Desperate for Help

Adil · 05-17-2006, 10:13 PM

I went on vacation for a month. Just got back to find that an accounting error at Tivo caused them to cancel my lifetime service just in the middle of May sweeps! I've missed the following shows from 10 May through today: Smallville (season finale), My Name is Earl, The Office, ER, The West Wing (Series Finale), The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, 24 (!!!), Scrubs, and The Apprentice.

So, my question, or plea if you will: Does anyone have copies of these shows that they would be willing to share or burn a DVD?

Before I went away, I bought a new 190 hour Tivo so I wouldn't miss anything. This is my second box (I've been using an old Series 1 40 Hour Sony box), but needed the capacity. Well, my plans all fell apart and I'm hoping someone out there can help.

Thanks,

AD

jjjenkin · 05-18-2006, 10:12 AM

Hope I can help. Not many people will as this is really an invitation for hard core geeks to flame you.

Research the Internet for Bittorrents.
I won't go into them much because some hard core geek reading this will correct me and I really don't care that much about the technology, legal implications blah blah.

Anyway,

1)Research bittorrents - they are basically small files that contain information on several sources that have only parts of the show you want. It is hard to grasp at first.

2)Download a bittorrent grabber like "Azureus".

3)Find a bittorrent site which hosts the bittorrents (thepiratebay or mininova)

4)Save the bittorent file to your computer

5)Throw the file into your "grabber" from #2

6)Wait for it to download

7)There ya go.

Any program you ever miss (as long as it is popular enough to record) should be on one of the sites, such as what is listed in #3.

Because of the amount of shows you missed, I'd get started pronto. Let me know if you need help. It took me a few weeks to figure it all out, not that I ever use or have ever used bittorrents or associated software.

Of course, once you have the files, you can either be a dork and huddle around the computer screen or burn them on DVD for viewing on your DVD player. With some quality loss, you may be able to get a couple of your shows on 1 DVD.

Good luck.

slocko · 05-18-2006, 10:57 AM

ditto on that. couple weeks ago my tivo decided to hang on a sunday night and i didn't notice till monday night. missed 24 and prison break. i had heard of bittorrent technology before but never paid attention since my Tivo records everything i want to watch.

as soon as i saw my 2 shows missing, i googled bittorrent and within 2 hours had everything figured out and downloaded. i didn't bother recording to dvd and just watched it on my computer. i do have a tech background so that probably helped me in my searching and interpreting what i was reading.

slocko · 05-18-2006, 10:59 AM

i found a utility called Ted that works in conjunction with Azureus. It already has the popular shows predefined so it will queue them up in Azureus for you.

it's free and you can download it form www.download.com

dagap · 05-18-2006, 11:37 AM

Better yet, grab the shows from the usenet binary newsgroups.

Your ISP probably provides a limited usenet feed for free. If that doesn't work out then ten bucks will buy you 25 GB of usenet downloads at http://www.news.astraweb.com/.

You'll need a downloader. I use Newsbin. It's $35 after a 10 day free trial. http://www.newsbin.com/

If you want to see what's available on the usenet binary groups, try a few searches at http://www.newzbin.com/. All your requested programs are available.

jjjenkin · 05-18-2006, 11:58 AM

Cool, will try TED out.

jjjenkin · 05-18-2006, 01:09 PM

TED is pretty cool, though all TV is almost over now!

This could potentially be solved with a Series 3 box. If you attach the external HD to it, you can record a season of a couple other shows to watch while no new shows are on. Cool deal.

Adil · 05-18-2006, 10:23 PM

I'm downloading from Azureus as I type. It's a slow process, but will get me what I need. I'm having some difficulty getting Windows Media Player to play the selection, but I'll work on that tomorrow.

Thanks again. I really appreciate the help.

AD

slocko · 05-19-2006, 09:07 AM

chances are that what you downloaded is a divx file. you are going to have to go to divx website and download their divx player. then you can watch it with their player.

there might be a way to install the codec on windows so that the windows media player can play it, but i didn't look into that.

jjjenkin · 05-19-2006, 11:04 AM

Everytime I've ever downloaded a torrent, it has been some type of .mpg file. The type of file will show up usually in the description. Or, when you begin downloading the file, look in the torrent folder and it will tell you.

There are a few programs out there that will convert it to what you want if it does end up being an annoying format.

Double-Tap · 05-20-2006, 06:07 AM

Try the network web sites to see if they offer the show for pay download. Google video has some network shows you can buy from them. The prices aren't free but they are reasonable enough to satisfy a series fix. Good luck.