Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why?

One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it’s hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead.

And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode).

But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn’t help either. This explains why hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. prefer to use BitTorrent.

The same is true for Canada and the United Kingdom, placed third and fourth in the list of pirate kings. If we look at the ranking of cities, London takes the lead followed by Sydney, Melbourne and Amsterdam.

To a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for Game of Throne’s success on BitTorrent. They want to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered.

Whether this is the best decision in terms of revenue is hard to tell, but it’s clear that HBO prefers more exclusiveness over less piracy. And who knows, maybe they even sell HBO subscriptions to BitTorrent downloaders in the long run.

The reasons above are not exhaustive of course, there are many more reasons why people turn to BitTorrent. For some it’s become a matter of habit that will be hard to break, no matter where they live and how good the legal alternative is.

If there are any Game of Thrones pirates reading this, let us know what drives you in the comments.

Source: Who’s Pirating Game of Thrones, And Why?

Ok, so the last sentence isn’t true, but nevertheless that appears to be the current assessment of events according to some BitTorrent users. Worryingly, the interpretation from others is even more wide of the mark.

The problem stems back to a new document which details a set of standards TV show release groups such as LOL and MOMENTUM will have to live up to in order to comply with so-called ‘Scene rules’. Not complying with the format means that a release group’s work risks being ‘nuked’ – a term which means something has been rated second-class by their pirating peers.

The document – ‘The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012′ – is extremely detailed and covers all sorts of technical issues, but the main controversy stems from the adoption of the x264 codec.

“x264 has become the most advanced video codec over the past few years. Compared to Xvid, it is able to provide higher quality and compression at greater SD resolutions,” the rule document begins.

“This standard aims to bring quality control back to SD releases. There are many standalone players/streamers such as TviX, Popcorn Hour, WDTV HD Media Player, Boxee, Xtreamer, PS3, XBOX 360, iPad, & HDTVs that can playback H264 and AAC encapsulated in MP4,” the doc adds.

From February 22nd and earlier in some cases, release groups including ASAP, BAJSKORV, C4TV, D2V, DiVERGE, FTP, KYR, LMAO, LOL, MOMENTUM, SYS, TLA and YesTV began releasing TV shows in the new format. Out went Xvid and avi, in came x264 and MP4.

However, while the release groups want to move with the times, there are many people consuming their content who either don’t or can’t. In the main, people seem disappointed because their standalone Xvid compatible DVD players won’t play the new releases.

Some of the reactions are polite enough, but show a misunderstanding of how the system works.

“LOL, why are all your new uploads MP4 format? How do we get hold of you? We need the AVI format back, really frustrating as most DVD players don’t play MP4 format which means we are back to converting format to AVI – how 3rd world LOL,” begins one user on popular torrent site EZTV.

“Hi there, I agree too please can you revert back to AVI as most DVD players cannot recognize MP4 format and this means I need to do conversion to AVI all the time for my grand mother and its quite painful,” says another.

At worst, some of the comments show an embarrassing sense of entitlement and an attitude that those downloading for free are actually “customers” of these release groups and as such deserve to be treated better.

“F@#k LOL and their mp4′s,” is just one example of the aggression directed towards them.

But there are another set of users who don’t understand where the releases come from at all and are instead directing their anger at the torrent sites – the equivalent of blaming Google for not listing the pictures people had hoped for in their image search.

“MP4 SUCKS AND IS A BULL SHIT FORMAT. AVI WILL ALWAYS BE KING. MORE TROUBLE THAN IS WORTH. TIME TO GET MY DOWNLOADS FROM A BETTER SITE THAT OFFERS AVI AND I KNOW A MAJORITY OF THE DOWN LOADERS WILL DO THE SAME,” shouts an EZTV user.

“SO I THINK EZTV HAS A LIMITED LIFE SPAN LEFT IF THEY DO NOT TELL DOWN LOADERS TO GO BACK TO AVI IT IS PROBABLY ALL OVER FOR THIS SITE.”

First off, these release groups aren’t deliberately releasing TV shows to please the masses. They do it for their own entertainment and it’s only when they leak out do the wider world get access to them. They are certainly not being put online to satisfy the needs of ALL CAPS MAN. Second, the torrent sites index other people’s content, they tend not to be the originators of it.

Sure, some of the more friendly but bewildered comments of upset downloaders are pretty amusing to read, but the more aggressive ones highlight a more worrying trend.

Somewhere along the line a consumer appeared who not only wants everything super quickly and for free, but also believes that the same should be offered with Class A service. Should these things not be delivered, he feels it is his right to take his “business” elsewhere. Could this become the new consumer standard for service on the Internet?

At the moment this toughest breed of consumer appears to be in the minority but thanks to the law of supply and demand, even he will find his needs served. Already people are ‘pirating’ the MP4 releases and re-uploading them in the Xvid format to satisfy his needs.

In the meantime, no doubt LOL and LMAO will be doing what their acronyms suggest.

Source: BitTorrent Pirates Go Nuts After TV Release Groups Dump Xvid

Lost and Heroes, two shows that were also leading the list in 2009, have achieved slightly fewer downloads when compared to last year. Despite this slight dip, the most downloaded episode of Heroes is still exceeding the average viewership on US television. The same is true for Dexter which moved up to third place this year.

The massive piracy of TV-shows is mostly a reflection of the unavailability of these shows in countries outside the U.S., and a signal that TV viewing habits are changing. There is a huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

The percentage of TV-downloaders from the U.S. has steadily declined over the last years, in part thanks to alternative viewing options such as Hulu. In other regions, such as Australia and Europe, the demand for U.S. TV-shows remains at pretty much the same level as last year.

Outside the U.S. fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their own country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the U.S. based on data from Nielsen. The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2010

The leaked episodes don’t originate from a Scene group, but according to unconfirmed reports they were ripped by the husband of a Showtime employee who got to take a promo-DVD home for Christmas. Such promo DVDs are often sent out to reviewers and industry insiders beforehand, and it’s not uncommon for them to appear online before the official TV-debut, appropriately tagged with a PREAIR label.

A few years ago the tag PREAIR was more common than it is nowadays. The tag is used on P2P and Scene releases to indicate that a TV-show has found its way onto the Internet before the episode appears on TV.

At one point during the summer of 2007 a massive 8 new episodes were released with a PREAIR tag in just one week. This year, however, only a few TV-leaks have appeared online. Early releases of The Walking Dead and Weeds were the only notable ones until today.

Promo and screener DVDs have always been a weak spot in the anti-piracy efforts of TV and movie studios. Millions of dollars are spent on lawsuits and takedown notices for leaks that often come from industry insiders. For this very reason some studios have opted to ban these screener DVDs entirely.

Kaye Cooper Mead, executive vice president of distribution at Summit Entertainment, recently said that getting rid of screeners entirely is the best option. Summit Entertainment is the studio behind the Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, a film that leaked online several months before it aired in movie theaters.

“It’s something we have to get away from,” Kaye Cooper Mead said recently. “Those screeners are a source of leaks, and when they leak, it’s a very serious leak because it’s a much better copy than the pirated ones.”

It is doubtful that the PREAIR leaks of Californication will do the series any harm. If anything, the show will pick up a few more fans thanks to this Christmas ‘present’.

Source: First Episodes Of Californication Leak On BitTorrent

At one point during the summer of 2007 a massive 8 new episodes were released with a PREAIR tag in just one week, including hit series such as Dexter, Weeds and Chuck.

In recent years, however, PREAIR releases have become a rarity. Before the start of the fall season of 2010, the only notable PREAIR leak was a Weeds episode.

Despite this declining trend, there are still a few notable releases that are worth mentioning, such as the premiere episode of The Walking Dead that surfaced online yesterday. The new series is written and produced by three-time Academy Award-nominee Frank Darabont, known for films such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

The Walking Dead is based on the similarly named comic book and tells the story of a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse.

The series will officially premiere in the US on the AMC network on October 31, but already thousands of people have downloaded the file online. According to most of the ‘amateur’ reviews we’ve read the quality isn’t all that great, but good enough to watch. Content wise there were few complaints.

AMC hasn’t officially responded to the leaks thus far, but we doubt that they will be bothered too much by the free publicity. It is often suggested that some of these leaks might even be intentional, that broadcasters use them to hype the show just before the season starts. Although this is often impossible to confirm, it would not be the first time that this has happened.

In 2007, a Warner Bros executive admitted that he helped to leak the pilot of ‘Pushing Daisies’. The exec wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and said his goal was to “help the cause.” He didn’t upload it himself though, but used his neighbor’s kid to do it instead.

The leak of The Walking Dead premiere, whether intentional or not, is guaranteed to boost the show’s momentum through word of mouth promotion. If anything it will help the show, rather than hurt it.

Source: The Walking Dead TV-Series Premieres On BitTorrent

Before The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and isoHunt started linking to torrent files, Suprnova was already serving to the masses. Like many sites in the early days of BitTorrent, the site began with a very primitive setup. It was hosted on a Linux box at the the home of its founder Andrej Preston, a Slovenian teenager better known as Sloncek.

In the months that followed Suprnova grew out to become the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, with over a million visitors a day. But it didn’t last. Along with huge popularity came the legal threats, and these eventually made Andrej decide to close the site in December 2004. As time went by other sites quickly filled the gap left behind by Suprnova.

That wasn’t the end of the site though. In 2007, Suprnova returned to the BitTorrent stage, resurrected by the folks behind The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, the site never even came close to its former glory, with just a few thousands visitors passing by each month.

For the former owner of the site, the decay of his baby was hard to watch.

“The Pirate Bay got huge press and they made a big statement on piracy (and how there is no stopping them) which benefited them a lot. Unfortunately, when the media attention passed, they completely forgot about the site and left it dead for years,” Sloncek told TorrentFreak today.

Because the site wasn’t of much use to anyone, Sloncek contacted the Pirate Bay crew a few months ago, hoping that they would return the domain that he once donated to them.

“A few months ago I tried to get the domain back, since I do feel like it is still a part of me. Even though it is just a domain name it has a lot of sentimental value. Thankfully, the Pirate Bay crew were kind enough to return the domain. On Monday, Suprnova.org was finally transferred back to me, and I have to admit, it feels good to have it back.”

Although he does sound a bit disgruntled, Sloncek says that there’s no bad blood between him and the Pirate Bay crew.

“I don’t want it to sound like I am mad at The Pirate Bay or anybody involved, I think that they tried to make a statement and they did. I just wished they actually did more with the domain or had returned it sooner,” Sloncek explains.

“All in all, I’m happy to have it back. My plan is not to turn it into a torrent site, but more of a online video portal. I guess I will go into more details later on, once I understand exactly what I want it to become. The thought of having it back is still very fresh and exciting,” he adds.

This new project suits the 2010 Sloncek better as he’s currently in San Francisco and attending the Academy of Art University where he focuses on TV and online video production. Although Sloncek is no longer actively involved, he didn’t cut his roots to the BitTorrent scene completely. He’s currently directing TorrentFreak TV in his spare time, which might be featured on the new Suprnova later this year.

Source: The Pirate Bay Says Goodbye to Suprnova

The paragraph above sets the stage for a brand new sci-fi series that will debut not on TV, but on BitTorrent. Titled Pioneer One, the series is a project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year.

Rather than the traditional path taken by most TV-makers, they do not plan to pitch a pilot to the studios. Instead, they are making the series on their own backed by donations from the public. The result will premiere exclusively on BitTorrent where it will instantly have an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The previous releases on VODO, a novel BitTorrent-powered distribution platform for indie filmmakers, have been a massive success as they were downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. VODO is fully supported by The Pirate Bay, EZTV and many other well known file-sharing partners that help to promote the releases.

Josh Bernhard, who wrote the script for the upcoming TV-series, sees VODO as the ideal distribution channel for ‘Pioneer One’ and hopes that it will equal or exceed the success of the film they released late last year.

“Because of our success with The Lionshare, we think we have a novel incentive to give potential sponsors,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak. “With the number of people who downloaded Lionshare, and the demographic they come from, we think that forward-thinking companies would see the opportunity in associating their brand with a unique show like this.”

The series, described by its makers as a “political drama, part procedural drama, with a tinge of sci-fi”, has the potential to revolutionize the TV-business. By taking the show directly to the Internet where it will build an online fanbase, it goes directly against traditional TV-making procedures.

The production of ‘Pioneer One’ is already well underway. The casting for the pilot has been completed and the crew will start shooting in 4 days. In order to produce a high quality pilot the makers are running a Kickstarter pledge drive through which they hope to get at least $6000 in funding from contributers who support the project.

If you want to be part of TV-history, we recommend that you send a few bucks over. At TorrentFreak we will definitely keep you updated on the project’s progress.

Source: Pioneer One, A BitTorrent Exclusive TV-Series

Several months later in November 2009, TorrentFreak looked at some Netnod data which seemed to indicate that not only had Swedish traffic levels returned to pre-IPRED levels, but actually surpassed them.

Traffic levels naturally increase year-on-year anyway, so it was difficult to be certain that that this boost was related to recovering levels of online piracy. However, new research just published by a consultancy firm seems to suggest that accessing illicit material online is indeed on the increase.

Mediavision bills itself an independent consultancy firm specializing in analyzing consumer behavior within the sphere of digital media. Its clients include media groups, TV channels, advertisers and production companies.

In its just published 2009 fourth quarter report, the company reveals that it detected an increase in the downloading of TV shows during the autumn of that year. In the 15 to 74 year-old bracket, 1.4 million Internet users engaged in that activity.

In the 15 to 24 year old group, 0.5 million used illicit streaming services to access both movies and TV shows, a method which Mediavision believes is becoming more sought after. 20% of the respondents in this age group admitted using them.

The company further says that 60% of 15 to 24 year-olds are estimated to have consumed illicit media online via various means in the fourth quarter of 2009, versus 40% of the 15 to 74 year-olds. This figure is the same as that reported by Mediavision before IPRED was introduced.

Overall, the company says it believes that the accessing of illicit movies and TV shows via the web has recovered at least to pre-IPRED levels, maybe slightly higher.

Jens Heron at Mediavision says that the piracy situation with TV shows would improve if foreign TV shows and other international became more readily available, at a time and place of the consumers’ choosing.

“Our analysis shows that consumers increasingly want to decide for themselves when to watch and from which screen. Unfortunately, many have become adept at circumventing the IPRED legislation. The way to remedy this, in addition to legislation, is, of course, by offering great legal alternatives,” he added.

Indeed, as earlier reported, around 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 are taking measures to neutralize IPRED, with as many as 500,000 others in the country following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

Source: Illicit File-Sharing and Streaming of TV Shows Increases

There is no doubt that the final season of the show will again be a strong contender in 2010′s list. However, it already has the honor of becoming the first TV-show to leak online after being recorded using a webcam on a tropical beach.

The copy of the first episode that appeared online two days ago was recorded during a live screening hosted by ABC at an Oahu beach. Well over 10,000 fans of the show attended the screening and at least one of them decided to record it via their laptop webcam.

The recording was posted online a few hours later and is now available on virtually all BitTorrent sites. The video quality is ‘reasonable’ according to initial reports from people who downloaded the file. The sound quality on the other hand is not that good, which is not really a surprise considering that thousands of people were present.

The cammed version of the episode has been downloaded a little over 25,000 times on BitTorrent thus far, which is really low and unlikely to cause ABC to lose any viewers tonight. If anything, it might serve as free publicity reminding people that the new season is starting soon.

From the torrent site comments we indeed learn that the majority of fans say they would prefer to see the episode in full quality on TV, or download a copy on BitTorrent a few hours later. In this case, most people seem to prefer quality over early access, which must be a comfort to the makers of the show.

Source: Lost Season 6 Premiere Pirated On The Beach

The rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent, and this is also reflected in the fact that most downloads occur from countries where the show has yet to air on TV.

Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their own country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Despite massive piracy of TV-shows, there are plenty of opportunities for distributors and broadcasters to win viewers back. The piracy figures simply show that TV viewing habits are changing. There is a huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US, based on data from Nielsen. The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2009

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.

Source: EZTV Suffers Downtime Due to Server Troubles

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.

Source: Leading TV Show eD2K Site Celebrates Birthday With Torrents

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.

Source: Popularity of Pirated TV-Shows Still Rising

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.

Source: EZTV Makes Comeback with New and Improved Site

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.

Source: BitTorrent On Your TV For Less Than $90.00

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.

Source: Unaired Prison Break Finale a Hit On BitTorrent

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.”

Source: Bye Bye FeedMyTorrents, Hello ShowRSS

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: FeedMyTorrents Closes In Face of Legal Threats

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Shared TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

“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.

Source: Norwegian State TV Launches BitTorrent Tracker

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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Last week, Heroes took over but Lost is again on top. Both Heroes and Lost were downloaded well over a million times, beating the rest of the shows by a landslide.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak. We use 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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

This week, however, Heroes took over the lead. Both Heroes and Lost were downloaded well over a million times, beating the rest of the shows by a landslide.

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak. We use 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.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Miro is especially useful for people who only use BitTorrent to download video files, since the BitTorrent client and video player are built in. The application is platform independent and open source. Although it doesn’t support some of the more advanced features other BitTorrent clients have, such as encryption, it works well enough for the average user.

With the new 2.0 release Miro has improved the user interface and added support for streaming sites. In addition, LegalTorrents was added as a default site to the sidebar, but users can add (sidebar > add) as many sites as they like. It works fine with most torrent sites, The Pirate Bay for instance, but not with sites that don’t link to the .torrent file directly, like Mininova.

It gets even more interesting when you use RSS feeds, which are a great help in automating TV-show downloads. There are several ways to import your favorite TV-shows into your download queue. Search-based RSS feeds, that relate to particular search terms, for example. If you search for ‘TorrentFreak’ the search results will have a link (the orange button) to a feed that will send you updates on all torrents that match this search term.

More convenient perhaps are sites such as FeedMyTorrent and TVRSS that offer pre-made or customizable RSS feeds for most TV-shows out there. Adding a feed to Miro is again very easy (sidebar > add feed) and it only takes a few seconds to get it up and running. Whenever a new episode is aired, it will automagically be downloaded in Miro.

To be honest, we don’t think that Miro will replace the regular BitTorrent client for most of the die-hard BitTorrent users. Nevertheless, it is the ideal tool for less BitTorrent savvy users who don’t want to be bothered with all the BitTorrent lingo.

Source: Get Your TV-Torrent Fix with Miro

The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak. We use a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. We usually include an additional list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week, but these data were not available at the time of publication.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak. We use a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The fifth season of Lost just started with two new episodes. Both episodes were downloaded close to two million time in the first week. As always, the vast majority of the people who download the show are located outside the U.S, where it may take up to a year before season 5 will actually air on TV.

The rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. It’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free and should be viewed as an opportunity, not a threat. The more restrictions, the more piracy – it’s as simple as that.

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. Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: ‘Lost’ Most Pirated TV-Show on BitTorrent

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. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008 was published in December.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008 was published two weeks ago.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

24 is traditionally one of the hit shows on BitTorrent. Together with Heroes, Lost and Prison Break, every episode is downloaded well over a million times. The show also has a reputation of leaking out, just before it premieres.

Similar to the unscheduled appearance of season 6, the first four episodes of the new season were uploaded onto several BitTorrent sites earlier today. The source appears to be a promo DVD sent out by the studios to several media outlets, TV editors and reviewers. According to early reports, the quality of the rip is mediocre, unlike the usual high quality scene rips usually posted on BitTorrent. Indeed, the leak appears to have bypassed The Scene altogether, leaking to P2P networks first.

It is often suggested that these leaks might be intentional, that broadcasters use them to hype the show just before the season starts. Although this is often impossible to confirm, it would not be the first time that this has happened.

In 2007, a Warner Bros executive admitted that he helped to leak the pilot of ‘Pushing Daisies’. The exec wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and said his goal was to “help the cause.” He didn’t upload it himself though, but used his neighbor’s kid to do it instead.

The leak of these 24 episodes, whether intentional or not, is guaranteed to result in a surge of word of mouth promotion, and free promotion throughout the blogosphere. If anything it will help the show, rather than hurt it.

Source: 24 Season 7 Leaks Early to BitTorrent

The new device can play videos from several large streaming sites, including YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe. However, its true power comes from the built-in BitTorrent client. Millions of people use BitTorrent to download TV-shows every week, so there are a lot of potential customers out there.

‘Whenever’ and ‘wherever’ are two words that are often heard when people explain why they use BitTorrent, and Netgear cleverly acknowledges this with their new player. “It is ideal for those who are geographically displaced from their preferred television content, such as international sporting events and Bollywood productions,” is how Netgear’s marketing promotes it.

If Netgear is indeed hoping for BitTorrent users to embrace the device, most of the potential lies outside the US, where 90% of all the TV-torrent downloads take place. The main reason being that fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country.

For those who have a large library of video files downloaded already, the Internet TV Player also supports external USB drives. Plug it in, and all your videos will be available on your TV instantly, easy as that. Netgear expects that the Internet TV Player (ITV2000), priced at $200, will be available in stores early Summer 2009.

Source: Netgear Unveils its TV-Torrent Player

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. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008 was published two weeks ago.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008 was published last week.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Whereas some people may download a movie to avoid the cost, TV shows offer something different. People are generally able to watch these shows for free on regular TV, but still, due to superior convenience and greater availability, those same people choose to get their fix from BitTorrent instead.

In Australia right now, online piracy is a hot topic, with anti-piracy outfits going as far as trying to hold ISPs accountable for the infringing actions of their customers, and the ‘firewall’ of Australia threatening to target BitTorrent. But when it comes to deterring piracy it seems the big studios are blind to some of the small things they can do to make the situation better, instead of continually going to war with pirates – a war they simply cannot win.

The TV show Doctor Who, like many shows, has a ‘Christmas Special’. This episode, unsurprisingly, will air Christmas Day on the BBC in the UK. In it the Doctor will have one of his trademark re-incarnations, a very important event for fans of the series. The problem for Australian viewers is simple – ABC who have the rights to the show think that Christmas Day falls on January 25th 2009 down-under, as this is the date it will air there, officially at least.

But of course, Doctor Who fans know about BitTorrent, the show has appeared in our most pirated TV show lists and was even subject to a major ‘leak‘ of its own.

Thanks to ABC’s short-sightedness, thousands of Australians will pirate this episode of their favorite show just minutes after it finishes airing in the UK and a month ahead of its official launch. It’s not just The Doctor who is capable of time-traveling these days.

Source: Aussie ‘Doctor Who’ Fans Set to Time Travel With BitTorrent

Perhaps even more importantly, the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent.

This also becomes clear when we look at the geographical location of the downloaders. The vast majority of the downloads come from overseas, over 90% on average. Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Legal online streaming services are only available in the US, and change very little in the overall download figures. Until the availability problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent. Indeed, compared to last year, the download figures have grown a little, especially for the top three TV-shows in the list.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US, based on data from Nielsen. Note that the download count for each show is per episode, the most downloaded in this case. The Olympics Opening Ceremony was one of the most wanted broadcasts of the year with 4,620,000 downloads, but we decided only to include TV-series.

The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. The download number is the sum of all torrent downloads for the most popular episode. Based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2008

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. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008, including download count will be published later this week.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

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.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

On a free account, users of Google’s App Engine can host 500MB data, and serve up to 5 million page views a month. This is more than enough for a medium sized BitTorrent site. At the moment it is not possible to upgrade these limits, since paid accounts are not yet available, but this might change in the future.

Both sites are totally ad free, and great resources to search for torrents. V0rtex currently searches 12 BitTorrent sites, including established sites such as Mininova, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. The site itself has a clean look and feel, and the search results are sortable by date, peers, seeds and more.

TorrentFreak spoke with Reda, the developer of the site, who told us that he started the project to learn how to code. “It was really fun and exciting to learn Python and Javascript/Ajax,” he said. His goal is not to compete with the big players though. Reda hasn’t even bothered to register a domain name for it since it was mainly a learning experience.

This is different for the other BitTorrent meta search engine hosted on Google’s App Engine, which does have its own domain. TorrentTab, which is a project of David Sánchez, is also using Google’s architecture to search for torrents. The site currently searches 10 sites, and presents the search results in tabs using Google Ajax Feed API.

David told TorrentFreak that he initially started the site on his own Internet connection. When the site started to attract more visitors, he had to find an alternative. Google’s App Engine seemed to be a great solution, so he recoded the site in Python and moved it over to Google’s infrastructure.

Unlike some of the other meta-search engines that use tabbed search results, TorrentTab is not merely loading the results from the other sites in a frame. Unfortunately there are no sorting options for the search results, which makes it hard to find the best seeded files, or the latest uploads.

Although V0rtex and TorrentTab are are not revolutionary in terms of features or functionality, it is great to see that Google is providing a free playground for BitTorrent startups. It’s always good to see some variety.

Source: Google Powered BitTorrent Seach Engines