BitTorrent has been around for long enough that most people are aware of what a terrific tool it is for the TV lover. As clients like Azureus and Torrent keep getting stronger and more user friendly, it's easier than ever to find and download your favorite TV shows on BitTorrent. But the fact is, relative to the easy television scheduling found in the DVR world, it could be a whole lot easier.
Unless you've decided to take the plunge and build your own DVR, most BitTorrent clients don't quite size up when all you want to do is set up a recording and let the shows come to you. Instead, you have to go hunting for new torrents each week and fire up your client to download them. Luckily, things are getting easier. This week I'll show you how to set up and automate BitTorrent downloads so that you can quit your weekly search for torrents.
The method I'm describing here uses the previously-mentioned free, open source torrent episode downloader, Ted. While Azureus and Torrent both have built-in RSS parsing and downloading features, Ted is the most user-friendly, simplest solution I've seen for downloading television on a schedule, and since all it does is download the torrent and open it in your favorite BitTorrent client, you can use it in conjunction with most popular BitTorrent clients.
Note: Mokustojas doesn't condone piracy. Downloading and distributing copyrighted material is illegal, so proceed at your own risk. Of course, if you decide to go on, you could check out a few top Azureus plug-ins, my favorite being Safe Peer, or you could try setting up anonymous Azureus. No guarantees either of these methods will keep the FCC from hunting you down and skinnng your children alive to make a point about that pirated episode of Amazing Race, though.
Subscribing to pre-loaded shows
- Download and install Ted (torrent episode downloader).
- Before you start adding shows to track, you need to configure Ted, which it will prompt you to do when you first run it. Configure to your liking, but be sure to keep "Try to open it in your default bittorrent client" checked.
- Once Ted is running, it's time to add your favorite shows, which you can do by clicking the "Add Show" button. Setting up popular shows in Ted is ber-simple. Just choose one of the predefined shows from the dropdown and Ted will automatically populate the appropriate RSS feed.
- If you're current with the show, you don't want to download every episode that pops up - you just want Ted to download the latest and greatest. You can easily do this by clicking the "Get Latest" button, which automatically loads the show's current season and episode. If you want everything you see in that feed, click the "Download all from feed" checkbox.
- Finally, click save and you're good to go. Whenever Ted detects a new episode, it will automatically fire up your default BitTorrent client and download away.
Easy, right? If you're using Azureus or Torrent, you'll want to make sure that you have a default download directory set so that you don't have to confirm the directory before the download begins (after all, the whole point is automation, right?). To do this in Azureus, go to Tools -> Options -> Files, then check the box labeled "Save to default directory."
The very simple method given above should work easily for the nearly 30 popular television shows currently pre-loaded in Ted, but for those shows that aren't automatically populated, or to get a little more specific, I'll show you how to find and setup your own feeds.
Creating custom TV torrent feeds for Ted
There are definitely times when it's useful to create your own feeds - say, for example, you wanted to download new episodes of your favorite show in an iPod-compatible video format, but iTunes doesn't offer it.
In order to add such a show to Ted, you'd need to find a torrent site that allows you to create custom feeds - TorrentSpy is great for this, since it allows for a lot of advanced search techniques. For the purpose of demonstration (and demonstration only!), I'll show you how to add a feed of iPod-compatible episodes of CSI to Ted.
First, go to TorrentSpy and select Preferences. Set Sort Results to Newest/Date. Then go to Advanced Search and select Handheld as a category and iPod as the section. Now enter "CSI" as your search term and you're ready to get your feed. In your search results, you should see a link that says "RSS Feed for These Results." Copy and paste that link into the RSS feed section of Ted's new show dialog.
Then just name your feed (I called mine "CSI (iPod)"), enter in the current episode, and click Save. If there's a new show available, Ted will automatically grab it. Easy, no?
If you're having trouble narrowing your feed down, you can add search terms to either TorrentSpy or to the Advanced tab of the new show settings in Ted. The cool part about Ted's Keyword search is that it lets you use search operators like ! (not), & (and), and | (or).
Legal television shows on BitTorrent?
Yes, that's right - you don't have to infringe! For example, why not take this ease-of-subscription opportunity to keep up-to-date with PBS's freely-distributed NerdTV? Here, I'll make it easy for you - copy and paste this feed into Ted.
After you've set up your recordings with Ted, you may not have a system quite as simple and powerful as a home-brewed DVR, but what you do have is a pretty good substitute. DVR or not, it's time you make TV bow to your will, on your schedule.
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