Has anyone else had trouble downloading POI recently through an itunes subscription?

I subscribe to several podcasts.  All download to my computer without interruption or any other difficulty with the exception of the last several episodes of POI.

For POI, recent episodes all seem to hang up and stop.  I have to restart the downloads numerous times to obtain the recording.

The problem could be on my end, for sure, but if so I don’t know a solution or even how to diagnose…

Am using a Mac, fwiw.

Trail Rider - 21 December 2011 08:22 AM

Has anyone else had trouble downloading POI recently through an itunes subscription?

I subscribe to several podcasts.  All download to my computer without interruption or any other difficulty with the exception of the last several episodes of POI.

For POI, recent episodes all seem to hang up and stop.  I have to restart the downloads numerous times to obtain the recording.

The problem could be on my end, for sure, but if so I don’t know a solution or even how to diagnose…

Am using a Mac, fwiw.

Brad, did this sort itself out for you? If not, please let me know.

No, I still had the same problem with the last episode featuring Stuart Robbins.  And as before, other podcasts, including Center Stage, downloaded lickity split.

I very much appreciate your reply and interest, Adam.

I am surprised that there were no other replies to my query.  However, if I’m the only one experiencing this, maybe I just have bad downloading ju-ju?

I have the same problem just downloading videos or music from the internet in general or even playing on-line poker on my desktop. I have narrowed this down to my router. While I have a hard connect to my router, there are two other computers using the wireless function of my router.  As I do not have the router firewall activated (I have my computer firewall on), I have been told it is possible that people (within a certain radius) with wireless systems could be using my router to access the internet. This might exceed the capacity of the router to handle all the traffic and cause “bottlenecks”.
I do not subscribe to itunes, and I do not used an ipod or other small portables, but I believe that subscription to itunes still needs to be made through a computer. Thus if you also use a router, the problem may lie there. Sometimes a simple router reset (unplug and wait 30 seconds) will restore smooth access.

I don’t know if this pertains in any way to your problem. I am certainly no IT.  Just a heavy user… 

I;ve downloaded the last few podcasts without incident. It may be a local problem. Try rebooting your router ( unplug it for 30 seconds and then plug it back in) and do the same with your modem.  If that doesnt work you could try downloading it on another device. An iphone or an ipod can download the podcasts directly to the device rather than having itunes download it and then synching. Some of these things might help you localize where the problem is.

I appreciate the replies.

This morning I find the same problem while trying to download the Brian Greene episode.  The download hangs up with the projected time increasing to higher and higher values until it stops with or without an error message. I can eventually get the entire episode by restarting many, many, times.

For the record:

I do not have a router, per se, but simply a DSL modem.  It has been rebooted two or three times since this problem began.
All other apps and podcasts download through itunes with absolutely no difficulty.
The built-in firewall is turned off on my computer and no other firewall is installed.
Only POI presents this problem.

Is there anyone else here who also uses itunes to automatically download new episodes of POI?

I use iTunes for downloading all my podcasts, including PoI. I have occasional problems with random podcasts, but PoI has been downloading reliably and quickly lately. I downloaded the Brian Greene episode last night in about 30 seconds. What version of iTunes are you using?

Interesting.

I’m using itunes for Mac version 10.5.2, which is the latest version for the version of OS X I’m running.

Are you using a Mac or PC?
If the latter, this could be one of the few times in recorded history when a PC works more efficiently than a Mac…

I’m using a MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM running OS 10.7.2 and iTunes 10.5.2. My connection ATT&T Uverse with the fastest speed available. Sounds like a modem issue on your end, or just one of those random Internet glitches.

Thanks once again for the thoughtful replies.

This is not the end of the world, needless to say.  I’m still able to obtain the podcast with some extra effort on my end.  Of course, if I couldn’t get the latest podcasts from Chris and Karen, that would signal the end of the world. 

In any event, I don’t think I have a modem / router problem.  I live part time in two places, one with AT&T wifi in the house, the other with Verizon wifi.  I’ve had the same issue - only with POI - in both locations. Again, all other content, including apps, music, and other podcasts, downloads rapidly and without glitches.

And my health is fine, so what’s not to like?

As much as anything, I just wanted to alert Adam / CFI that there may have been some wider problem, which is apparently not the case.

Having documented Internet Gateway commands on a past job I can say that the more I learned about the Internet the more surprised I became that it works at all. Many things can go wrong between servers, and it appears somewhere between your ISP and the iTunes store some servers are not communicating well. When you send a request to download a podcast the request goes from your computer to your ISP’s server, to an Internet backbone server which routes it to the destination server, in this case iTunes. The iTunes server then requests information from the PoI server, which goes through another backbone server, and the whole process runs backwards to your computer. One glitch along the way can stop the transmission or slow it to a crawl.

At least you have your health.

You can always download episodes from the Point of Inquiry website (pointofinquiry.org).