It should be called an audcast because it is an audio broadcast. What does pod have to do with it?

When I listen to audcasts, I first SSH into my media playing machine connected to the home stereo system and launch gPodder (that should be gAuder and you auder use it). After launching gPodder, I can then check for and download new episodes, or I can have gPodder launch an application to play already downloaded episodes.

GPodder doesn't play episodes, but it can be configured to play audio or video with a user specified application. It was the actual need of a command line audio player to use with gPodder that led to the creation of sap.

What I recently found out is that when one tries to play an audcast or vidcast (video broadcast) that is not present on the computer, gPodder will launch the player application using the on-line location of the *casts file, so instead of download and then playing the file, the file can be played over streaming HTTP. This will only work if the player is capable of playing a file over HTTP.

That's a nice little feature/bug!

Since the media playing machine has s-video out to a television, I can use gPodder in conjunction with mplayer to stream NOVA vidcasts.

Sweet!

Now quit reading, and go sit on your duff while watching NOVA.