No luck yet on 8830 World Edition

[TKwok]

I have an 8830 world edition and so far, I have had no luck getting Podtrapper to download any podcasts.

I don't have wifi, so that feature is not an option.

Nothing happens when I connect my Blackberry to my laptop via USB, so the wired download option is not working for me.

When I enable the cellular connection option, I can get a bunch of podcast headers where each one has all of the textual information about the podcast, but all of them are 0% complete and there is no audio file to listen to. It does appear to be connecting over the cellular network, but no happiness in getting the actual data file downloaded.

Any suggestions?

[marwatk]

Hi TKwok,

We've been talking about this via email, but wanted to post a followup here.

It appears that some carriers and BES owners restrict the size of file that can be downloaded over the air. The current desktop solution ends up running into the same situation, except through your desktop instead of over the air (the BES server defines how large a file can be for download, and it's enforced even when tethered).

I have a fix in mind for both situations, but will take me a couple of days to implement them. I'll make sure I post here when a solution is ready.

Thanks for helping me diagnose it...

-Marcus

[marwatk]

Hi TKwok,

I finally finished desktop downloading and a new version to support it. Check out the details here and let me know if this doesn't solve your issues.

Thanks again for helping me diagnose and determine that some carriers wouldn't work over cell network.

-Marcus

[WarER4X]

I'm running a Storm (on Verizon) and cannot get OTA downloads to work either. I'll try the desktop app method in a couple of days when I'm not behind the company firewall (the desktop app has no option to get through a proxy server). At any rate, it would still be nice to have the option to do OTA downloads for just this kind of scenario. While the carrier may restrict file download size (I have no idea if that is the case with VZW, but they restrict everything else, so it wouldn't surprise me), I have read that some apps are able to get around this limitation. Some info on crackberry.com indicates that Opera Mini can download files through links even if the file is larger than the size limit. It might be worth looking into how something like this can be done.

-SR-

[chuvisco]

Hi war,

I don't have any problems with OTA downloads on my Verizon Curve. Even large video podcasts download ok (but the ones I've tried are either an unsupported codec or are at a higher resolution that overwhelms the 8330's hardware, so I can't really watch them). The downloads are actually pretty quick--just a few minutes for a 45 min. audio podcast. I am running a beta OS (4.5.0.97) that is not Verizon branded, but I'm not sure that makes a difference--I would think that restrictions like this would be set on the Blackberry server (BIS in my case).

- Mike

[WarER4X]

Hi war,

I don't have any problems with OTA downloads on my Verizon Curve. Even large video podcasts download ok (but the ones I've tried are either an unsupported codec or are at a higher resolution that overwhelms the 8330's hardware, so I can't really watch them). The downloads are actually pretty quick--just a few minutes for a 45 min. audio podcast. I am running a beta OS (4.5.0.97) that is not Verizon branded, but I'm not sure that makes a difference--I would think that restrictions like this would be set on the Blackberry server (BIS in my case).

- Mike

That's good to know. The problem must be something else. I'm also not having any luck downloading through the desktop portal app. Perhaps I should try a different podcast address.

-SR-

[marwatk]

Hi all,

There is another option that I have yet to implement that I will be for OTA stuff, but it doesn't work with all podcasts. Basically it involves requesting little pieces of the file a at a time, but some podcast servers (looking at you, Vanguard) don't support this style of downloading. So while most would work, some don't, and so I focused on the desktop solution before the OTA one. I'm definitely interested in why the desktop downloader isn't working for you (see this post).

Though I do have users successfully downloading OTA with verizon, so it could be that the APN settings need to be defined on your device. Hey Mike, would you mind posting your APN settings?

If there is a real issue with the desktop I may have to bump up the priority on the chunked OTA downloading :/

-Marcus

[WarER4X]

Regular OTA download is, in fact, working just fine for me. The only exception is the one specific podcast that I have tried (posted in another thread). Other podcasts work without a hitch.

-SR-