If you already have the URL of a RSS feed, you can click on the 'new' icon, and type in the URL. If this feed provides audio/video/software attachment, you can select to download the attachment automatically. You can also choose to automatically archive the news items (as well as its attachment). 

     For mp3/mp4 players which are PlayForSure certified, BitsCast can maintain and update a playlist titled "Bitscast" in "My Playlist". Make sure you select the "Microsoft Media Player" format in the Preference->Podcast, and simply click on the the 'playlist export/play' icon to export current podcast contents to Microsoft  Media Player; you can then use the "BitsCast" playlist for syncing with your PlayForSure device(s). 

    For iPod user, if you choose to use Bitscast for podcast, you will have to set up Preference->Podcast to use Apple iTunes playlist format (you will also need to create a new playlist named "BitsCast" in iTune's main library if you are the first time user). Then click on the 'playlist export/play' icon, Bitscast will update the "BitsCast" playlist with the current contents. You can then sync the podcast with your iPod device.

    For non "PlaysForSure" devices which is mounted as a letter drive, power users can use the post processing feature to download synch. Example (courtecy of Paul Barrett): supposed the mp3 device is connected as F:, and the media files are expected under F:\media, open the preference->podcast, and enter "echo copy "%f" f:\media\ >>c:\latestfiles.bat" as the postprocessing command. This will create a batch file C:\latestfiles.bat as Bitscast finishes each download. The batch will copy all the latest download to F: drives. Remove the batch file after synch.

     Check the Preference->BitTorrrent->Listen Port. These are the port ranges that the BitTorrent will use to listen to connections. If you block the listen ports with firewall, the traffic will be stalled.

     Many publishers already provide RSS feeds together with their websites. If you see the indicator at the lower right corner of the browser window changes from  to , some RSS feed links are just detected on the page by BitsCast. You can subscribe to these feeds simply by clicking on the toolbar , which will further analysize the page content to present you with a full list of feeds. Even for those websites which is not yet properly designed for RSS auto-dectection, BitsCast's  tool can still be used to analysize the page content and extract all the feed URLs for you to review and/or subscribe. 

     BitsCast support OPML format RSS directory. Click on the 'directory' icon, you may browse the default news/podcast directory. To subscribe to any feed URL in the directory, simply double click on the link, and follow the instructions. If you also add your own OPML directory URL for your later use.

     "News Watch" is a saved search query. It uses keyword to search through the incoming RSS feed and database to put all the relevant information right at your figure tip. To create a "News Watch", simply put the mouse at one of the folder/channel (on the left tree-like catalogs), and right click the mouse and select "Create New Watch".

     The NU's Recycle Bin Protection may be doing redundent 'protection' for the Bitscast temperary files. Bitscast creates and deletes a lot of immediate files during the download, and the Microsoft JET engine will also produce a lot of database lock files (.ldb) during database query. The NU will try to protect all these temperary files, and therefore create a huge disk usage if you have a lot of subscription. We suggest you to exclude the whole Bitscast user directory from NU (for example, add exclusion rule of '-c:\documents and settings\\my documents\bitscast\' in the Norton Protected Recycle Bin's properties).

     An archived news item is a news/podcat whose content (and its podcast attachment) are cached locally.  The archived content is saved as html file in <My Documents>\BitsCast\My Archive\<feed title>\. If the feed contains any attachment (audio/video/software) they are downloaded as well. An archived item and its attachment will not expire or get removed automatically. The red-orange squares indicated the news/podcast item is archived.

    To archive a particular news item, toggle the archive status by clicking on the icon section of the news item; or right click on the item, and select "archive this item".

    To archive a news feed automatically, click on the feed URL, and select properies. On the properties dialog, click on auto-archive.

     An outdated item is a news item which is not in the current feed and/or is older than certain days (configurable from preference dialog) There are 3 ways to purge outdated news items. 1) By right click the mouse button on the news feed, and select "remove all outdated feeds", 2) by click on the 'recycle' icon on the search toolbar to purge oudated items from all database. 3) use preference dialog to configure the BitsCast to run auto-purge during news update.

     Reducing the maximum number of news threads: Go to preference->download, change to allow 1 - 2 news scanning threads, click OK, and then quit Bitscast and restart again to load the setting. The Microsoft JET engine (used for database management) seems not to be capable of handling multiple data access simultaneously. When more than 3 news scanning threads are trying to feed data into the JET engine at the same time, you will see stalling effect.

     BitsCast implements following keyboard shortcuts:

• F5 - activate feed subscription pane;
• F6 - activate news list pane
• F7 - activate address bar
• F8 - activate browser pane
• Control+TAB - switch to next pane (feed subscription/news list/browser)
• TAB - go to next URL (when browser pane is activated)

     Simply remove the libtorrent.dll from the installation.

    Yes. You will need Microsoft Media Player 9 or later if you want to playback/preview any podcast audio/video. Media Player is not needed if all you do is to read text/html news feed.

    Yes. You can download QuickTime for free from Apple Computer .

    Simple! Just copy the whole directory <My Documents>/BitsCast will do the trick.

    If the RSS reader support OPML export, simply export all the subscription to an opml file, and use BitsCast to import it.

    FromFile->Export select a subscription list to export (in opml format), and import it to the other RSS aggregator.

    You can use Controlpanel->Add/Remove Software to un-install BitsCast. You will need to un-install older BitsCast installation before installing any newer update.