CastGrabber, the Standalone Podcast Downloader
Podcasts are available in ridiculous quantities around the net ranging from tech news to transsexual talk shows and everything in between. Podcast downloaders have been around for a while in software form like iTunes and Juice, but the first one requires actually using iTunes and the second failed rather epically when I tried it as it didn't even detect any MP3 files in the RSS feed I gave it. Software downloaders of course also reuires the computer to be on and the player to be connected and it's not really that automatic if you still need to fulfill those criteria.
The CastGrabber is the first standalone podcast downloader for pretty much any MP3 player on the market and it might just make it that much simpler to get updated podcasts automatically. Its basically a box where you plug in an Ethernet cable and the USB cable of your MP3 player and it will do it's thing without further hassle after the initial setup along with charging the player. It's all very easy and according to the website you manage everything online with no complicated processes whatsoever. It all sounds well and good, but there is very crucial (for many, including me) feature missing - WiFi. Since you can only connect with an Ethernet cable, that means that it simply won't work unless you place it directly beside your router. I'd imagine a lot of people would use this at work, on the nightstand or similar places and that's not exactly the most common place to put a router. Either way, nice piece of hardware that might just be worth the $120.
Comments
Lucky Luciano on June 25, 2008 5:35 PM
Isn't there some piece of software with which you can do this straight from the PC? I mean if you transfer music to the pmp, you'll need a pc anyway. So why buy that thing?
Jon HH on June 25, 2008 6:26 PM
For people who doesn't want to turn on their PC every morning to download the latest pre-recorded radio shows?
Keith Z-G on June 27, 2008 6:22 PM
When I don't feel like turning on my PC . . . I just leave it on at night! Or when I don't do that, I just wake up my laptop . . . but really, I think the true solution is just to use Amarok. The KDE4 version (ie. so it's portable to OSX and Windows as well) is getting pretty spiffy.
I can't think of a better program than Amarok, really. Works with any mp3 player that isn't terribly locked down (and many that are, depending), handles audio RSS feeds be they mp3 or ogg or m4a or whatever, and the behaviour of the podcast handling is very robust (you could, for example, set it up to automatically download and queue up certain podcasts to be uploaded to your mp3 player as soon as they show up in the feed). I really don't know how far along the KDE4/OSX/Win version has gotten though.