How to view iTunes U without itunes?

Question

I want to view Stanford's iOS programming course.

How can I see it without installign itunes on my PC and on my Android mobile device?

Answer 1

How to see iTunes U courses without iTunes

iTunes U courses are RSS feeds, so you will need:

• An RSS reader, either web browser-based, like Google Reader(*) or Feedly, or standalone, like RssReader.

  Make sure that in either case it can display H.264/MPEG-4 videos.

  (*) Google Reader will not be available after July 1 2013.

• The feed URL, which for the iOS programming course Coding Together: Developing Apps for iPhone and iPad (Winter 2013) is:

  https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/LZDirectory.woa/ra/directory/courses/593208016/feed

For example, after subscribing with Google Reader you'll see a list with links to the course videos:

How to obtain the feed URL

Neither Standford University nor iTunes Preview publish the feed URL, so you will need iTunes to get it:

1. Open iTunes and look for "Stanford coding together"

2. Select the course and subscribe:

   

3. Navigate to iTunes U, right click the course and select Copy iTunes U URL:

   

Answer 2

Here's an alternative which worked for me without using iTunes:

• Get course URL, for example:
  • https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/this-text-doesnt-matter/id775395339
• Use a feed extractor like feedflipper. This eventually gives you the raw xml file:
  • https://p1-u.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/LZStudent.woa/ra/feed/COFFWM26TD
• The file is served as text/rss so may not display nicely in the browser.
  • Open with an RSS reader OR
  • Download as *.txt file, reopen in firefox and use DownThemAll or alternative OR
  • Copy the entire XML file and use a link scraper like the one built into JDownloader.

Answer 3

If you have access to a computer with iTunes, go to the iTunes Store and find the iTunesU 'casts you want to save. Drill down to the class's page (it lists all the episodes in the class, and lets you play them if you want), look on the left under the main class icon. There should be two buttons: Subscribe Free and Get All.

Get All will download the episodes to local machine. Once they are downloaded, go into the iTunesU section in Library (left pane in iTunes main program window.)

Once the iTunesU pane loads, right-click (PC) or ctrl-click (Mac) any of the episodes, and select "Show in Windows Explorer" (PC) or "Reveal in Finder" (Mac). The directory with all of the episodes will open.

Now that you know where all of the episodes are you can copy them to removable media and move them to your own system.