Podcast downloading stuck at 'Pending'

[TGBmark1234]

Hi,

I finally figured out how to make Mango download podcasts on the phone itself, and learnt to deal with the idiocy of it immediately redownloading deleted episodes, but think it's gone and stuffed me now.

Somehow... no idea how. When it was downloading a few nights a ago it stopped and I had an episode that was about 10% downloaded, two more in the queue and nothing happening. All three downloads were marked as pending. There was nothing I could do to make them start up again.

I've cancelled those downloads, but it's still not working properly. It finds episodes of series that I subscribe to as new, but still won't download them - Pending. Any new episodes of existing series aren't found at all.

I can download apps and music just fine, not podcasts.

I've tried unsubscribing the series (doesn't work) and I've tried syncing the affected episodes across from Zune (syncs fine, but doesn't do anything to solve the problem).

Any suggestions or am I looking at a hard reset, losing game progress (again) and having to reset everything from scratch?

I love everything about WP7, except how it handles podcasts. Seriously, my previous Symbian (!) phone was doing on-device downloading perfectly well three years ago.

Thanks for any help.

 

[TheWeeBear]

It's nothing to do with podcasts being too large in size and needs Wi-Fi enabled or are you using Wi-Fi already ?

I know that's not causing your episodes problem, but thought i'd mention it anyway.

 

[TGBmark1234]

Hi. As far as I can tell, WP7 only downloads podcasts over WiFi. I've left the phone plugged into the mains, with WiFi on overnight and it makes no progress at all.

 

[TheWeeBear]

Ah right, Ok TGBmark1234. I've only ever downloaded podcasts as a one off, never subscribed to any. Will need to give it a try and see how it goes. Hope you get to the bottom of the problem soon.

 

[TGBmark1234]

I've reset my phone (several times) and have come to the conclusion that on device podcast downloading is very fragile. If you so much as look at the phone in the wrong way whilst it's downloading it will break. Once it's stopped it is a hard reset to get downloading working again.

It's working at the moment, but when (not if) it breaks again I'm going to give up and go back to syncing with Zune, which annoys me. Every single little thing about WP7 is better than Symbian, except this...

 

[binarymoustache]

Feeling the pain on this one.

Between this "pending" issue, and the issue where new podcast episodes are not available to download, WP7 podcast functionality is pretty much broken. It would be PERFECT if everything just worked like it was supposed to, but it doesn't.

Hope the bugs are worked out in the next release.

 

[Embiggens]

Yup I'm seeing this too on my titan. Ah so close to perfect podcast behavior. Well that and I wish I could pin 'podcasts' to my start menu.

 

[dainla]

Just happened on my HD7.

Seriously annoyed

 

[kevm14]

I've had 3 podcasts set to download only over WiFi on my Titan (keep 3) and I've had this setup for weeks now with no issues yet. I wonder if it's something with the particular podcast (something common to the server side), or a phone setting issue. Or is it just a matter of time?

 

[TGBmark1234]

I've also had this running fairly (but not completely) reliably for several weeks now.

I did have an issue with one series, but since I unsubscribed from that all has been good. That series was first in the list and had an ampersand in the name. Not sure if either of those points is significant. Unsubscribing is fine at the moment, but once the F1 season restarts I will want to resubscribe to the AT&T Williams podcast.

I second the desire to be able to pin "podcasts" to the start screen.

 

[jhoff80]

I've been having this issue as well. Also, now that I unsubscribed to the two podcasts that were stuck on pending, I seem to not be able to RE-subscribe to them.

 

[jhoff80]

As it turns out in my case, the issue was caused by manually putting MP3 files tagged as "Podcast" into the Zune podcasts library and syncing them to my phone. As soon as I removed those podcast files that I manually transferred, the pending stuff was able to sync.

 

[cgk]

Hi. As far as I can tell, WP7 only downloads podcasts over WiFi. I've left the phone plugged into the mains, with WiFi on overnight and it makes no progress at all.

I thought this feature was not available in the UK - if it is available, how do I turn it on?

 

[oldpueblo]

I have several podcasts I'm subscribed to and I just make sure I have wifi turned on when I plug it in at night. They don't download over the air claiming they are too large, which makes no sense of course since I have "unlimited data" and the phone is configured to do just that. Oh well it's not a show stopper, just a minor annoyance.

 

[awesumjon]

Here's my .02¢

Podcasts can't be over a certain size *(30MB?) to download OTA but they will over WiFi. Also, you should be able to just stream them by pressing the the play button when viewing them in the marketplace, even if they are over the size to download them*

The marketplace podcast system wasn't designed to replace Zune syncing, it would be a constant hassle for syncing and re-syncing OTA across WPs and PCs. (meaning both would need to be connected at all times w/ Zune open)

They meant it more for listening to "one off episodes" but do offer the subscribe option on your WP, which DOES NOT sync with the Zune software. So if you subscribe on your phone it won't automatically subscribe on Zune software. The subscriptions are handled separately from the Zune and the Phone.

Was that a mouthful or what lol so, provided you have a good data connection you can always stream it (buffering may be required) but you'll have to mark it as played on Zune software when you get home.

If all else fails, I go to the direct link in IE (found separately on the podcaster's site and download it (or stream it in WP7s case) in IE, but that means you can't exit from IE at risk of starting over (and you can't skip past what isn't buffered or you'll restart the stream)

Yeah. I listen to 20 podcasts and I hate missing an episode. Hope that helped!

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express

 

[TGBmark1234]

I thought this feature was not available in the UK - if it is available, how do I turn it on?

Hi,

I'm assuming you mean on-device podcast downloading. It does work in the UK, but it's a pain to setup. You need to download an episode of the series that you want using Zune on your PC. Sync that across to the phone, and then you can access the Subscribe option on the phone to make start downloading future episodes. All this because Microsoft deem the Podcast Marketplace to be US only, clearly the rest-of-world region cannot be trusted with this.

You should also be aware that WP7 doesn't like you trying to manage your podcast collection yourself. So if you tend to listen to listen and delete then you'll have to unlearn that behaviour as the phone will immediately try and redownload the episode you've just deleted. Instead you have to let it waste space and auto delete episodes according to how many episodes you've told it to keep.

It's also not possible to force WP7 to go and download all episodes NOW. It does it on its own schedule that you have no control over. What I have found is that you can use the annoying must-download behaviour I mentioned above to force it to download a new episode, providing you know there is a new one waiting to be discovered.

 

[TGBmark1234]

Oh, and it only works over WiFi. No 3G podcast downloading outside of the US. It will discover new episodes over 3G, it just won't download them.

Honestly, my old Symbian (which was otherwise a pile of junk) was much better at handling podcasts.

 

[mhans311]

Is it just me or will it not show new episodes even when you manually check for them?

Sent from my Trophy using Board Express

 

[awesumjon]

Is it just me or will it not show new episodes even when you manually check for them?

Sent from my Trophy using Board Express

Yeah, it takes a couple of hours to get there. I don't know why, it just happens.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express

 

[Reiff Lorenz]

I had the same issue on Windows Phone 8. My podcasts stopped downloading automatically. Episodes were all listed as 'pending' but they never downloaded.

I finally figured out that this happened when I tried to use the Windows Phone 8 application for Windows 8 desktop to sync a podcast series from my desktop.

The fix consisted of:
1. Turn off podcast syncing from the desktop app.
2. Sync the phone. (This will remove the desktop-synced podcasts.)
3. Reboot the phone
4. Cancel all the pending downloads
5. Go to the Podcasts section of the phone and make some small change (like changing saved episodes from 3 to 4)

After all that, the phone recognized all the podcasts, all the episodes that needed to be downloaded, and actually started downloading them.

Hope this helps!