Torrents

[El Fangel]

I wish to Torrent a few seasons of a few shows, I downloaded uTORRENT, and went to the site I used to download from (torrentspy) and I cannot remember a thing on how to download the torrents, could someone provide a little help, or suggestions on better site/download clients.

[KYR]

I used to use Torrent Spy but these days you can't be sure you're downloading what you think you are (comments are genreally off-line these days). These days I tend to use mininova.org or eztv.it (both will have most tof the popular shows you will want to download.

Anyhow - getting back to your original question.

On Torrent Spy, select the torrent you want to download and save it to a specific folder on your hard drive (torrent download will only take a second or two).

Once downloaded, open up your torrent client (I use Azureus, but you can use ABC or Bittorrent as well - I've used these but find Azureus to be the best).

Add the downloaded torrent file to your torrent client, select the folder to download your file(s) if you haven't got a default folder and you're right to go.

In the past, I used to have problems with torrents crashing for no apparrent reason. When I switched to Azureus I never had a torrent crash. Another tip for anyone who uses torrents and also has Google Desktop running - make sure you go into the Google Desktop settings and remove the Drive/Folder from Google Desktop that you download your torrent files into.

Many times I would be downloading and a torrent would crash and I would get an error message saying that "the file was in use by another application". This would have me stumped because I couldn't think what other application would be accessing a partially downloaded file. Google Desktop is always scanning your drives and folders. When it accesses your partially downloaded file it will cause it to crash. Deselect this folder/drive from Google Desktop's search parameters and you won't have a problem.

[El Fangel]

I am currently downloading Seasons 1 - 3 of Lost, and I tried to check to see if the download is legit, but when I try playing it Windows Media Player says

"Its corrupt, or does not support the format your trying to play"

Suggestions?

[KYR]

First, has the download completed?

If so, then you might just be missing the codec.

If you use a program like GSPOT (download for free - only a small program) it will tell you which codec it needs, then you can just download that codec.

If the download hasn't finished the WMP won't play it. Try setting a "high priority" on one episode only (or alternatively just select one episode out of all the seasons to download) so you can check if it's legit before you download all the other episodes.

[El Fangel]

I deleted the download, as I tried WMP, Winamp, and DivX and nothing, I think Ill try it again though.

[El Fangel]

Also, I can select single episodes for download, but when I try to download just the first one,it ends up trying to download them all.

[KYR]

Often the torrent clients will start to download "non-selected" files but will soon stop.

If it doesn't, I can highly recommend Azureus - it's free, user-friendly, compatible with just about everything and will download only what you select to download.

By the way, I checked both eztv.it and mininova.org this morning and both have plenty of torrents for Lost. Suggest you have a look at mininova, do a search for Lost, you will see how many seeders and leechers there are for each torrent and a lot have comments so you can read which ones are good quality etc. Remember, the more seeders and fewer leechers the faster the download.

It also used to be the case (not so sure these days now) but the more you "share" i.e. have available to upload, the faster your download speed will be.

Currently on Azureus, I'm sharing about 500 - 600 video files and my download speed is very quick e.g. a normal 1 hour TV show will take about 2-3 hours to download (depending on the number of peers, seeds and leechers).

[El Fangel]

Thanks, things seemed to be cleared up now.