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Cannot download sermons thru iTunes on iOS devices

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Cannot download sermons thru iTunes on iOS devices

12 September, 2011
4:07 am

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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I was just alerted to the issue that our visitors cannot use any iOS 4 devices (iPad, iPhone or iPod touch) to download our sermons through iTunes. The sermons download fine through iTunes on Mac OS X or Windows, but when using iTunes on iOS, our visitors get an error "[Sermon name] cannot be played on this iPhone" (or iPad or iPod).

If I link to the podcast feed directly (via clicking Other) on a iOS device (tested with iPhone 4 and iPad 2), the feeds rendered in HTML by reader.mac.com and each sermon is reachable (and streams automatically, though there are no playback controls). So the links are resolvable, our feed validates, but just doesn't work within iTunes for iOS.

One question is whether iTunes (iOS) is more strict about the URL redirect (the filename in the reader.mac.com rendering is similar to "?show&file_name=2011-06-12%20PM%20T…". Has anyone else encountered this issue and/or have ideas on how to fix it?

Thanks,
Caleb Clauset
Deacon and webmaster
South Fork church of Christ
http://southforkcofc.org

12 September, 2011
4:13 am

cclauset

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FWIW, I have successfully downloaded—using iTunes (iOS)—episodes from other podcasts, but their feeds weren't generated by SermonBrowser.

20 September, 2011
3:20 pm

mtnvalleycc

Upstate NY

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19 September, 2011

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yeah… i had this working once before….and haven't revisited it….but you actually have to get the feed approved through Apple and it will work well….

20 September, 2011
3:55 pm

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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This isn't an issue with feed approval, rather it's that the sermon episodes aren't downloadable when using iTunes on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). I can download the episodes fine through iTunes on a Mac or PC.

After digging into this some more, I believe it's the fault of an inappropriate encoding in the sb_podcast_file_url function in podcast.php. For example, our feed is http://southforkcofc.org/sermo…..r/?podcast and the current first item has an enclosure url of:

http://southforkcofc.org/sermo…..02%205.mp3

Note the encoded & within the URL. If I attempt to copy and paste the URL into Firefox, the %20 are automatically replaced by " " (space), but the &amp remains as is and rather than the MP3 downloading (or playing in browser), the main SermonBrowser page displays. I got similar results in Safari and Chrome.

Again, in looking at the sb_podcast_file_url, specifically lines 61 and 66 one can see that the URL is constructed with this encoded &:

$media_name=sb_display_url().sb_query_char().'show&file_name='.rawurlencode($media_name);

I'm going to replace the encoded & with an & and wait 24 hours for iTunes to update our listing to see if this fixes our issue.

21 September, 2011
8:05 pm

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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Unfortunately my modification to podcast.php does not appear to have resolved the "[Podcast episode title]" cannot be played on this iPhone error when attempting to download a SermonBrowser podcast through iTunes on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, although it has fixed the issue with the RSS feed linking to the actual MP3s for Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

21 September, 2011
10:23 pm

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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Doh! This modification doesn't affect iTunes as the sb_podcast_file_url function provides a different URL to iTunes (line 63: if (!stats)). So I'm still mystified why iTunes for iOS doesn't work unless the iTunes for iOS uses a different user-agent string that isn't handled by line 55?:

<item>
<guid>http://southforkcofc.org/wp-co…..id>
<title>The World, the Spirit and the Christian</title>
<link>http://southforkcofc.org/sermo…..nk>
<itunes:author>Bill Allen</itunes:author>
<enclosure url="http://southforkcofc.org/wp-co….." length="4735049" type="audio/mpeg" />
<itunes:duration>26:18</itunes:duration>
<category>Sunday evening</category>
<pubDate>Sun, 11 Sep 2011 18:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
</item>

Or it's something else. Is there actually an issue with SermonBrowser and iTunes for iOS or is it just me (and my site)?

21 September, 2011
10:32 pm

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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Also, I've verified that it's not the file(s) as I downloaded a MP3 from a different podcast (that doesn't use SermonBrowser to generate the RSS), added it to our podcast to test and I still get the same failure: "Test" cannot be played on this iPhone.

7 October, 2011
2:09 am

cclauset

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16 May, 2010

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FYI, I worked around my issue by redirecting iTunes to a FeedBurner-generated RSS feed rather than using the native SermonBrowser-generated RSS feed. Which makes me wonder if perhaps iTunes on iOS uses a different user agent that is NOT detected by the sb_podcast_file_url function?

function sb_podcast_file_url($media_name, $media_type) {
$user_agent = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] : '';
if (stripos($user_agent, 'itunes') !== FALSE | stripos($user_agent, 'FeedBurner') !== FALSE)

7 October, 2011
8:12 am

xrstokes

Australia

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30 September, 2011

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I totally had the same problem and in podcast.php i had to disable stats. I just changed where it says stats = true to stats = false. i realise i can't get stats anymore through the built in method but i've got another way of doing that. i also added a html5 media player. Those half baked, half eaten apple devices are popping up everywhere. This meant we could put it in the store for our ios users. And they can listen online at the site. http://itunes.apple.com/au/pod…..d469040303

I Love People. I Love Jesus. But most of all. I Love telling People about Jesus.

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