I am one of those people that don’t like to run with the herd. I believe in the value of choice and alternatives to the mainstream, furthermore I believe that one company shouldn’t control the portable digital music player market; yes, I mean Apple. I find it truly frustrating that there seems, after a so far exhaustive search, to be no decent podcast clients out there to simply synchronize and manage all the audio podcasts I listen to.
I assumed, when I bought my Sansa Connect that I would be able to easily manage and listen to my podcasts as easily as I manage and read my RSS news feeds.
I was wrong.
I have worked my ass off trying to find a good program to take care of my podcasting needs. It seems that there are many good solutions out there, however they all seem to be geared towards listening to podcasts on the computer. I don’t like to do that. I prefer to listen to my podcasts while I work out or drive in my car.
I know that ITunes and IPods have very good podcasting support, but I hate IPods! I had one and the damn thing broke a year after I got it, and I used it only a handful of times. I vowed then to never buy a hard-drive-based portable music player ever again!
So, this will be my first post in what I believe is to be a succession of posts chronicling my quest to find the perfect, or best I can get my hands on, solution to an alternative to IPods/ITunes podcast client!
Stay tuned,
Joel
Comments (2)
Hi Joel,
I also purchased a Connect and have been generally pleased by it. The wifi, subscription-based music model works well for me.
However I believe this product will move from really good to great once the need for the computer can be cut from the process loop. And the only times it is needed now is 1) to search for music and 2) to transfer podcasts.
I understand Sansa will be working to allow search, but have heard nothing about podcast support. I don’t expect you’ll stumble on a way to wirelessly download podcasts, but will be interested in what you find. Good luck!
Thanks for the comment Jeff.
I think the podcast route could possibly work over wifi, I’m using yahoo music unlimited. It would be great to be able to add my podcast/rss feed URL’s into my account via my computer web browser, and then have them delivered, or “pushed,” to my sansa connect over wifi. A web interface something like podnova would be great.