XB Stream, a new RSS/XML feed reader/aggregator for XBox 360 users, was released last week and quickly nuked several podcast sites. The software is configured to automatically download content, which has resulted in several podcast sites getting deluged with traffic.

Users are urged to upgrade to the latest version, XB Stream 1.2:

XB Stream and podcast problems – READ IMMEDIATELY

If you have downloaded a previous version of XB Stream please immediately follow these steps below. Several podcast sites are being continually hit by XB Stream and using up massive amounts of their bandwidth. Please please follow the steps below to fix this issue ASAP, as we should respect the podcasts.

1. Uninstall XB Stream completely.
2. Download the new version on this website and install.
3. The new version will not download audio podcasts by default.

Here are the XB Stream features:

• Full support for all versions of Windows XP (Home, Professional, Media Center) & Windows Vista
• Full support for Windows Media Connect, and Windows Media Player 11 (or higher)
• Built in wizards to automatically configure with WMC and WMP 11 (or higher)
• Automatically downloads text based xml feeds and converts to images
• Automatically downloads and builds playlists for audio podcasts and blogcasts
• Automatically deletes and manages old content feeds, allowing you to set the max number of feed items to retain
• Simulates the Xbox 360 dashboard look onto rendered text content feeds
• Downloads and renders content feeds with all images, and html formatting
• Automatically breaks up large content feeds onto multiple pages
• Easily add/remove and manage content feeds with the intuitive XB Stream feed manager
• Supports outputting images in both widescreen and standard definition format.
• Choose the frequency of how often content feeds should download and update – 5, 15, 30 minutes, 1, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week, or choose manual updates
• Runs as a Windows NT service, allowing feeds to be downloaded to the Xbox 360 without anyone logging into the computer
• Log-off the computer and content feed updates will still download and process themselves
• Comes included with several text and audio content feeds from the best of the Xbox 360 community sites
• Built just for the Xbox 360 video game console, and it‚Äôs completely free.