Randomn3ss » Bittorrent

Do You Download TV Shows?

Mike Panic — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:20:18 +0000

Three years ago I asked if you download music. It’s a simple question, but one that I’m sure most everyone today does. Either legally or illegally through bittorrent, I know of nearly no-one who has a computer who doesn’t download music in one way or another. What I want to know now is if you download TV shows, or is it too much of a pain?

Since I’ve already given you the complete list of websites to stream full TV shows and movies from, and written a how-to for streaming shows from a Mac to television, I’m curious to know what method you use. I still am very reluctant to spend money on a monthly charge for a DVR service from my cable provider and some of the shows I want to watch are more than six months old and not available to stream, so I download them. My Internet connection is fast and most shows take only a few minutes to download in HD, so for me it works.

Additionally, I realized several months ago that my $40 Philips up-sampling DVD player had a USB port on the front. Rather then hooking my laptop up to my TV now I simply download the shows, transfer to a large USB thumb drive and plug it in, accessing the contents from the DVD remote control. No need to connect a computer to my TV to stream or watch downloaded video content. And now that fast high-speed Internet is readily available just about everywhere, and over 80 sites to stream content from, am I the only one who doesn’t want to stream?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.Similar articles that might also interest you:

FeedMyTorrents and TVRSS Head for High Ground

Keith — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:27:42 +0000

It appears that the popular television torrent sources have taken shelter after several Cease and Desist orders. That and the fact that the plaintiffs in thePirateBay lawsuit continue to seek jail time for the creators.

FeedMyTorrents left the following message at their old IP address which has since been taken down as well.

It’s over. We’ve received several take down requests, and have decided not to test the extents of the law. We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and for the fun times we’ve had.

TVRSS has not been live for quite some time, and I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering how, and where I will find relevant, high quality sources for my queries.

I just have to figure out how I will break it to my wife…no more Ghost Whisperer. (If I had only thought of this sooner!)Similar articles that might also interest you:

OPENhulu now streams TV full screen!

Mike Panic — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:17:52 +0000

While showing a friend OPENhulu last night, the glorious service that streams TV shows to your computer, I noticed a new feature, FULL SCREEN MODE! I was initially a bit iffy on the site before this, as the size of the streaming video was fairly small and the site has a ton of ads. Now, with full screen mode, I won’t need to rely on bittorrent sites to acquire shows I’ve missed.

Additionally, the list of shows is growing, rapidly. OPENhulu also seems to be pretty proud at the announcement of their forums being open, but I’d avoid them for now. Nearly every post is some form of spam and they have, what appears to be, no form of moderation yet. Hopefully the can get that issue worked out soon.Similar articles that might also interest you:

Stream TV to your computer with OPENhulu

Mike Panic — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:51:07 +0000

As I grow older I watch less TV and enjoy life and friends more and more, however there are a few shows I enjoy and try to follow. I’ve already showed you how to watch TV shows on your time, not the networks, however this requires the use of bittorrent software and some time to allow for downloads. This poses a problem if you are at work on a lunch hour and just want to watch some TV or stuck at an airport for an hour. An hour is enough time to download a show, usually, but not enough to watch it. Streaming TV comes into play now.

Hulu.com offers free streaming TV and aims,

to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more.

That sounds great! Especially since they have some premium shows available now, there is no software to download and plays in nearly every web browser, only an internet connection is needed. One problem, it is private beta only and who knows when you may actually get approved for it. Not to fret, there is a solution.

OPENhulu.com ~~has somehow found a way to exploit Hulu and~~ streams nearly every show that is available from Hulu using the embed feature (thanks for clarifying Brandon), no software to download and install, nothing special needed to play the shows, just a high-speed internet connection and a web browser. There is a downside to this goodness though, but I don’t really view it all as so negative that it detracts from the fact that this is free. Ads, lots and lots of ads. They need to make money, I’m OK with that and understand it, there is also a five second ad before the show starts. Currently there is no way to make it go full screen [that I am aware of] and there is no way to save or export the videos to save locally to watch later or put onto a video iPod or similar device.

So if you missed your favorite show and don’t want to bother learning how to acquire shows via bittorrent, OPENhulu is a great second solution to watch your favorite shows without waiting for them to come out on DVD.Similar articles that might also interest you:

17 Bittorrent sites to use while OiNK and Demonoid are down

Mike Panic — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:02:50 +0000

In less than two weeks my two preferred websites for acquiring stuff via bittorrent have been quashed, I’m sure more will fall soon. That being said, I figured I’d share with you a nice list of public tracker sites that I’ve used along with some more from around the web. I’m still trying to find an invite to waffles.fm, but from what I hear, the selection isn’t even a fraction of what OiNK was. If you have a spare, I’m interested.

thepiratebay.org – this is the granddaddy of them all, which publicly thumbs their nose to everyone. While a good resource, it often contains poor quality music and more seeders than leachers.

mininova.org – my go-to site when all else fails

tvrss.net – searchable database for most all TV shows, most torrents are hosted through mininova.org, this just helps weed them out and gives you an RSS feed for individual shows if you want. This has been my favorite site to catch up on TV shows on my time.

torrentspy.com – this was a great resource however they have banned all IP addresses from the US. There are ways around it, but why bother when so many others are out there.

Those four sites are the main ones I use, however there are thousands of others. Here is a brief list of some more worth checking that I found around the ‘net. I would caution you against joining any torrent tracker site that makes you pay to be a member, this is a good way to get someone in a suit showing up at your doorstep. A great idea once you found a few tracker sites you like is to add the search function to your Firefox search using the OpenSearchFox add-on.

Please leave a comment with links to your favorite tracker site if it’s not on the list.Similar articles that might also interest you:

Demonoid shut down

Mike Panic — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:06:56 +0000

First thing this morning I checked to see if anything new was on the popular invite only bittorrent tracking site Demonoid.com only to see this message

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they will come back online at some point, this isn’t the first time the CRIA has threatened to shut them down. I’m also going to assume that when they do come back online, they will have their servers hosted in a different country.Similar articles that might also interest you:

Waffles.fm steps up to take OiNK’s place, feels growing pains

Mike Panic — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:34:02 +0000

So after what I thought was a clever message to the masses regarding the demise of OiNK turns out to be a subtle hint for a new, member only, invite only bittorrent tracking site. Waffles.fm is, from what I understand, very similar to how OiNK was run, only they were never quite as big and are now feeling the strain on their servers as their membership grows.

From what I’ve read around the blogsphere, they are a bit more strict as well, which is fine, I never had many problems with OiNK and honestly, I’ve been able to find almost everything I need on Demonoid as of late. That said, I am interested in an invite, so if anyone has one to share, or wants to trade a Demonoid invite, please use the contact form to get a hold of me, I’ll gladly show you my ratio on Demonoid.

Even with invite only, closed membership, free to use private tracking sites, more than a half dozen other torrent trackers have popped up to fill the void that OiNK has left. All have been open to the public and all are gaining in popularity. This is not the end of torrent tracking site, and as mentioned before, searching Google will often lead you to just about anything you are looking for.Similar articles that might also interest you:

OiNK is coming back online thanks to The Pirate Bay

Mike Panic — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:19:41 +0000

Only three days after OiNK was raided and shut down by the police, The Pirate Bay has vowed to bring the OiNK trackers back online. Torrent Freak is reporting,

The Pirate Bay is currently working on an OiNK replacement in an attempt to bring the hundreds of thousands of music albums back online that disappeared during the raid. The replacement will be released within a week and on the BOiNK.cd domain.

BOiNK will probably be ready in a few days.

BOiNK is a Pirate Bay only project, OiNK and other BitTorrent sites are not involved.

While I am really stoked that The Pirate Bay is willing to give the finger to IFPI, the RIAA and lots of other silly acronyms. Point is, the music industry needs to wake up and look at the bigger picture. The masses don’t want to pay 99c a song on iTunes for crappy quality music that has is crippled with DRM. Radiohead released their 7th album for free, asked their fans to pay what they thought it was worth, it has done really well. The rich music moguls need to realize that with sites like MySpace, bands are handling their own releases, putting out their own CDs and getting pretty well known, maybe not commercial radio station or MTV famous, but they do OK. The money is there, people want to go to clubs and see live music, smaller bands can still cash in and enjoy doing what they do, but consumers don’t want to get raped for enjoying the music.Similar articles that might also interest you:

OiNK has been raided and shut down, long live the pirates!

Mike Panic — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:04:18 +0000

What may have been one of the largest collections of amazing music and programs in bittorrent format was raided last night and shut down. Mega torrent tracker OiNK, which had a near fight club attitude to advertising and was available to users only on an invite basis, seems to have been shut down for good. Excerpts from the IFPI press release,

British and Dutch police today shut down the world’s biggest source of illegal pre-release chart albums and arrested a 24-year old man in an operation coordinated between Middlesbrough and Amsterdam.

The site, with an estimated membership of 180,000, has been used by many hardcore file-sharers to violate the rights of artists and producers by obtaining copyrighted recordings and making them available on the internet.

The site’s servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week. OiNK’s operator allegedly made money by setting up a donations account on the site facilitated by PayPal.

Reuters has a quote from one of the people who works for IFPI,

“OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online,” said Jeremy Banks, head of the anti-piracy unit at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which helped in the investigation.

I am saddened to see OiNK go, if it truly is gone forever. Over the last two years or so I was introduced to countless amounts of new music that I otherwise may have never heard before. In my opinion, the music industry needs to figure out a better way to distribute music, with CD sales falling every year; one would think they get the drift. My opinion is that the $1 per song download through iTunes and similar sites is not the answer either.Similar articles that might also interest you:

First comment gets an OiNK invite

Mike Panic — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:08:09 +0000

The last time I gave out OiNK invites, it went pretty well, but many of you kept contacting me long after the contest had ended. I gave out the four I had mentioned in the post plus an extra one that I had earned during the time of the contest. This time around, it will be much easier to get one, but I only have one to give out. The early bird gets the OiNK invite this time.

First person to leave a comment on the Win a Nalgene Refill Not Landfill bottle post and this one gets the invite. Make sure you use a valid email address so I can contact you.

Disclaimer, if you don’t know what OiNK is, or how to keep a good seed ratio, don’t bother asking or entering this contest.Similar articles that might also interest you: