Author Archives: tony

The Most Basic Guide Available To Downloading Television Shows With Bit Torrent

A little while ago Jennifer de-lurked to ask about downloading television shows so she wouldn’t be at the mercy of our networks.

What follows is a completely non-exhaustive, unofficial, as basic as you can get guide to getting what you want on your telly, when you want it.

What You need

First off you need a broadband connection.

You can do this on dial up but when you are dealing with files about 350MB you won’t be answering the phone for a very long time. If you don’t have a broadband connection yet go to Netspace and tell them ‘caffeine’ sent you.

A Bit Torrent client.

BitTorrent is what makes this whole thing possible. I’m not going to explain how in detail, you can get that from the BitTorrent Introduction page. Put simply you get bits of the file from different people and in turn you share the bits you already have with other people. You can see that the more people accessing file, the more choice of downloaders you have and the faster it should go for everyone.

Bit Torrent is free. Don’t pay for it. You can use the original BitTorrent client from www.bittorrent.com but this tends to confuse people ’cause nothing appears to be installed after you install it. There are other clients around – Bit Comet for Windows and even Mac users (Hi Rob and Rob) can get in on the action with the Java based Azureus.

Torrent files for each episode.

The shows are downloaded via torrent files. These tell your client where to start looking and how to share your download. These torrent files are listed on web sites and here Google is, as always, your best friend. Googling ‘torrent desperate housewives‘ should return you a list of pages with torrent files for Desperate Housewives.

What I Use

So what do I use? I use Bit Comet as my torrent client and do most of my searching on www.isohunt.com to search for shows or go straight to www.tv-swarm.com or www.tvtorrents.tv and search from there.

How I Do It

This is the simple part. Once you’ve installed your client and found the show you’re looking for you click on the torrent file link. Your client should start up and then, after a few seconds, start downloading and sharing at the same time. It’s that simple.

Things I’ve Found

The show names. I always go for those marked HDTV_LOL – these are great qualities .avi files, wide-screen and around 350MB per episode (42 minutes of show time). I still have no idea what the LOL bit means but they always work for me. One I downloaded had some obscure sound format that needed a codec, which all became too difficult so I downloaded a different file. I think most are encoded with mp3 so Windows Media Player plays them no problems.

Those marked HDHR are High Resolution files and look stunning – but are twice the size and hence take twice as long to download.

Some are encoded with surround sound too, just look at the file name and it should be obvious which ones these are.

Variations in download time
This is the killer. Some files have taken 14 hours to download, and just last night one took only 4 hours. The time taken depends upon many factors from how many peers (those holding the file to download) to net traffic, to which way the wind is blowing. I’ve found it really helps to download new episodes the day after they are aired, when demand is greatest. Older episodes – even those a month or so old – can take significantly longer to retrieve.

As for old old shows, such as the first season of Carnivale that screened in 2003 in America yet is only getting it’s first airing here, you can almost forget it.

Watermarks
Most shows ripped (or capped) from television will have the network logo watermarked on it. Ads are always removed and sometimes end credits can be missing too.

Sharing
Don’t leach. Make sure you keep the torrent available for as long as you can – remember there are others like you probably wanting the same episode and the longer you keep it open, the more people can share and the better (quicker) it is for everyone. BitTorrent depends upon many people sharing the same file.

And that’s pretty much it.

In summary :

  • Get a bit torrent client
  • Find a list of torrent files
  • Download or click on the torrent you want
  • Open this file, or it should open automatically
  • Download, share and enjoy

Oh yeah, you may want to invest in a DVD burner for your PC so you can watch them on your television.

Apple, Mini Wow

Apple have released a great machine that shows their keen grasp of marketing and user based technology – the Mac mini. I can see myself getting a base model version to use as my iPod machine and for the Mac’s wonderful media applications while keeping my PC as my work station. It’s a fantastic idea Apple, well done.

More On MS Anti=Spyware

I’ve downloaded the beta of Microsoft’s anti-spyware and had a play with it. My initial reaction is favourable. It’s small, light and appears to work although the 3 ‘threats’ it found were only applicable to Internet Explorer. This made me sit up and take notice though, I’m a fairly scrupulous person when it comes to checking what I’m about to install on PC yet these malware products made it on to my hard drive. Being IE problems though they would never have affected me thanks to the wonder that is Firefox.

For the moment I will keep Spy Bot Search And Destroy, and it will probably remain my initial defence against these sort of nasties. I wonder what Microsoft will end up calling this program? After all, Microsot Windows AntiSpyware isn’t the sexiest of titles.

Where’s My Coffee

One of particular interst to Melbourne readers.

Hudsons Coffee have a rather unique view of Melbourne on their Store Locator page. I’ve never seen a map for this city laid out this way before and it’s very interesting.

The only suggestion I have is that they gave prominence to the wrong end. Most of the store are located around centre of the CBD, Swanston St and surrounds. The largest area on their graphic is also the emptiest (there are only four outlets west of Queen St compared with nine East of the same street) and you have to squint to figure out where most of the far stores are. They should have reversed the map so the Spring St end was in the foreground or, preferably, set Swantson St as the centre and maybe fish eyed the city.

Dis-Intergration

Coles Myer may make a fortune each year but it would seem none of that is spent on system integration.

Today I had to go to Myer Melbourne to purchase a wedding gift. In order to do this I had to go to the registry department, hand over a card with the event number on it, wait for a print out, decide what I wanted to buy, go to the floor, purchase the item and then return to the registry to tell them what we purchased so they could cross it off the list.

a) Why did I have to go in to Myer to get the list?
b) Why can’t I tell them what I want and organise them to get one from stock and wrap it once I’m there?
c) Why, if I follow their plan do I have to return to the registry department to tell them what I purchased? If I have to go to the department myself why can’t I show them the event card and have them mark the gift as purchased?

or most sensibly

d) why can’t I log on to myerregistry.com (don’t bother, it’s not there), enter the event number, select what I want to purchase and press the ‘Buy, Wrap and Send’ button.

Coles Myer, move into the 20th century at least before trying to catch up with your 21st century competition.

As it is, my nephew will be getting something that doesn’t come from Myer.

Crendentials

Just proving my credentials to be writing here.

Tonight as I walk down to my car I will have a laptop, an Ipaq, a 512Meg USB key and an iPod in my hands.