ONE of the truly amazing things about the internet is its sheer size. The statistics are truly mind blowing. Every hour enough information is downloaded to fill seven million DVDs.

By 2015, the annual size of web traffic will be in the region of 966 exabtyes.

Never heard of an exabyte? Written down it would be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. Or, put another way, according to the boffins at the University of California, Berkeley, all the words spoken by human beings (ever) could comfortably be stored in a mere five exabtyes.

Which is a handy figure, because this week I have been delving into the wonderful world of podcasts – radio shows on the web.

Podcasts tend to be overlooked by casual web users who prefer the visual delights of You Tube to online radio.

Of course, listeners in the UK have arguably the best public radio service in the world but even the BBC's seven digital channels can't compete with the breadth of content available online.

Podcasts are easy to listen to when you're commuting to work or doing the ironing – something that can't be said of You Tube – and they can be easily downloaded to a portable device like an iPod or an iPhone.

Once upon a time you needed a sound-proof studio, high end microphones, mixing and recording equipment to produce a radio show but home computers have changed all that. Today, armed with a PC, a microphone and the right software, pretty much anyone can put together a professional-sounding show.

The problem, of course, is that there's precious little quality control and some “shows” are so excruciatingly bad you may as well listen to white noise for a couple of hours.

But there's plenty of great programming to be found and most of it caters to the kind of niche interests that are largely ignored by professional broadcasters like the BBC.

For instance, I'm a big fan of cheesy horror movies and the output of Hammer Films. Two of my favourite podcasts are the B-Moviecast and 1951 Down Place.

The B-Moviecast is hosted by Vince Rotolo and his long-suffering wife Mary. By day Vince works in the nuclear industry but in his spare time he researches and records a weekly two-hour podcast about the kind of movies loved by audiences and hated by critics. Where else could you listen to critical appreciation of such, er, classics as Manos: The Hands of Fate?

The B-Moviecast is everything that good podcasting should be. It's professionally put together with interesting and amusing guests about a subject that would otherwise be ignored by the wider broadcasting community. Indeed, Vince is such a good host that I suspect a second career on commercial radio beckons should he wish to give up the day job.

The 1951 Down Place podcast is perhaps even more hardcore. Even the title - Down Place was the name of the house on the banks of the Thames that became Bray Studios - would be a mystery to casual subscribers. Recorded on a monthly-basis, each show examines a single Hammer Film in great detail. It's not as amusing as the B-Moviecast, but 1951 Down Place is highly professional – easily the equal of a commercial station – and required listening for British horror fans.

If this has whetted your appetite why not try subscribing to a couple of podcasts? The easiest way is via iTunes, you just search in the store for the name of your podcast or a subject you'd like to listen to and add it with a single click.

If you have a strange aversion to Apple software there are plenty of other podcast catchers. Google Reader is nice and simple and the freeware app Juice will download podcasts to your PC for later listening off-line.

Who knows, when you've listened to a few you might be bitten by the podcasting bug enough to record a show of your own.

You can listen and subscribe to the B-Moviecast at www.bmoviecast.com and 1951 Down Place at www.1951downplace.com