The name Vodcasting is a combination of VOD (Video On Demand) and (web/ broad/ narrow) casting.

Vodcast channels can be consumed on the desktop, on-the-go on your portable media player, and even on your big-screen in the living room. Broadcasters call it the future of television.

All you need is a Vodcast client. Apple is the first company that implemented full Vodcast support in their media products: iTunes, iPod and Front Row.

Vodcast technology is a combination of on-demand video IP streams or downloadable files, encapsulated in RSS, XML, HTML or WML feeds.

From a web server, a video podcast can be distributed as a file or as a stream. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Downloading complete video podcasts in advance gives the user the ability to play the video podcasts offline on, for example, a portable media player. A downloaded version can be watched many times with only one download, reducing bandwidth costs in this case. Streaming allows seeking (skipping portions of the file) without downloading the full video podcast, better statistics and lower bandwidth costs for the servers; however, users may have to face pauses in playback caused by slow transfer speeds.

A podcasting client may work with a separate, or integrated player. One such example of the latter is iTunes, which is an unusual case of a web feed aggregator being added to a media player rather than vice versa.

Channeling of on-demand content has major benefits for both publishers and subscribers. Publishers can still bundle content for their audience. Subscribers can consume content on-demand and don't need keyboard or mouse interfaces to choose channels and items, much similar to zapping through regular TV stations, and new episodes show up automatically, so the technology is ideal for on-the-go (portable media players and mobile phones) and living room mass media consumption.