iphonepodcasts.app
When using the podcast app, I can view the details about a particular show and am presented with three options that all sound like what I want to do. I want to get the episode now over wifi, and then listen to the episode later with no data connection.
What is the difference between on-the-go, save episode and download episode?
Badges are the little numbered icons, like the one that appears on the Mail and SMS apps when you have new messages.
Alerts are popup messages like this:
In both cases, you need to download the same number of bytes, but streaming takes them at a much slower rate, thus using less bandwidth (which is measured in terms of data divided by time).
When streaming a podcast, you need to download a minute's worth of audio every minute, plus slightly more for buffering.
Given that it doesn't take an hour to download an hour long podcast, you are getting far more data per minute when downloading than you are when streaming.
To put it differently, if you're streaming an hour-long podcast, you are guaranteed to be transferring only that one podcast over the network during the next hour -- and if you stop and move on to something else, you stop downloading that podcast.
If you're downloading an hour-long podcast, you might download several of them during a one hour period, putting much higher demand on the network.
Best Answer
On-The-Go will create a play list which can be found under My Stations / On-The-Go.
Save Episode will save an episode that you've already played under the Saved tab.
Doing Download Episode, on the other hand, will actually start to download the episode and move it into My Podcasts list.
So, while On-The-Go and Save Episode is a way of organizing the episodes you've already downloaded, doing Download Episode actually downloads it.