Today the group serves more than 16 million visitors a month on its website alone, and a multiple of that on the other torrent sites they distribute their releases on.

Several days ago EZTV’s website suddenly went offline without prior notice, something that usually leads to wild rumors about what the cause. Luckily EZTV’s problems are due to technical problems and they are currently working on a comeback.

EZTV’s Novaking told TorrentFreak that a rebuild of the servers stuffed up and they are currently waiting for some tech people to look into it. It’s not clear when the site will return, but it’s safe to assume that it will be a matter of days, not weeks or months.

This is not the first prolonged outage the popular TV-torrent site has suffered this year. During the summer the website was down for six weeks. It went offline because of hardware problems, but EZTV decided to take advantage of the situation and relocate all hardware to a new datacenter while implementing several new features.

Even though the website is currently offline, EZTV’s releases are still widely available though a number of sites. “You can still get our stuff from Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Twitter and Zoink,” Novaking told TorrentFreak.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Once upon a time there was a popular TV show eD2K link site called The Real World. Of course, it wasn’t long before the site’s popularity caused it have legal problems, and in August 2005 it all came crashing down.

However, just as people recently copied The Pirate Bay when waters started to get choppy, the same thing also happened with The Real World, with the site’s database being shared around on eD2K. Soon after The Free World was born, run by an Austrian national, but that site didn’t last long either and was shut down following MPAA action.

On October 23rd 2005, exactly four years ago today, yet another site came out of the ashes. That site, TV Underground (TVU), remains to this today and claims to be the biggest site for eD2K link TV shows. TVU has a unique feature – it is believed to be the only site to run its very own eD2K server.

“We take pride in running the only P2P server sponsored by the P2P community
and not by some shady porn site,” TVU admin CheGuevara told TorrentFreak. For those interested, stats for the server (currently indexing 8.6million files) can be found here.

While eD2K remains popular, BitTorrent is the current darling of the P2P file-sharing world and is particularly popular with fans of TV shows. This is clearly something the TV Underground team wish to exploit.

“We have launched a new version of our site today to allow users to submit torrents,” CheGuevara told us. “At first we will allow users to submit torrents to seasons that already have eD2K links, but we are planning to expand to torrent-only seasons and per show torrents after the launch.”

So what motivated this development at TVU?

“We love ed2k, but we acknowledge that BitTorrent has it’s own advantages and some users prefer to use that,” they explained.

“Our mission is to spread quality TV Shows to every corner of the world. We think the current system of how the rest of the world has to wait months and years to see a show that has been shown in the US or elsewhere as totally unfair,” CheGuevara notes. “I myself am a big fan of House. It is on Season 6 right now, but where I live they are just only showing Season 4… Fair? No. You get the point.”

TV Underground will have to go a long way in the torrent world to catch up with the likes of EZTV, but with the site currently down because of maintenance, many will be grateful for an alternative.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Most TV-show downloads come from overseas where the episodes haven’t aired yet, let alone that it can be streamed online. The only option left for these unfortunate souls is to use BitTorrent, or wait.

However, it seems that people don’t want to wait for months when they know that their favorite TV-show is out there, just a few clicks away. Indeed, at an increasing rate people have started to use BitTorrent to get their TV fix.

Traffic to the leading TV-torrent distribution site EZTV is up over 50% compared to last year. The site had more than 15 million visits in September compared to 9.2 a year earlier.

TV-torrents are particularly popular in Australia where most US TV-shows air with a delay of months or even years. EZTV is among the 300 most visited websites Down Under, and Mininova, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt are all in the top 100.

Stopping TV piracy is not that hard though. TV distribution companies should get rid of the long delays and offer streams to people outside of the US. If they can pull that off there is no doubt that the number of ‘pirated’ downloads will plunge.

Below is the list of most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent last week. Heroes is leading the chart with well over a million downloads in just one week.

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It therefore came as a surprise to many that the site went blank this June. At first rumors surfaced that the site was shut down through legal action, but in reality EZTV was busy transferring the servers to a new location, and working on implementing several new features while they were at it.

EZTV’s Novaking told TorrentFreak that downtime was initially caused by hardware problems, but they decided to take advantage of the situation and relocate all hardware to a new datacenter while implementing several new features.

“It was hard to work on the new features while the site was operational, as I don’t get enough hours in the day to maintain and code a new one,” Novaking told TorrentFreak, explaining why the downtime took longer than expected.

The wait is over though. Today the site has returned with more features than ever before. Aside from getting the forums back online, EZTV now dedicates a full page to each released episode, with download statistics, a sample of the release and several download mirrors.

In addition to these episode pages, all the TV shows now have their own page as well as a user generated show rating, a description of the show and related news items and general information.

On top of the changes in the site’s functionality, EZTV has also switched to using the OpenBitTorrent tracker instead of those of The Pirate Bay. “That was a pretty easy decision,” Novaking told us. “With the current sale of TPB it would only be a matter of time before we couldn’t use it anyways, so we made the switch before that happened.

As if that’s not enough good news already, there is even more for TV-torrent addicts. Coinciding with the relaunch of its site, EZTV is launching a replacement for TVRSS, a site where users could generate custom made RSS feeds for their favorite TV-shows.

The new site, named ezRSS, has the same functionality as the TVRSS website that was taken down two months ago, and is compatible with all BitTorrent clients that support RSS downloads.

Novaking said that ezRSS is one of features he’s most excited about, although it’s still uncertain if it will be able to handle the stream of new users without any significant problems. “I’m hoping our servers can handle the load,” he said.

There will be plenty of interest, that’s for sure.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

CinemaCube connects to your regular TV. It has an HDMI port and supports HD content up to 720p. It has all the usual analog and composite connections, S-Video and S/PDIF and plays back a multitude of formats including Xvid, DivX, AVI, H.264, MP4, MP2, RMVB, WMV, MP4, MKV, JPEG, BMP and PNG. Audio formats are also supported including FLAC, AAC, OGG and WAV.

Crucially for TorrentFreak readers, all of the above media can be acquired via the machine’s built-in BitTorrent client or from your existing PC archive via the built in 10/100 network socket.

Of course, there are many other set-top style boxes with these type of capabilities these days but what sets CinemaCube out from the competition is what it doesn’t have.

For starters the device doesn’t have a built in hard drive. Instead, CinemaCube has USB 2.0 connectivity which means that you can use your own external units or take advantage of small and cheap USB memory sticks which simply plug in.

For green-minded individuals, due to the lack of a hard drive CinemaCube doesn’t have a thirst for power consumption either, using only 10 watts of electricity when downloading via BitTorrent.

Perhaps most importantly, the device also lacks a big price tag. Unlike other admittedly higher-spec boxes, CinemaCube from brite-View costs just $89.99, putting it in reach of even the most frugal BitTorrent user.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Unlike the regular episodes these last two were never aired by Fox on US television, this also shows in the download statistics. Up to 25 percent of the downloads came from the US compared to little over 5 percent for the other episodes that did air on television.

Episode 23 and 24 of the fourth Prison Break season are available on BitTorrent because some non-US networks did decide to air them. ‘Prison Break: The Final Break’, as the final two episodes are called, is scheduled for a (ca-ching) DVD release in the US on July 21.

The data for the most downloaded TV episodes of this week are listed below. The data are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, the closure of FMT didn’t go unnoticed. Over in Spain the admin of Karmorra – an ex-FMT user – became very disappointed that the site was forced to close and decided to do something about filling the hole FMT left behind.

He told TorrentFreak, “I was a FeedMyTorrents user (I loved the service!) and I didn’t like the fact they closed because of legal threats. So, with the help of some friends, I released a service that does the same thing that they did.”

And so showRSS was born.

The site is minimal right now, but very functional. Users are required to register a username and password so that feeds can be customized easily. Once logged in, this is achieved by clicking the ‘my tv shows’ button and choosing the show required and clicking ‘Add to My List’ – this can be repeated any number of times to add multiple shows to a personalized RSS feed.

That’s pretty much it as far as input goes. From the TV shows chosen, showRSS generates a single RSS feed to all your favorite shows. By configuring an RSS-compatible client like uTorrent with the feed, all shows will downloaded automatically when they become available.

All the feeds will only list one torrent per episode, meaning that no duplicates will appear in the RSS feeds. Currently only standard definition torrents are supported, however, showRSS is working on adding high definition feeds as well. There is no doubt that TV-torrent addicts will appreciate the new service, but what if the entertainment industry lawyers come calling?

The admin of showRSS told TorrentFreak that he isn’t worried by legal threats – they’ve even opened a Pirate Bay-style ‘Legal Threats‘ section on the site to showcase anyone foolish enough to send them any. But why the cavalier attitude? It’s quite simple. Since the admin is in Spain and torrent sites have been ruled legal there if no revenue is generated directly from an infringement.

“I won’t get any benefits or put any kind of ads on the website, I’m paying the server with my own money,” he told TorrentFreak.

“In Spain that’s 100% legal.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Due to the site’s growing popularity, FMT started to hit problems in early 2009 – specifically those relating to capacity. According to staff on the site, every day there was a 5% increase in pageviews and registrations. More and more users meant the site consumed more and more bandwidth, which affected both the server performance and stability. This was a problem since the site was already running on a server labeled as “a piece of old junk” by staff.

In February 2009, it all started to get too much. The site needed funds to continue. Staff explained that if every visitor to the site on a single day donated $1, the site could survive for another 6 months. In the end the site raised less than half of this money, raising the possibility that another donation drive would be needed sooner rather than later, if the site was to survive.

Then last week the site completely disappeared. The DNS for the domain was updated on May 12th and no longer points to the old IP address. However, the old IP address is currently still functional and shows this message;

It’s over. We’ve received several take down requests, and have decided not to test the extents of the law. We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and for the fun times we’ve had.

That message seems fairly final, which is quite a shame. However, BitTorrent fans looking for an RSS fix still have plenty of other options, some of which are outlined in our earlier article, Top 10 BitTorrent and RSS tips.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads is not yet available at the time of publication.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“With our own tracker we will get better statistics and gather important data about how this technology works. And as we did with our early tests we’ll also try to share the knowledge as we grow this service,” NRK’s Eirik Solheim writes in an article announcing the tracker.

The decision to go with BitTorrent was an easy one according to the broadcaster, as tests with traditional downloads crushed their servers. BitTorrent on the other had allows them to distribute their shows to millions of people without having to invest in extra bandwidth or hardware.

“This type of distribution is reliable, cheap and popular with our audience,” Solheim told TorrentFreak. “The main problem is the rights issues. We hope to be able to make television shows with a creative commons license in the future. That will make it easier for us to allow full freedom for our audience,” He added.

NRK understands that the traditional distribution methods are changing, and that their viewers want to consume television shows wherever and whenever they want. The way people consume music and video has changed, and NRK doesn’t want to fall behind.

“It is important for us to start experimenting with new distribution methods. We don’t want to do like the music industry. Running around thinking that people will keep driving down to a record store when they can have the content delivered with the push of a button at home,” Eirik Solheim said in an interview last year.

It is great to see traditional broadcasting companies starting to experiment with BitTorrent and we hope that many others will follow. Making TV-shows available online will only increase the viewership, and with BitTorrent it can be done relatively cheaply too.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.