Two days ago the website of the popular TV-torrent distribution group EZTV went down without explanation. Although this by itself isn’t that unique, the timing is unfortunate to say the least as the new TV-season is just starting up.
The beginning of the new TV-season is generally speaking the busiest time for EZTV, as over a million people flock to the site every day to catch up with their favorite shows. So when they found that their preferred TV-torrent index wasn’t loading, some people started to worry.
Luckily for them, there is not much to be concerned about.
EZTV’s NovaKing informed TorrentFreak that the downtime is due to hardware issues. They are currently working on replacing old servers with new ones, and when this is done the site will come back. This could take a few more hours up to a few days, depending on how much time the volunteers can free up.
“We recently got new servers to help with the increase in visitors we are getting to the site. With the new setup EZTV and sister sites like ezRSS will be more stable,” NovaKing said.
In recent months EZTV has seen quite an increase in usage, and since the old servers couldn’t keep up this often resulted in downtime. And aside from better up-time, there’s more for EZTV’s users to look forward to.
“The new version of the site is almost complete as well which we hope most people will like and find more useful,” NovaKing told us.
One of the new features currently in development is the integration of ezRSS (which is also down) with EZTV’s “my shows” feature. This means that users can setup an RSS feed for their favorite shows on the EZTV website, and use this feed to automatically download new shows.
The upcoming iteration of the site will also have a revamped forum, improved usability, more detailed show information and an updated TV news system. When these new features will be rolled out is unknown at this point.
Unlike other torrent sites, EZTV is completely advertising free and run entirely by volunteers. All the people working on the site also have real jobs to attend so site maintenance and upgrades sometimes take longer than with other sites. Still, that doesn’t mean that EZTV isn’t publishing content elsewhere.
Update October 5, 2011
EZTV has not made the switch yet and is still facing issues every now and then. The site is down at the moment but the techies are working on bringing it back.
