Hi all,

I want to thank you all for letting us know about the trouble you're having with downloads. We are (very) aware of the issue and are working actively to minimize its impact on you and your audience.

There are several kinds of reports we've seen here, so I'll list them. If I'm missing one, just respond to this post and let me know.

1. iTunes or another podcatcher will retrieve an episode and tell you it is complete, but the download will not in fact be complete. We just found the cause of this issue today (it has to do with how the RSS feed is read by podcatchers and is not limited to Podomatic) and corrected it. I've posted about this in detail on Site Status and Tech: http://www.podomatic.com/forumpost/show/17037
2. iTunes or another podcatcher will download a portion of an episode, then time out or quit downloading. iTunes calls this "error -3259". Retrying will usually have it pick up where it left off and maybe even complete.
3. Related to this, we've had reports that sometimes a player window will halt in the middle of streaming an episode and refuse to continue the download.

The last two issues come down to the same factor: bandwidth. Different software works differently here, but for some reason, there's an interruption in one of the many network connections between your computer and our server. The result is that the client (the player, itunes, etc) gives up at that point instead of trying to continue the download. There are many connections and parties involved here, so it is impossible to say it will ever work perfectly for everyone, but we're working to roll out a new server just for the player window that will help coordinate downloads and handle interruptions better. With the stopped download issue, we only see this when iTunes is competing for network resources. Retrying the download with the "Allow simultaneous downloads" box unchecked should help it complete.

I'll be updating this topic as I have more information available on the issue.