BeyondPod Podcast Manager: Hands down the best podcast player for Android

[dgsinclair]

I tried many of the podcast players out there, but this has some features that are unique and helpful (see items with * below). Though the paid version is expensive ($7 at this time), if you have lots of feeds, it is very very worth it.

PROS:

1. Customizable Categories* - the ability to put feeds into customized catageories if a must have if you have lots of podcasts. Even better, you can put each feed into up to two categories - so I have a Favorites category which is a nice cross-section of my other feeds. I don't think ANY of the competitors, not even Doggcatcher, has this (I could be wrong).
2. Import/Export feeds - you can add a feed by one of three methods - search, input URL, or import from .opml. The last one is nicely implemented, in that you don't have to import the whole .opml, but can choose individual feeds from it.
3. Auto Features - auto refresh/update (or on schedule), auto download the latest X episodes, max number to keep for each feed, auto delete upon completion.
4. Informative List Views - each view has slightly different data available, but they are very informative. Views include (a) list all shows in feed (b) show only Unread, (c) Show all dowloaded for this feed, this category, or all (d) show/manage download queue (available from status bar). The design is very efficient and informative.
5. Car-friendly landscape view - put it in your car holder, it gets big buttons in landscape (even just in your hand, doesn't require dock).
6. Headset control - this only works when the app is in focus, but it works. Stop, forwards, backwards.
7. Playlists - both manual and Smart
8. Commercial skip* - allows you to set time for skip intervals
9. Video - does not have its own video player, but allows you to choose which to use
10. Scrobble support - whatever that is
11. Share - share with any of your social media services
12. High configurability - the defaults are smart, but everytying is configurable, at the global, category, and feed levels. Very nice.
13. Responsive Developer - the dev is helpful, responsive, and always adding features.
14. Full-featured trial - what got me to buy was using the trial version for 7 days. I was hooked! That's long enough to decide if you want to buy it.

CONS:
Compared to the other players out there, I have few complaints. I've asked the Dev to add adjust playback speed, which he said is often requested - he says that as soon as Android allows for that, he'll add it. The recent update (6/10/10) fixed most of my previous feature requests, so there are few things left to 'fix.' Here's my stretch at trying to think of some cons:

• Price - at $6.99, kinda high, but trying the rest made me realize that this was the one to have.
• High configurability - this is not really a bug, but the high number of options means that you can have one setting override another without knowing it. For example, you have defaults, like max number of shows per feed. If you don't realize that you only allow 3 shows max as default (the most is 20 as a default), you may find your downloads disappearing because you've hit the cap. Of course, for an individual feed, you can up that number to say 200 or more, and stop the autodelete of files beyond the deafult cap. But you might not see that right away. I hasten to add, though, the defaults are very smartly set for the basic user, and for the advanced user, there's lots of room to set things the way you want.
• Limited themes - it has one dark, one light theme. The dark works fine for me, and i could care less about skinning it, the colors work great.

CONCLUSION:
If you are serious about your podcast listening, and need to categorize your feeds because you have quite a few, look no further. I love this app.

 

[OnTheNose]

I saw this after posting a question on Podcast players in a different thread, so apologies up from about a quasi double post.

Agree the cost of this one listed above is a bit much for something I think should be free or at least cheaper, but it's not about price actually, just features.

From the list above #4 comes closest to what I want (and what my Nokia used to give me) - just a way to list Recently downloaded and flags for Not listened to yet / Listened to but not finished / already listened to.

I'm assuming most or all of these players remembers the point you were at in the podcast or song if you leave it to hear another song or podcast and go back to it later.

Any apps out there which covers all of these?

 

[OnTheNose]

Also can it work from the audio library on my SD card and not need to download? Like the way WinAmp imports your library and present it to the app.

I saw this after posting a question on Podcast players in a different thread, so apologies up from about a quasi double post.

Agree the cost of this one listed above is a bit much for something I think should be free or at least cheaper, but it's not about price actually, just features.

From the list above #4 comes closest to what I want (and what my Nokia used to give me) - just a way to list Recently downloaded and flags for Not listened to yet / Listened to but not finished / already listened to.

I'm assuming most or all of these players remembers the point you were at in the podcast or song if you leave it to hear another song or podcast and go back to it later.

Any apps out there which covers all of these?