Friday, June 29, 2007

Automatic Podcasts on Your HTPC with Podcatcher

Want to watch video podcasts on your Home Theater PC? With Beyond TV and a free plugin called Podcatcher, you can set up the program to automatically download those video podcasts. Podcatcher integrates the podcast title and description information right into the Beyond TV folders with ease. Podcatcher was developed by Michael Pyle, a regular forum member on the Snapstream Forums.

Limitations:
  • Must Own Beyond TV4 or higher
  • Will only Allow playback of BeyondTV supported files such as:
Installation:
  • Download Podcatcher from the Snapstream Forums HERE
  • Unzip files to a folder Run setup.exe this will install the program and add a shortcut to the start menu
Once installed, run the Podcatcher and you will see the following screen where you input the BTV server IP address, the BTV port number (default is 8129) and the BTV password if you have a password set up. You can also select how often you want Podcatcher to update the podcast feeds and look for new podcasts.
Once you are done with the setup screen, select the save button.

Add Podcast Feeds:

To add your feeds open Podcatcher, Select Setup and then select feeds from the menu bar.

Paste your new podcast feed (RSS2.0 preferred) into the "Feed URL" box and click on the"Add/Update" button. This will automatically populate the feed title and feed description.

Once You are done, Podcatcher will begin downloading your selected podcasts. Once downloaded, they will show up automatically in Beyond TV. The minimized Podcatcher will run in the background and continue to watch for new Podcasts to catch.

Podcast Resources:
To find new podcasts and their related feeds, check out the following sources:

Yahoo Podcasts

Revision3

Podcast Alley