Let’s face it, TV in Japan has some comedic value but for me a lot of it is mind nummingly boring. If you’re fluent in Japanese you may benefit from a wider selection of programs than i do, although from what i’ve been told by people who are, it actually dissapoints you more to understand 100% what the show is about.
The one exception for me is sport, i do find alot of sport that interests me on Japanese TV, the Sumo, Baseball, Horse Racing, K1 and so on.
So, despite having E2 by Skyperfect i still find myself lacking some entertaining TV which leads me to download TV shows from the internet. Before coming to Japan i had no idea how this stuff really worked, also we were lacking the fat internet connection we have here so it wasn’t really an option back then.
How do i download tv shows? Using 2 things, a torrent search engine and then a torrent client that enables the p2p (peer to peer) sharing. Basically, it relies on each user having a piece of the file to be downloaded and sharing those pieces amongst each other until everyone has the complete download.
Firstly, find the torrent using a torrent search engine, i use isohunt. Once i’m at the Isohunt search page i enter the name of the show i want to download, in this case The Amazing Race.
Once you’ve found the episode you want it’s just a matter of saving that file to your system for opening later, or starting to download directly as i do.
The next piece you need is the torrent client, i use BitLord and again there’s many different ones you can use. This is actually an application that is installed on your computer, I wouldn’t advise installing on your work computer due to IT regulations.
Fire your torrent client up and kick off the download. Depending on the file size and connection speed it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to grab the program in it’s entirety.
A few suggestions you should follow;
- Research the whole BitTorrent thing a lot more before giving it a go yourself, the above is purely a basic overview of the process, which i’m surprised many people don’t know.
- Ensure the file you grab is in a format your PC can open, .avi, .mpg, .wmv etc …
- Read the comments for each torrent and verify it’s legitimate, some people upload fakes for various reasons, piracy and copyright laws can affect the legitamacy of the torrents.
- Choosing a torrent with high usage by other users will result in a quicker download. The torrent search engine will have numbers for S (Seeders) and L (Leachers) …. the higher these numbers the more people sharing this file.
- It will chew up your upload and download bandwith, so unless you have unlimited you may want to reconsider this as an option. Your service provider might also clamp down on the amount you’re downloading.
- Use TvCountdown to verify the program has actually aired, this helps reduce the chance of getting a fake.
- It helps if you have a PC connected to your TV and some decent storage, i have a Sony Living Room PC with 160Gb of disk with a further 300Gb external HD, that way you can keep lots of programs on easy stand by.
It really is a pretty simple process if you’re semi computer savvy and a great way of catching up with your program.
Being able to do this has been a massive benefit to me when looking forward to a lazy night on the couch so on that note, what about you?
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I remember just before the last Star Wars movie came out (actually one or two days before) there was a massive download fest at Bittorrent (when it was still free) after someone had uploaded a copy of the master copy. And then, Yahoo reported the news and directed everyone to the Bittorrent site, which increased the download fuckery even more. There were some prosecutions, but I don’t remember exactly what came of it. All is I know is that I learned how to download pirated material from Yahoo News.
Thankyou Yahoo News. After the demise of kazaa i got on to the torrents …. i had too, the hotel i was staying in when i got here had very poor paytv, you can only watch so much CNN, NBC, BBC before enough is enough …. lucky they had a fat 100 meg connection. That’s also what got me in the the internet in general … nothing to watch on TV but plenty to do with the internet.
mininova is also another great site for torrents.
Yep, that’s another i use frequently Ken.
You can also save some time using a software to check torrents for you.
Give TED (Torrent Episode Downloader) a try:
http://www.ted.nu/
Then you can forget about when your shows are being aired, for TED will remember airing dates for you (including season breaks, mind you).
I’ve been using it for some months now, and I couldn’t be happier.
Enjoy!
here is a list of sites that i use:
1.) Isohunt – great for tv shows and movies. kinda sucks when it comes to Anime and games. its just doesn’t deliver the right stuff.
2.) The Pirate Bay – awesome place for games. again its down side is when it comes to movies and tv shows. it gives some but not the better versions like you can get on Isohunt (aXXo and FXG dvd rips)
3.) Boxtorrents – for all your Anime/hentai/manga etc needs. you must register since it has a ”ratio” system. read its FAQ if you don’t know what that is. but know that this site only has Anime that has not been yet licensed it the US so some shows might not appear when you do a search.
4.) BtJunkie – a mixture of everything above. has TONS of torrents. so if you can’t find what your looking for this is the place to find it.
5.) Empornium.us – the mother load of ”Health Material”. it has EVERY thing you can imagine. it also has a section where you can watch them on the site its self, like YouTube. this site also requires to register and has a ”ratio” system. read its FAQ.
well this is my little list. hope you didn’t mind Niel ^_^
Not at all, I appreciate the effort you’ve gone too, other people will benefit from it too.
Worth mentioning that most torrent clients support encryption which you can enable to mask the fact that you’re using p2p/bittorrent. It reduces your download speed some, but makes it harder for your internet provider to log what you’re doing and report you to the authorities. Speaking of which, does anyone know what Japan is like for tracking down and prosecuting file sharers?
Anyway, if you really want to get loads of TV shows, you should be using Usenet instead of BitTorrent. You have to pay for access to a server (GigaNews is a good one – they have a 3 day free trial with 15 Gig limit) but if you’ve got a fast internet connection you can pull down an entire series in less than an hour, which is quicker than getting a single episode with p2p.
Thanks for the tips!
Sorry, as for the file sharing, I have heard of 1 person getting a letter from their provider but can’t recall which one, pretty sure it was Japan which I didn’t like to hear!
and if you wanna be EXTRA sure get PeerGuardian 2. its a IPBlocker and its FREE. but it doesn’t support Vista or Mac…
link to the site: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Cheers man, this is good info, i’ll check it out.
try this
http://www.xtvi.com/
eztv
that works as well
You might also want to try some of the services listed over at Greg’s HTPC blog at http://gregtvhomeentertainment.blogspot.com/. He has some really good products listed i”ve downloaded a few and have since gained about 2,500 movies and about 200 full seasons of tv shows. Have also canceled my tv cable service needless to say.. haha
Hey Neil.
Anyone with limited hard drive space might want to look at streaming TV rather than downloading. There are a couple of options here.
Hulu.com – NBC’s website offers a ton of tv shows, but they can’t be viewed outside the US. But if you use hotspotshield.com’s vpn, you can spoof a US IP address, and watch ‘em to your heart’s content.
Chinese Video sites – Youku.com, Tudou.com, Ku6.com, 6.cn — all these sites are very similar to youtube, but unlike youtube they offer full tv shows and movies rather than just clips. Fun fun fun…
And there’s also this streaming player as well, which is good for anyone on a windows machine: http://tinyurl.com/6pjrqf
I take it for granted that disk is no problem, it’s so cheap here. Thanks for the tips though Rick, others might benefit from them, cheers.
Hi Neil,
You might also want to check out d-addicts.com , they list heaps of Asian (including Japanese tvshows) with English subtitles. Makes it alot easier to understand what you’re watching.
Japanese TV is, for the most part, tripe. Downloads are pretty much all I watch. I use the Peer Guardian 2, seed but don’t upload, and don’t post any comments. Haven’t had any problems so far.
You should check out http://eztv.it/ if you’re into downloading TV shows. Probably the best torrent site for that sort of thing.
Cheers, will look into it!
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