Can't dowload any podcast mp3s

root
 June 03, 2012 at 06:35 AM posted in General Discussion

Technically not a problem with website, but i think the MP3s do download directly from ChinesePod, so I will ask this here:

For at least a couple of weeks I cannot download any new podcasts through itunes when I subscribe to my feed.  Nothing.  Not a single mp3.  I can see there's about 20 podcasts available, but they are all grayed out and nothing will download.

The rest of internet is working fine, except for half of the images on chinesepod, many JPGs don't show up either.

I am in shanghai, on China Telecom DSL, if that helps.  Does anyone have similar experience ?

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jcheinbockel
 June 04, 2012 at 05:42 AM

Hi,

If you're in Shanghai, there's a good chance that your service provider is filtering international media bandwidth. This is very common during politically sensitive times, and in the past has tended to last just a few days. We're not sure how long this will last this time, and unfortunately it tends to be inconsistent across the country, and even the city.

We use Amazon's cloud server, which hosts the media from mirrors all over the world. We're also always looking into other options in case the problem gets worse. In the meantime, we recommend you use a VPN, which should eliminate any connection problems.

Best,
JC 

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jcheinbockel
 June 07, 2012 at 10:07 AM

Glad to hear things are working. I've never heard of that happening before, and so I assumed incorrectly that this was related to some connection problems some users within China have been having.

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root
 June 05, 2012 at 02:52 PM

I found these instructions when I realized that I cannot connect to iTunes store.

You have to:

Find the command prompt shortcut in the start menu ('cmd') and right-click on it, then select 'run as administrator'

Then the command prompt should open, looking like a black box with c:> at the bottom. You type the command, and press enter. If all is good, it should tell you you need to reboot for the reset to take effect. After this my iTunes store and podcast downloads were working fine.

Good luck!

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bodawei
 June 05, 2012 at 05:56 AM

ah.. I have never mastered iTunes. Where do you enter "netsh winsock reset" ? I might have the same problem.

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root
 June 04, 2012 at 02:31 PM

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am trying to live in shanghai without VPN, so I have to suffer for it... I always hope to find a local resource that would not require tunneling under the wall.

Lucky for me, the problem happened to be with iTunes, all I had to do was enter "netsh winsock reset" and everything was magically fixed.

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bodawei
 June 04, 2012 at 01:12 PM

Hi JC

There are a number of questions raised by your answer, and I wonder why ChinesePod does not post a comprehensive technical response to this problem that is consistent and covers all the matters raised (perhaps in your blog?)

When you do so, can you address the matter raised by the poddie root that 'the rest of the Internet is working fine'? (This is also my experience.) This seems to be a fundamental issue and makes the rest of your comments hard to understand, if not redundant. The vpn recommendation comes up again - suggested for a problem that is not even raised by root. What has this all got to do with 'connections'?

I'm trying to stay cool about this but it seems to be a problem that is not going away.