How to browse and subscribe to BBC podcasts

Excellent piece, very clear and useful.

Many thanks for clear and comprehensive post, I have wanted to do this but never knew how. Anyone got any more useful OPMLs to add?

Golux, I couldn't find any other official OPML addresses apart from the BBC and NPR ones, which is a bit strange as OPML is meant to be a very widely used standard.

I suspect there are more out there but the broadcasters don't want to make them known to the public, a bit like RTSP addresses.

There are lots of guides to using offline OPML files but as I mentioned in the text offline files won't update themselves with new addresses. It makes a lot more sense to use an online file which can be updated by the broadcaster themselves.

There are lots of unofficial OPML directories, for example:

http://hosting.opml.org/dave/podcasting.opml

...but these unofficial sites tend to contain lots of broken links because the person who created them doesn't bother to update them.

Tzer2 wrote:Golux, I couldn't find any other official OPML addresses apart from the BBC and NPR ones, which is a bit strange as OPML is meant to be a very widely used standard.

I suspect there are more out there but the broadcasters don't want to make them known to the public, a bit like RTSP addresses.

There are lots of guides to using offline OPML files but as I mentioned in the text offline files won't update themselves with new addresses. It makes a lot more sense to use an online file which can be updated by the broadcaster themselves.

There are lots of unofficial OPML directories, for example:

http://hosting.opml.org/dave/podcasting.opml

...but these unofficial sites tend to contain lots of broken links because the person who created them doesn't bother to update them.

I see the problem you are raising but it's really not that more inconvenient than just doing it manually yourself.
Basically the opml file is just a special formatted textfile with links to different podcasts and videos, whereas many of them again are RSS or web feeds.

Comparing it to RTSP is a bit off as RTSP is a protocol while OPML is a markup language, but yes, they both are links in a sense.

You can even build your own opml file
http://reader.feedshow.com/goodies/opml/OPMLBuilder-create-opml-from-rss-list.php

Though I do agree that it's quite static and as yourself I haven't seen any widely use of it.
(Actually I didn't know about it before I started to use Podcasting on my Nokia)

What I'm trying to say is that whether you call it OPML or RSS, it still links to other places before pulling down the content.
If you've had checked inside e.g Nokia Podcasting, you can already find very much contents from NPR, besides the directory in which the Podcasting finds it's content from are from this website
http://podcastdirectory.com

The full url is actually
http://podcastdirectory.nokia.com/pc/search/?appid=NokiaPodcastingApplication1&keywords=#&format=rss&sort=rel&searchsource=all&contentfilter=noadult

From the url you see that the application itself presents itself whereas the format of the contents it finds are based on rss and the standard filter is noadult.

Excellent feature, thanks. I didn't know they had an opml feed.

wampyre wrote:I see the problem you are raising but it's really not that more inconvenient than just doing it manually yourself.

What I'm trying to say is that whether you call it OPML or RSS, it still links to other places before pulling down the content.

If you're using your own favourite links, maybe a self-made OPML file is good enough.

However, if you're trying to follow podcasts from a major broadcaster, using an offline OPML file is much less convenient, because it won't stay up to date.

If a new podcast is added you will never find out about it because your own OPML file is static. And if existing podcast addresses are changed your own OPML file will contain broken links.

It's the same reason that websites are better than static HTML files, because websites get updated by their owners.

Comparing it to RTSP is a bit off as RTSP is a protocol while OPML is a markup language, but yes, they both are links in a sense.

I didn't mean any similarity in a technical sense, just in the way that broadcasters treat them.

You can listen to BBC stations on your phone live if you insert the correct RTSP address, but the BBC will not publish these addresses in public because they don't want people use them.

I suspect there may be similar cases with OPML files, broadcasters may use them for distribution to various other sites but don't want the public accessing them. I'm not sure about that though, I could be totally wrong, maybe broadcasters just don't use online OPML directories very much.

If you've had checked inside e.g Nokia Podcasting, you can already find very much contents from NPR, besides the directory in which the Podcasting finds it's content from are from this website

You're absolutely right that NPR has a lot more links in the default directory, and I do recommend people use the default directories as well. I was mainly using NPR's own directory as an example of another major broadcaster having an online podcast OPML address.

However, the default directories only contain a tiny number of BBC podcasts so there's obviously a need to add the BBC's own directory which lists them all.

The full url is actually
http://podcastdirectory.nokia.com/pc/search/?appid=NokiaPodcastingApplication1&keywords=#&format=rss&sort=rel&searchsource=all&contentfilter=noadult

That's slightly different, that's actually the search function. The directories are separate from search, and they contain different sets of podcasts.

For example All About Symbian's podcast can be found from the app's search function (try using the keyword "Symbian"😉, but AAS is not listed in any of the app's default directories.

There is some overlap, NPR has podcasts in both directories and in search, but they're separate sets of data. I think Nokia should make this clearer, because it's quite confusing to see podcasts in search results that aren't in the directories.

Thanks. I knew there must be a way of doing this, but until now I'd not found it!

Well it seems that we agree to some extent the opinions of eachother Tzer2.
And you bring out good points regarding offline OPML files and you probably know more about it.

However what I often see inside the OPML files are links to the RSS of a particular show / podcast, which again is "kept alive" by the update and the syndication, e.g AAS's podcast.

I just can't see the dynamic of the OPML files itself.
(That may be due to I've never seen one, or that I'm comparing it to things like a java script)

However what I often see inside the OPML files are links to the RSS of a particular show / podcast, which again is "kept alive" by the update and the syndication, e.g AAS's podcast.

Yes, but the RSS only works for one podcast or site. If the podcast series closes down the link becomes broken, and if a totally different podcast series begins you won't know its RSS link.

For example, if you subscribe to the AAS podcast through its RSS feed, and then we stop releasing them, the link becomes broken. And if we start a totally new website ("All About Lawnmowers" or something like that) with its own podcast, you won't know about it existing.

Online OPML directories point towards all the RSS links for all the different podcasts and/or sites provided by that broadcaster. When the broadcaster wants to add a new podcast RSS, they add it to their directory, so the OPML file is kept up to date. When the Nokia Podcasting app accesses the OPML file online, it will only see the latest version with all the latest RSS links.

There's nothing dynamic about OPML files, but if they're stored online then the creator of the file can keep it updated, just like keeping a website HTML file updated.

Yes, good work Tzer2 - thanks.

I'm curious about the 'international' section. What's 'international' when it's at home?

Why does it have 'UK' - surely that's 'national'? ...and 'International' doesn't have any 'USA' category - I would have thought there would be many padcasts from the USA.

Pisses me off when people assume I'm in a certain place. Sometimes it just seems like people sometimes just haven't got a clue.

I could understand if they used the GPS or something to find out where you are, and then change what's in 'international' to match that, but this isn't doing that...it seems to be assuming everyone is in the USA. Pathetic.

You can also include a "link" to other online OPML files from your own OPML file. This makes it easy to migrate podcast sources to new device not just specific podcasts.

<opml>
<head></head>
<body>
<outline text="TITLE OF PODCAST SOURCE TO BE ADDED TO DIRECTLY" type="link" url="PLACE URL TO OPML FILE HERE"/>
</body>
</opml>

For those of use without touch screens and qwerty keyboards entering the OPML's long URL can be very painful. But that's easily solved too.

1. Install nokia's 2d bar code software from:

I can't post urls, so you'll have to google it.

2. Install the firefox 2d bar code generator from:

Since I can't post urls Google is your friend again. Seach for "Mobile Barcoder" or "firefox 2d barcode plugin"

Then you can just right click on a link and selecte "Create bar code for this link" and voile, you can point your phone's camera at the screen and read in the barcode. You can then use Option->Copy to copy the link into the cut and paste buffer, and then paste it into the URL field.

Very hand.

So when is "All About Lawnmowers" launching? Can't wait...:tongue:

boren wrote:For those of use without touch screens and qwerty keyboards entering the OPML's long URL can be very painful. But that's easily solved too.

1. Install nokia's 2d bar code software from:

I can't post urls, so you'll have to google it.

2. Install the firefox 2d bar code generator from:

Since I can't post urls Google is your friend again. Seach for "Mobile Barcoder" or "firefox 2d barcode plugin"

Then you can just right click on a link and selecte "Create bar code for this link" and voile, you can point your phone's camera at the screen and read in the barcode. You can then use Option->Copy to copy the link into the cut and paste buffer, and then paste it into the URL field.

Very hand.

Yes, I use this technique 'all the time'. Much more handy than trying to re-type URLS or to navigate to the page again.

Thanks. Dead easy when you know how. Worked first time.