Easy Way to Download TV Shows from the Internet

How to Download TV Shows from the Internet

Well, it’s that time of year again, the Fall TV season is starting. Oh yeah after a long summer of nothing to do but go outside, meet other humans, and physical activity you can finally plop down on the couch and turn into a fat zombie watching the thrilling new episodes of your favorite shows. Now, I know you’re going to be there promptly every night living vicariously through your celluloid pseudo friends.

But, what if all of that human contact and activity from the summer bleeds into the fall? What if you find yourself having plans on, (don’t say it) a WEEKNIGHT gasp! Sure, you could just set the Tivo to grab all of your favorite shows, right after you remember to back up your computer, wear a condom and floss daily. Or worse yet, let’s say one of your “friends” or “neighbors” grabs you at the last minute and forces you to miss an episode of “The Office”. You can’t ask the Tivo to go get shows that it never recorded.

It must be difficult, expensive, or illegal. NO!, NO!, and “Probably Not.” It is pretty simple, totally free, and probably legal.

Well, all is not lost, you can always get any shows, with the commercials edited out right from the only “real” friend that you have (except for the TV), you guessed it, the Internet.

That doesn’t sound right. It must be difficult, expensive, or illegal. NO!, NO!, and “Probably Not.” It is pretty simple, totally free, and probably legal. (Well, when was the last time that you heard of someone getting sued for downloading Scrubs?) Follow these simple steps in this TWO PART ARTICLE and you can get any shows Freely, Quickly, and Easily.

What You Need to Download TV Shows

There are two things that you need to get your shows from the Internet:

1. A tool to download the files
2. A site that posts links to the files

Get a “Bit Torrent” tool that will download the files from the Internet.

Bit Torrent is a technology that allows you to download large files from users all over the world. Many people have a file and you take little pieces of the file from all of them at the same time. This is a pretty safe technology.

There are many “Good” Free Bit Torrent tools available; this guide will use one called “uTorrent”. Another good one is “Azureus”.

Get the uTorrent tool HERE.

Install the “uTorrent” software on your computer.

After you install the software and open it, you need to tell it where to put the files (TV shows) that you download.

Click Options> Preferences from the application’s toolbar.

This will open the Preferences window.

Select Downloads from the navigation tree on the left side of the Preferences window. This is where you tell uTorrent where to put your downloaded files.

Set your system to the circled setting above.

Finding Your Shows

Now, you are all ready to get some TV shows. You need to open up your web browser and go to a “Torrent Download Site” that will let you begin downloading files.

There are many of these sights that specialize in different things like Computer Software (probably semi-illegal), Video Games (ditto), and Videos. The one that caters specifically to TV and is very good is XTVi.com.

Go to http://tvrss.net/shows/ in your browser.

There is an alphabetical “Jump To” list at the top of the page. Click on the letter that your show starts with to find the show.

Let’s say you’re a fan of Saturday Night Live, click on the letter “S”.

Locate and select your show.

You will be directed to a list of posted episodes.

There is a bit of information here, but the key thing is the last field (Date and Time). Shows will be chronologically listed by the date they were posted to the site. Usually the day after the show aired. Newest dates are at the top.

Click on the Show Name link on the right side of the screen for your episode.

Now, you will see a link that says “Download this torrent!”

Click this link to start downloading your file.

You will be asked if you want to Save or Open the file.

YOU MUST CLICK OPEN!

Then, uTorrent will open and ask you if want to add the new torrent. This means start downloading the torrent.

Of course you want to download the torrent.

Click the OK button.

The file will begin downloading.

The ETA column lists the amount of time until the file completes downloading. You can right click on the torrent and select a few things to speed up your download.

Bandwidth Allocation> High

and

Update Tracker

These should speed up the file.

Well, that’s it for Part 1. Check out Part 2 of this article, where you can see how to How to Make uTorrent Automatically Find and Download your Favorite Shows

Complete instructions are available in a Word Document. (Hey, who wants to have their browser open when their trying to set this stuff up?

Update: More Ways to Download Your TV Shows

There is an article on Lifehacker that outlines Six Ways to Catch Your Favorite TV Shows. Very thorough and well written. They’re the best at this stuff!

Stay Tuned for the Next Article

In the next article I’ll cover How to Make uTorrent Automatically Find and Download TV Shows.

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