Anthony Malloy

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.

I know you’re all probably not that interested but I really need Google to pick up my latest client site for the ‘7th World Congress On Inflammation, Melbourne, Australia. August 20-24, 2005‘ and this is just about the quickest way I have of getting them to take notice.

UPDATE

What one earth!? Yesterday it was showing my spiffy new CSS site – now it’s back to the horror of the original site. Something odd is happening.

Where on earth did that go? I’m positive that two weeks is meant to feel a lot longer than the last two weeks have. Tomorrow is the dreaded return to work and I’ve been lying in the sun wondering if it’s too late to fax in my resignation effective as of tomorrow. I have no idea how I’m going to get out of bed at 6:15am let alone get through an entire day of work without my afternoon hammock nap. I remember an episode of the Simpsons where Homer’s great motivational idea was corporate hammocks. That guy is a true visionary.

’twas a great family weekend with my nephew’s wedding yesterday and a combined Bartlett/Malloy barbeque here today. Great food, lovely weather good company and the best lawn edges in the inner west all made for a good last-days-of-holiday weekend. As long as I can make myself stay awake long enough after all the food and sun to watch tonight’s episodes of Carnivale we should be able to chalk up the Christmas break of 2004/2005 as one of the best ever.

I think I may be going mad, I’ve developed a new obsession. My edges. Well, not my edges as such, I’m quite round and edgeless – I mean my lawn edges.

Up until moving here I’ve never been responsible for a lawn edge, and up until this week I’ve never really worried about them but with a family bbq this Sunday they suddenly, and oddly, assumed a state of massive importance. Now they’ve been whipper snippered and done with an edger to within an inch, or about 1cm, of their life. Concrete that hadn’t seen the light of day for many years is now working on developing melanomas and a large number of our friends from the insect world are looking for new digs.

We’ve also cleaned up the front yard, uncovered the path border and mowed the whole lot. Rae’s put plants in too so the garden is looking as good as it has since we moved in.

Our other obsession over the past few days has been American TV shows. Thanks to technology we’ve caught up to the States with Desperate Housewives so now we only have to download the latest episode each week and we’ve started on Lost. Sorry Channel Seven but after the way you treated Buffy we don’t trust you to do these fantasticly original shows justice. You pushed over the edge and we ain’t going back.

Hmm, another edge. I wonder if they need someone to take care of it?

We were going to go to the movies at the Sun, maybe lunch out, enjoy a day when Phee was at the grandparents doing things best done without child in tow.

That is until the day was stolen by one of our feline children.

We try and get Thomas in by 6:30 every night, we don’t like him being out after or approaching dusk and the longer we leave it the more difficult it seems to get him inside. Even though the night wasn’t hot, there wasn’t a strong wind and the moon wasn’t full – all of his usual triggers for a night on the town – he chose to stay out late. And by late, we mean late.

We worry like hell when he chooses not to come home, and if you need a little refresher as to why check out the story of the thousand dollar cat. So last night we only half watched Carnivale as we listened out for him. At one stage some birds on a wire alerted us to the fact he was hiding in the front yard, then he was hiding in the back bushes and was last seen jumping the fence next door.

We went to bed. And we stressed. And we lay and listened. And listened. And stressed. And tossed. And listened. And turned. And listened.

At 2:05am he appeared silently at the front door and miawoed to be let in.

Three quarters of an hour later I managed to fall asleep.

As you can probably guess most of today was lost in a sleepy haze until we finally succumbed and had a nap in the afternoon. There was no movie but we did manage a coffee and stroll in Yarraville in the afternoon.

We also managed to watch the first four episodes of Desperate Housewives and we’re going to make time for three more tomorrow. Australia, you’re going to love this show.

Tonight we’re faced with the greatest test of memory known to mankind.

We’ve decided we’ve missed so many new release films at the cinema of late that we’re going to hire a new release DVD for the night. Now we have to try and figure out which of the local stores we haven’t joined before and/or which one we probably owe the least to in overdue fines from a couple of years ago.

First resolution – be good to the local traders from now on.

2005.

Happy New Year to all!

Except to the idiots setting off fireworks in the next block, scaring our cats and every dog within cooee. But I’m sure that’s not you so happy new year.

If I was any more relaxed I’d be comatose.

Today was spent upgrading Rae’s PC with a new CD burner and operating system. Bye bye Windows 98, hello Windows 2000 Professional. I did manage to get the lawns mown in between a visit from Rob and some Simpsons Hit and Run on the Xbox.

Now the lawn is trim and the weather is on the improve I think tomorrow may be hammock day. God it’s going to be tough going back to work.

72.

That’s the number of hours I went without sitting at a computer. No internet, no blogs, no podcasts, no email. Amazingly I am still functioning and obviously back.

I had a magnificent Christmas. Scored a great deal of great loot (Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker are now resident on my office desk) and was spoilt rotten by my gal who managed to get two great tickets to see Paul Kelly and Deborah Conway on the same bill at A Day On The Green at All Saints Winery just outside of Rutherglen. If this doesn’t make me the luckiest guy in the world I have no idea what does.

We then spent a few days up in Shepp doing bugger all. We’d get up and read the papers, then go down the street to grab a coffee from the new Hudsons (and I know should be supporting a good local cafe, but you show me where you can get a consistently good coffee in Shepparton and I’ll support them. Besides, I want a ‘free’ travel mug). Then we’d read some more before having a bit more of read to recover from the days reading before heading off to bed for a little night reading.

Now we’re home and the cats seem happy enough to see us. We’ll probably spend the last few days of 2004 getting this house in to some sort of order. After which we’ll probably sit down and read a little more.

Lying in the sun on a (new) hammock under a clear blue sky listening to some podcasts on the Ipod while watching jets fly off to destinations unknown.

Merry Christmas one and all.