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Comment by badprose | Hacker News Reader

I recently tried turning the PocketCasts webplayer into an app on chrome and while it worked well, it had a major flaw. I'm stuck at my computer! If I wanted to get a cup of water, check the mail, put clothes in the dryer, whatever, I would have to pause the podcast, or leave it on and lose part of the story. This is fine when I had radio, since I can dip in and out and it doesn't matter much. But if I'm listening to something with a deep plot like Serial or that Halo thing, I don't want to miss a thing.

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Spotify just needs to host more podcasts... I have become obsessed with how convenient it is to cast Spotify to my wifi speakers, phone, computer and back and forth. Easy to switch where it's playing by changing in the the mobile or desktop UI. Constantly switching between phone/speakers when moving around the house, or leaving the house.

'Podcastaddict' also has google Cast functionality.

One of the few free apps that I've donated to! Quality podcasting app that has been receiving non-trivial updates for years.

Agreed, and I have donated as well. I especially like the advanced sorting options they have added reciently.

PocketCasts also supports chromecast

Spotify has a horrible UI for podcasts. Pocket Casts, which I use, is near perfect.

There's a PocketCasts mobile app on Android that works reasonably well (can't figure out how to set >1x speed) and syncs progress. It should be included with price of web app, imo, but it's cheap enough for the pair that I was ok with it. You have to then carry headphones, and still have to pause, so that seems unsatisfying.

Consider getting Chromecast Audios and cheap speakers through your house and creating logical groupings (e.g. I have an "everywhere" group, and common room paths + destinations for various things, like Living Room through Hallway to Bathroom), and using the Cast feature of PocketCasts. Much cheaper than Sonos, etc. and you probably have a bunch of speakers anyway. Also Google Homes double as a good enough speaker in annoying rooms that don't have many outlets, if you're ok with having a microphone in those rooms, and they obviously synergize well with the Chromecast Audios.

You can't figure out how to set >1x speed? On the playback screen, there's one button in each of the bottom corners; bottom right lets you set a sleep timer, bottom left has a whole bunch of settings, including playback speed.

I didn't realize those were even menus. Was looking through all the other settings menus instead. Oh well. Thank you!

I suffer from the same issue, to the extent that I'm considering adjusting my flow so that I always listen to podcasts on a mobile device, even when I'm sat at my computer. This eliminates all the syncing issues, etc. The only tricky decision is which mobile device is better for podcast listening: my iPod or my android phone. iPod has far superior battery life, and generally better podcast-listening experience. The one advantage the phone has is that I can update podcast content when I'm away from my home desktop. If Apple has ever released an iPod classic with wifi support for syncing, it would probably have been my dream product!

Or you could just get wireless headphones

Do Wifi headphones exist? Because Bluetooth has too short of a range.

Would imagine wifi sucks too much power

Consider that mobile phones exist.

(I am very happy with my wireless headphones.)

Custom radio on ISM bands, works flawlessly

The main issue is likely to be latency and lack of existing low latency protocols - it's doable, I use jack over my network to watch video and voip apps like Mumble get pretty damn good with compressed audio, but most of the music oriented type stuff is high latency SHOUTcast or other http streaming type solutions, which tend to involve large buffers and stuff. There's just nothing existing which would feel correct for wifi headphones to my knowledge.

Battery life is probably an issue too, but with low power wifi SoCs like the espressif stuff, you can probably get away with similar to Bluetooth using the tech that's around now and doing as much possible in hardware and with interrupts as possible.

Latency is an issue for gaming or other real-time applications, sure, but I doubt 100ms would make much difference for listening to music or podcasts?

What's a normal range for Bluetooth headphones? Because I was pretty amazed to still have audio playing on my AirPods being ~75m away from my phone. To be fair, there was nothing but a single pane of glass between the two, but still, that's quite the distance.

Just wanted to give a bump to this. I've been absolutely amazed with the range of my AirPods. They have the best range of any of the 3 pairs of bluetooth headphones that I own. Whereas my other 2 pairs will cut out if I leave my home office and go to the kitchen or the bathroom, my AirPods keep playing strong.

I'm really curious if this is a special function of the AirPods or Apple's W1 bluetooth chip in general. One of my other pairs is an older pair of PowerBeats sports headphones. I would definitely consider replacing them with a new set of BeatsX headphones if that's the case.

Big loud speakers are the answer.

I love a low-tech approach to solving a problem! Kudos!

lol, it's just the solution I have when I work from home. I'm often up doing the dishes or what not and I just turn the volume up before I leave my desk.

What Halo thing? I'm always up to hear about new podcasts. Thanks!

This made me curious enough to google it.

Maybe this?

http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/tagged/s1

Maybe! I didn't Google it; I searched in Overcast, but found nothing clearly relevant. Perhaps if I had the perfect podcast app...anyway, thanks! Even if this isn't the same podcast, I've always been much more fond of the Halo mythos than the actual games, and this looks like being very enjoyable.

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