XBStream Clobbers XBLR’s Podcast Server
A new program that hit the market recently has many podcast fans excited and ironicly has upset many podcasters.
XBStream is a free-ware program that allows you to stream audio and text xml based feeds to your Xbox 360 video game console.
This program comes pre-installed with many of your favorite Xbox related RSS feeds, including yours truely, XBL Radio along with GamerAndy and Gamertag Radio among the giants of 1up, IGN, OXM and Major Nelson.
The drawback is that once installed, the program defaults to auto download the THIRTY most recent items on EACH feed. After just a few hours of installation, your hard drive will be raided with up to 30 Gigs of blog entries and podcasts.
So why are the podcasters upset? Isn’t this great new publicity? Well… when thousands of people start downloading several dozen 20-40+ Megabyte files all at once, it tends to shut down servers. Our sever had over 42,000 hits with over 500 gigs of bandwith in less than 48 hours. We are currently out of commission.
We don’t know when we’ll be back up. We don’t know when XB Stream will fix this. We don’t know HOW XB Stream will fix this. There apprears to be no update feature on the program. How are we gonna tell the thousands of people who have already downloaded it to remove our feed? How are we gonna stop more people from downloading it? The XBLR Podcast Feed is F#$%ED untill further notice.
Check out what GamerAndy had to say about it! And some more interesting talk in the XBStream Forms.
September 17th, 2006 at 4:50 am
dudes you may have to bite the bullet and get a new feed…
September 17th, 2006 at 10:47 am
yeah,what he said. To bad major nelson didnt know this would hapen.He said download at your risk though
September 17th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Wow that really sucks. Wasnt a very smart move by them to do that. Im sure they will think of something sooner or later.
September 17th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Hi guys, I apologize for what my Xb Stream software has done. It was never my intention for the software to ddos your podcasts like this, rather it was to help give you guys a little more exposure. Never did I expect the software to be downloaded by more then 20,000 users within 48 hours and when it did obviously thats when problems started happening.
I’ve uploaded a permanent fixed version 1.1 to the website which solves the problem for anyone that downloads and updates the new version. The new version will only download 1 (the most current) audio podcast.
Again I’d like to say I’m very sorry for this
September 17th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I was on major Nelson’s site and I was actually thinking about downloading this. I’m very very happy I didn’t!! Well hopefully things get figured out soon.
September 18th, 2006 at 4:06 am
[…] For those not in the know: bandwidth is the oil of the internet, what costs us sites the money to operate our services. Yep, the XBStream problems are costing Gamer Andy a lot of money. The folks at XBL Radio have suffered similar problems: Our sever had over 42,000 hits with over 500 gigs of bandwith in less than 48 hours. We are currently out of commission. […]
September 18th, 2006 at 5:20 am
Woh! scary stuff. Do you think that there will be any chance of a Podcast on Tues XBLR?
September 18th, 2006 at 6:40 am
I can assure you that on Tuesday the cast should be up and running. I think everything should be o.k.. Rusty took all precautions at the time of the “Hit Crisis” and salvaged our bandwidth. For the past few days we have had not actual shows on the server. This was to ensure that even though hits to the rss were active, the rss and podcast would not be downloaded. All we can do now is hope that most people are cognisant of the patch. It would be in the best interest of other sites, and podcasts promoting sites, to let their subscribers know that a patch is present.
I personally cannot fault the programmer: it is trial and error that creates new innovations. However, upon the first days I assumed that someone really hated my Saint’s Row review. Glad to see it was just a malfunctioning protocal and not a malfunctioning listener.
-Carpal Out.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:58 am
XBStream is fixed.
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox/xbstream-apologizes-for-killing-all-those-podcasts-201293.php
Wish I was on it.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Hi Guys, I’m really sorry my software has done this. The new version now up on the website no longer downloads all back catalog of audio, it will only download the most recent podcast. Please send me an email at pg4@xbstream.com with your paypal email address so I can send you $100 and keep your show going; you should be able to purchase more bandwidth from your provider for the short term with that.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Luke - email me at pg4@xbstream.com and I’ll add your podcast to the default lineup if you wish. Let me know your website and rss feed url.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
wow PG4, you seem like quite a nice guy
hope everything runs smoothly from now on
September 18th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Thats a nice gesture, and I would like to say I will endorse the XB Stream on our next show. I hope it works and I am not upset at the issues this week. I talked with Rusty and we had a couple of down days, however it’s not the first time the system has been shut down. We still think of ourselves as a small-operation. So things like this can, and will, happen. Please contact Rusty at his email if you want to find out any further info on the site. Once again, I appreciate your efforts for the community, and hope we can further work together.
P.S. Would you consider coming on our cast this week to discuss yourr program? If so please send me an e-mail at carpultunnel@hotmail.com
September 19th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
so,are you guys just gonna keep changing the name of this article