I gave this a try for the first time today even though I didn't even know what a Podcast was.

It's got a great interface and is super easy to use.

Only trouble is that a video podcast runs way too chunky and can't be viewed correctly

I went into offline mode and loaded the podcast with only mplayer running.

Is this common?

The screen for the video was quite small even (I have zoom=false thinking I would see better performance).

So are there any video podcasts that can be viewed well on the tablet?

I've noticed that the only thing mplayer can handle without using a video converting program is cartoons or anime.