P2p, Bit Torrents ?

[rocky123]

Stupid falang need guidance, PLEASE. Before I pull all my hair out can anyone guide me how to download stuff for free. I was informed when I bought this laptop vista it would be easy to do, ha ha. I have a land line ????? Many thanks.

[Mid]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=B...G=Google+Search

[phazey]

I have a land line ?????

Need more than that.......

[smartecosse]

isohunt

[Gumballl]

I have a land line ?????

Need more than that.......

I have a land line... I can download at approximately 6 Mbps. Maybe the OP means he has dial-up service, in which case you would be correct in stating that more bandwidth would be desirable.

[Daewoo]

Stupid falang need guidance, PLEASE. Before I pull all my hair out can anyone guide me how to download stuff for free. I was informed when I bought this laptop vista it would be easy to do, ha ha. I have a land line ????? Many thanks.

I am not much on the nerdbox, but am a bit bored at work, so I will kick things off, and hopefully others will pick up on my errors and help you...

Your original post doesn't really help explain too much what you have and what you would like to do...

1st, you need an Internet Connection... You said you have a landline, but do you mean you have a dial-up internet connection (very slow) or broadband over you phone line (much better)... either way you need to connect to the Internet first.

The most popular P2P format for movies at the moment is BitTorrent.

2nd, you need to download a 'BitTorrent Client" like BitCommet or Azureus, I find BitCommet easiest. The Torrent Client is the program that manages the download for you, but isn't like a big database of movies... it just manages the download of torrents that you find somewhere else...

When someone creates a torrent they split the movie up into heaps of tiny little packets and list the torrent on a search engine... people (or peers) who download the whole torrent and leave the whole thing there for others to upload are called seeders... people (or peers), who have some of the packets but not all are called leechers... BitTorrent works by getting little packets of the movie from all of the other peers and letting other peers get some of what you have downloaded already.

The number of peers (seeders and leechers) who have part of the movie is what decides the health of the torrent, and how fast you will be able to upload it...

3rd, The search engines to find the torrent are just web based like google... some of the main ones are torrentspy, mininova, meganova, btjunkie, Isohunt and torrent portal. You just open them in your web browser (such as Internet Explorer) type in the movie that you want, and click search... look at the movie with the best 'health' and check the comments to see if it is what you want, whether the quality is good, what language it is in, that sort of thing... if you like it, click ion the "download this torrent" button...

This will download a little program that tells you what files are in the torrent, and asks you where on your computer you want the movie stored... when you are happy, click OK and it will tell your BitTorrent Client to start the download...

4th, most movies are compressed using programs called Codecs, such as Divx, or Xvid... to play these on a DVD player you need one that has these codecs (it will be on the box or front of the player)... to replay them on your computer, you can just download the codec for free from the Internet. Using Codecs allow them to convert a 4Gb movie to as small as 600Mb without loosing ]too much quality...

It might sound a bit daunting, but it is actually pretty easy once you do the first 1 or two... there is heaps of info on the Internet to help, just search for BitTorrent.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Daewoo

[bkk_mike]

I'll add one thing...

If you're wanting to watch specific TV series, rather than movies, you should pick a torrent client that can handle RSS. (i.e. Azureus' RSSFeed Scanner plugin or μtorrent that I know of.) That way, your PC can automatically download the next episode of the more popular TV shows virtually as soon as they're uploaded, without you having to kick it off.

Useful sites would be tvrss.net, mininova.org, and bt-chat.com, and the bigger shows are usually in the VTV or EZTV feeds.

For downloading older episodes, you're better off picking the torrents manually - based on number of seeders / leeches...

Edited June 3, 2007 by bkk_mike

[Maigo6]

Dial up will be incredibly slow and a movie will take days to download even weeks!!!

Music will be ok but still slow, only hours.

You need ADSL.

Edited June 3, 2007 by Maigo6