Entertainment Step 2: The Software for downloading

OK, after you have the computer that you will use for your entertainment system, and the monitor or TV set, it’s time for software.

The best kind of software you can use for downloading TV Shows, Movies and the like is software that will let you take advantage of Bit Torrent technology. What is Bit Torrent? It is a system where you download large files in small chunks from different people on the network who all have the file. For example, let’s just say that you are doing to download last week’s episode of “24”. If you go to a bit torrent site and look at the list of shows that are available for download, it will show statistics about the show. It will tell you how many “Seeders” there are and how many “Leechers” there are. A Seeder is a person who has the entire show and is sharing it with everybody else. A Leecher is somebody who only has a portion of the show, and is downloading the rest of it (he is also sharing the parts that he has). The more Seeders there are, the better for you, because you can have a better and quicker download. Once you have finished downloading the show, it’s best if you can leave it on your drive and share it with others for a few days at least, to contribute to the community.

OK, so how can you join in this Bit Torrent community? Well, you need software! There are a number of different programs to choose from. The one I like to use is called Azureus. If you click on the link, you can download Azureus for your own use. After downloading Azureus, install it on your computer, and you are about ready to go!

Next step, you will need to go to a site where you can choose what shows to download. Here are the sites that I use:

• Mininova: I like Mininova because it has a wide variety of different TV Shows, Music and other things available for download. Last year, I almost switched to another site because Mininova became very slow, but they have upgraded their hardware and it’s performance is quite good now.
• IsoHunt: IsoHunt also upgraded it’s hardware in the past few months. Another good site for fining available Bit Torrents. I like Mininova better, though.
• EZTV: For the very best in TV shows available for download, EZTV beats them all. The only thing you’ll find here are TV shows, but if that is what you want, you need to check out this one!

Basically, just go to any of these sites, and when you find items that you want to download, just click the download link, and Azureus will automatically start downloading. When the download is complete, a little box will pop up and tell you that the download is finished. Remember, these files are huge (300 Mb to 4 Gb), so downloads take time. On average, it might take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to download a file. But, you can have multiple downloads going at once, so it’s OK. For popular shows, where there are a lot of Seeds available on the Bit Torrent, you can generally download a one hour program in about 2 or 3 hours or so.

Happy Downloading!