Podstar Runner 2008

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 18:16, 2 April 2006

"What am I doing in this tiny box?"

Podstar Runner is a collection of cartoons transferable to a fifth generation iPod, in .m4v format. It was released simultaneously with the email technology. It was originally a collection of Strong Bad Emails, but on March 6, 2006 they added Teen Girl Squad and called it Teen Girl Squadcast. As of March 6, 2006 the first five Teen Girl Squad episodes have been released.

Page Title: Podstar Runner, Come On And Come On, Y'all

Release Date: January 30th, 2006

Transcript for Emails

The SBEmail iPod Menu.

{The Homestar Runner head from the spoof on Apple's "Think different" campaign appears. After a few seconds, the iPod menu appears:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom.}

{The selected email plays.}

{After the email has played, the screen cuts back to the "iPod menu." After a second, Strong Bad's head pops into view}

STRONG BAD: Whoa, what am I doing in this tiny box? {starts banging his head and hands on the screen} Let me! Outta the! Tiny! Box!

{The screen appears to shatter, with a shattering sound effect.}

STRONG BAD: Whoops. Hope you got the extended warranty.

{The shattered screen crackles, and goes black. Two shards of the screen fall.}

Transcript for Teen Girl Squad

Teen Girl Squad!

{The Homestar Runner head from the spoof on Apple's "Think different" campaign appears. After a few seconds, a piece of paper is placed over it, with the iPod menu drawn in Strong Bad's handwriting:}

{The menu scrolls down to the bottom.}

STRONG BAD: {TGS voice} Click click click click! {regular voice} Click.

{The selected episode plays.}

Fun Facts

Podstar Runner podcast

Trivia

• The label on the floppy disk is unreadable, but there are several possibilities.
• The podcast "Strong Bad Email" became #1 on February 20, 2006.
• The podcast was featured on the Podcasts main page on iTunes in the "New and Notable" section on February 19, 2006.
• Around March 5, 2006, the name of the podcast changed from "Strong Bad Email" to "Strong Bad Emails and More!" due to the addition of the Teen Girl Squadcast.
• The battery meter in the intro for the Strong Bad Emails is relatively full, while the hand-drawn intro for Teen Girl Squadcast's battery meter is almost empty.

Remarks

• With the exception of Homsar's appearance in dragon, none of the Easter eggs from the original versions of the Emails are present.
  • This egg also plays automatically in the DVD version of dragon.
  • All the Easter eggs in the Teen Girl Squad issues are present, and play automatically.
• The notice on the main page originally said "sbemail podcast!" but it was later changed to "sbemails on ipod!." This was most likely changed after noting that Podstar Runner was not truly a podcast, due to the videos not being broadcasted through a RSS feed syndication. As of February 6, 2006, however, an official RSS feed has been released making Podstar Runner an actual podcast. On March 5, 2006, it was changed to "teen girl squadcast!" in response to the new feature.
• The sound quality in the iPod version of bottom 10 seems to drop to regular email level after the appearance of Wet The Cheat. There also seems to be a minor sound bug while Strong Bad has the jibblies.
• The podstar.homestarrunner.com server doesn't have the 404'd page set up; incorrect URLs will get the standard 404 error page instead.
• The filename for dragon is "trogdor," not "dragon."
• Due to the size and resolution of the iPod's screen, virus's Navbar is removed, and its "widescreen" effects removed by pan and scan.
• On February 27, 2006, Podstar Runner ceased downloads of all the previously available Strong Bad Emails and only allowed downloads of the most recent Podcast. A notice on the page read "due to bandwidth doodoo, we're doing one at a time for now." It was fixed on March 3, 2006, and all the emails could be downloaded again.

Goofs

• While the iPod in the background is meant to be a fifth generation model, the headphone port is placed in the top center of the device like a fourth generation's, rather than at the top right.
• When the email ends and returns to the animated iPod menu, "Homestarrunner.com" is highlighted. However, the animated menu at the beginning of the email has "Email" selected. The iPod's memory should keep the selection where it was when you left it, not move back to the top.
• Many of the listed file sizes are inaccurate. The table below shows the correct file sizes.

Glitches

Two podcasts

• Due to the use of relative linking in the navbar (and depending on the browser), clicking on any of the links on the bottom of the page will sometimes work correctly but will sometimes take you to a nonexistent page beginning with http://podstar.homestarrunner.com/, with the Store being the only exception.

One of the browsers that this glitch does NOT apply to is Firefox.

Fixed Glitches

• In the XML feed, the description of crying was the same as that of kids' book, namely "Strong Bad seriously defaces a children's book." This has since been fixed.
• There used to be two podcasts available through iTunes Music Store: one by "Strong bad" and one by "The Brothers Chaps." Noticeably different between the two was the logo of the two podcasts, as well as the absent "Clean" marker in the second podcast. The podcast by Strong Bad has since been removed.
• When Guitar was released, all the e-mail links became the same, all leading to the guitar e-mail file. Now they have reverted back to the separate names.
• When montage was released, the link to download montage was incorrect in the XML feed, which pointed to "sb_email_motage.m4v" instead of "sb_email_montage.m4v", leaving users temporarily unable to download montage through iTunes. This was fixed the day after.

Inside References

• The page title refers to the email intro of rampage.

External Links

Downloadable Emails

Downloadable Teen Girl Squad (Teen Girl Squadcast)

Other

• Podstar Runner
• Podstar Runner on iTunes
• Podstar Runner XML feed
• View the page background
• forum thread re: Podstar Runner

iTunes 4.9 or later; Quicktime 6.0 (mac · win) or later; or VLC media player can be used to view M4V video files.