Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 13 years and 7 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Last month I purchased Podcaster for my iPhone (thanks to this thread over on the TiVo Community Forum) and have now been using it for a few weeks.

Podcaster was originally rejected by Apple back in 2008 so the developer put the app on Cydia instead for jailbroken phones. Then in 2009, a slightly stripped down version called RSS Player accepted into the App Store. Finally, this past June, Podcaster for iOS4 devices was approved by Apple (RSS Player is still available for older iOS3 devices).

I love having the ability to manage my podcast subscriptions directly on my iPhone, without the need for iTunes. Setup was pretty simple: I exported my iTunes podcast subscriptions into OPML format and then e-mailed it to myself, opened the attachment on my iPhone which launched Podcaster and imported all of the subscriptions. I then removed all of my podcast subscriptions in iTunes so I’m not doubling-up on downloaded files.

I also like the ability to set up automatic synchronization schedules: I’ve got it configured for 6am and 4pm so theoretically it’s current before I leave the house in the morning, and then before I leave work in the evening. If you don’t (or can’t) download an episode, you can simply stream it.

Another cool feature is the ability to control download/retention settings at the podcast level. In iTunes you can only say you want to keep the last 3 episodes, all unplayed episodes, etc. and that is effective for all of your subscriptions. In Podcaster, however, you can set those options for each individual subscription. This way I can keep all the unplayed episodes of Buzz Out Loud but only have one (the most recent) episode of Adam Carolla available.

Some things that bug me so far, though:

• it doesn’t truly run in the background (even with iOS4’s new multi-tasking abilities) so I have to remember to leave the app open in order for the scheduled sync times to work. Since I’ve jailbroken my iPhone I’ve been using Backgrounder to keep Podcaster in the “foreground” so the downloads happen in the “background.” This approach has been relatively successful so far, except for some partial downloads (see below).
• it supports the remote button on my headphones to start/stop playback, but the double-click-and-hold (for FF) and triple-click-and-hold (for REW) don’t work in video podcasts. I really miss this ability to FF/REW from my headset (or car dock) since using the scrubber to skip through commercials is just about impossible and the 10-second skipahead is only available on audio podcasts.
• similarly, the 10/20/30 second skip-ahead feature doesn’t seem to be present in video podcasts
• video playback will be paused when an alert (or push notification) comes in. This occurs in the normal iPod app though, which started with iOS4 (and continues to bugs me).
• you can’t create a mixed playlist of audio and video podcasts
• I’ve run into problems with a few corrupted downloads where the video just hangs at one point even though I drag the slider farther. I suspect the downloads are interrupted due to poor signal (or an incompatibility with running in the background) so Podcaster thinks they are complete but they really aren’t.

So, the app has promise and is well worth the $0.99 price of admission, but it still needs some polish.