podcasts so don't want to download all of them. maybe there's a setting in snarfer to automatically download but i don't know, i'm using linux atm so can't check. snarfer also uses the IE engine so i run it in a sandbox.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/snarfer.html
http://www.snapfiles.com/screenshots/snarfer.htm
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/misctools/fwrssreaders.html

linux has lot of media players that have RSS downloaders, so there must be something like that for windows, maybe itunes??

[dogma]

Thanks iceni60

I've tried itunes and didn't really like it. After searching the net for a while and trialling a few, I think I'll stick to downloading manually for now.

[chrome_sturmen]

Hey dont give up yet- give newzcrawler a shot, it's what I use. Not only can it snag your scheduled podcasts, but it's also great for rss feeds and other stuff -

http://www.newzcrawler.com/


What NewzCrawler will do for me?

With the help of NewzCrawler you'll be able to:
Read news from various sources: ATOM, RSS, RDF, Usenet Newsgroups (NNTP), Web (HTTP);
Compose messages with full-featured WYSIWYG editor and post them to your weblog on any Blogger, Metaweblog, MovableType or LiveJournal API supporting website;
Browse actual news articles in the web using built-in browser;
Keep informed about the most recent news in elegant manner with News Ticker and News Balloon;
Synchronize your subscriptions and news read status using permanent or dial-up connection;
Email interesting news and web pages to your friends;
Search for news by keywords;
Organize news channels in a fully customizable tree structure;
Download podcasts and listen them in your favorite media player;
Use MS Agent characters for speech synthesis.

[dogma]

Thanks, but unfortunately it looks like newscrawler isn't free.

[Ocky]

RSSOwl is a good one (free). Don't use it now, but had no problems before.

http://www.rssowl.org/overview


http://www.rssowl.org/images/overview/rssowl_win.gif

[dogma]

Thanks Ocky. I may have overlooked it, but from a quick skim it doesn't seem to offer auto downloads of podcasts.

Thanks everyone, but for now I'll utilise Thunderbird (it too doesn't auto download) as it's already my mail client. Hopefully orbit downloader will soon offer this feature.

[iceni60]

did you try juice? it automatically downloads. there must be loads of media players that automatically download too, all the linux ones do so i'm sure windows media players do the same.

[dogma]

No. I've read somewhere that it's no longer being developed. Based on this, I assume (maybe incorrectly) that it won't be offering any new features, like synching with an MP3 player, in the future. Only offering one service ain't appealing for me. And I kinda like jack-of-all-trades software.

I don't listen to many podcasts, so I can endure manually downloading via thunderbird.

Thanks

[iceni60]

you could try songbird, i'm sure that has an rss plugin. i just don't think you know what you're missing :dry: manually downloading is rubbish!
http://www.songbirdnest.com/

don't you want to try something like rssowl? i've got that and it's really good, you can view the lastest news, read new blog posts, download the lastest podcasts, subscribe to social bookmarking sites, get the latest security alerts and more all from one program!

you might as well start using linux because there are loads of media players with RSS support - exaile, amarok, banshee and bmpx, they are just the ones i've got installed, i'm sure there are more!

[dogma]

I've just found a Manager for my new Sony mp3player that also auot-downloads podcasts (via rss feed). The programs rums off the Mp3player so no installation required. I think it's written in Java. I am going to give this a go. If anyone wants it, it will be in my signature soon.

Thanks again.

[iceni60]

i just remembered there's this java RSS reader too -
http://www.blogbridge.com/

it runs from the folder it's in so you can delete the folder if you don't like it.