I’ve been using BeyondPod to manage my audio podcasts since shortly after picking up my Google Nexus One earlier this year. While the app can also download and play video podcasts, I didn’t really pay much attention to that feature because the video features were kind of clunky and because I don’t really make time to watch video podcasts all that often. That may change now that BeyondPod has rolled out an update with better video support.
BeyondPod 2.4.9 includes a number of tweaks and bug fixes. That includes a new video catalog with a thousand video titles from tech blogs, TV and movie sites, news organizations, and other sources.
There’s also a new “video” tab in searches helping you differentiate audio from video podcasts in the Add Feeds area.
The new version of BeyondPod also has a setting to lock screen orientation to portrait or landscape, and a new feature that lets you selet the defult screen that opens when you launch the app (Feeds, Podcasts, or Player).
I checked out the new features by finding a few video podcasts this morning and I had no trouble finding what I was looking for and choosing to either download the videos to my phone or stream the larger files over the web without downloading them first (which comes in happy when you’re staring at a 600MB video file!)
BeyondPod is available as a free download for Google Android, but the free version only provides a 7 day trial period before it stops working. You can purchase an unlock key from the Android Market for $6.99 which lets you continue using BeyondPod after the trial period is up.
