I recently explained to a friend how to use bit-torrent file-sharing to download movies, tv shows, music and software for free from the pirate sites, so I thought I might as well posy my explanation here for anyone who wants to know.
OK, first off you need a 'client' to download with. You can get it here: http://www.utorrent.com/downloads It's nothing complex or long-winded, it installs in seconds. You might get a security alert from Windows firewall or your anti-virus software during the install as it needs to open a port for connections, so click to allow access.
There are loads of torrent trackers on the web. There's a search engine here that's pretty good: http://isohunt.com/ Isohunt searches most of the trackers so you will usually find what you want on there. Just put the name of the movie into the search box – you know the drill.
OK here's an example – follow this link: http://isohunt.com/torrents/true+blood?ihs1=4&iho1=d&iht=-1&ihp=2
That's a torrent search for True Blood You see the numbers on the right hand side in the S and L columns? Well S stands for seeders and L stands for leechers. The beauty of bit-torrent is that you connect to loads of people not just one. Seeders have 100% of the file you want. Leechers have some of the file but not all of it but will share what they have until everyone has 100% and becomes a seeder. Generally speaking you will get faster downloads from the torrents with the highest numbers in those two columns. If it's a 0 in the S column then avoid it.
OK, so click on the torrent you want – I recommend the third one down on that page 'Season 1 complete' that has over 1800 seeders. It's a good idea to read the comments tab as some torrents are fake, password protected until you've signed up on their website etc. If it's genuine click 'download torrent', then you get a dialog box, choose a folder to save it to and click save. Now open the utorrent client (double-click on the green u in the system tray.) Click file, open, then go to the folder you saved the torrent file in and select your torrent then click open. Utorrent should create a folder in your My Docs called downloads so that's where it will download to.
Downloads will start slowly but get faster as you make more connections. How fast depends on your connection speed, mine is 8MB and I can get a full-length film in under an hour. If there's less seeders it could take several hours so don't expect miracles – it's a good idea to plan what you want to watch tomorrow tonight and start downloading it tonight to avoid disappointment! Torrents sometimes download faster if you limit the upload speed as upload uses more bandwidth than download (I think!) Right click on the torrent in utorrent, then go down to Bandwidth Allocation, Set Upload Limit.....I normally limit mine at 25.0kbps then switch it back to unlimited once it's completed.
If a torrent contains several files e.g. the True Blood torrent you can set priorities on what should download first. It makes sense to get episode 1 first rather than waiting for the whole series to download. In utorrent highlight the torrent at the top, then click on the 'files' tab half way down. Right-click on episode 1, go to Set Priority, High. It will now download episode 1 first.
It's file-sharing etiquette to let things seed for a while after they've completed, especially if there's a low number of seeders, so please bear that in mind. I'm sorry if I've made this sound extremely complicated but honestly it's not, it's simple. You can get almost any film that's in the cinemas now, albums are uploaded as soon as they're released, plus you can get software, books, TV shows, porn if you're into that sort of thing which obviously I'm not.
Here's some more torrent sites to search on, or you can even use Google – just put the name of whatever you're searching for followed by the word 'torrent'.
http://www.torrentreactor.net/
Happy file-sharing!
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