National Theatre

What are podcasts?

Podcasting, portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", is a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing you to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically, usually at no cost.

In order to sign up for a podcast you need an internet connection and a piece of podcast software which will search the web to find the latest episode and automatically deliver it to your computer.

This software is usually free, and these three are popular with NT users:

• iTunes
• Juice
• Doppler

The steps you go though in order to subscribe to a podcast will vary depending on which software you choose.

If you have iTunes

You can subscribe to some podcasts through the iTunes Podcast Directory.

If you can't find the podcast that you want in iTunes then you can follow the same method as outlined below for Juice, Doppler and other podcast software.

If you have Juice, Doppler or other podcast software

You need to add the "feed" of the podcast to your software. The feed is really just the address of the podcast, which the software will go to each time it wants to check for a new episode.

You can find the feed for all NT podcasts by clicking on the 'Subscribe to podcast' link in the podcast listing pages. What the 'subscribe' link does depends on your browser, its version and the podcast reader you have, but you will probably need to copy this feed address and paste it into your podcast software. How you do this will depend on your software, but you should look out for buttons or links that say "Add" or "Subscribe".

Listen to the audio or watch the video

When a new 'episode' becomes available for the podcast you have subscribed to, your software will automatically download it. For audio, you can then listen to this episode on your computer or transfer it to your portable player to listen to later. Note that for video, the episode should play on your computer but will only play on certain portable players and mobile phones (the video is in mp4 format). Please check the instructions for your device.

In order to watch the video on your computer, you will need to have Quicktime installed. You can download it from www.apple.com/au/quicktime/download/standalone.html

You may want to check the settings of your podcast software for details including how often it will check for new episodes, whether it will keep old episodes for you etc. This will vary depending on the software you have chosen, and your personal preferences.

If you decide that you no longer want to receive podcast episodes then it should be very easy to unsubscribe. Again, how you do this will depend on your software, but you should look for "Clear" or "Unsubscribe" options.