Subscriptions to various shows are managed from within the application. Once set, the software runs silently in the background checking to see if .torrent files are available for your chosen shows yet, and if they are it downloads them by triggering an instance of your favorite BitTorrent client and the download begins.

TVShows is able to download the correct episode from within a series and offers a choice of video qualities to download – Normal, High and Very High.

The open source TVShows 0.2 runs on Mac OS X 10.4+ and is available on SourceForge.

Windows users may like to try Ted, the Torrent Episode Downloader.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Xtorrent, the new BitTorrent client for Mac OS X, just rolled out of the beta phase. In September, we reviewed the first public beta, which initially looked like a promising application. However, issues like the problematic libtransmission library, and the intrusive shareware policy make this client a lot less attractive.

The first major drawback of Xtorrent is that it is not free, which is extremely unusual and awkward for a BitTorrent client. In addition, Xtorrent has a very intrusive shareware policy. If you do not register the application, a floating window that you cannot close gets stuck on your screen, and searches randomly start to fail. To make things even worse, it seems like the application throttles the available bandwidth to 10kbps after an hour of usage.

The second drawback is that Xtorrent’s core is made up of the libtransmission library. This library is known to hammer trackers, and is banned from an increasing number of them, which makes Xtorrent useless for members of Oink, for example.

If you decide to buy Xtorrent you’re mostly paying for the (stunningly) beautiful user-interface, not because its download speeds are the best or because it is the lightest BitTorrent client available for the Mac. Azureus still leads by a wide margin in download speeds, and Transmission is hands down the lightest BitTorrent client for the Mac.

Xtorrent looks good, it integrates well with iTunes, has iPod support and subscribes to RSS feeds. But to be completely honest, it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the money. Perhaps that’s just because I’m a Windows user. Paying for software just isn’t in my blood.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Once a torrent is downloaded, Ted will automatically launch it in your default BitTorrent client, in my case, Transmission. If your BitTorrent client has the option to delete the original torrent once it has been imported, the whole process can be made very clean, with no traces or files left behind.

The simplicity of Ted is reminiscent of LimeWire, the P2P application that made downloading mp3s easier than surfing the web. The only problem is that you need to have a BitTorrent client installed. I’m guessing that the Opera browser with its built-in BitTorrent functionality would do. Ubuntu users might have it the best, since the OS comes with a version of the mainline client pre-installed.

Ted is not yet perfect, and still needs some work. Something funny I noticed was that while setting it up, it asked me whether I wanted it to start minimised in the system tray. Mac OS X doesn’t have a system tray! It’s quite obvious that Ted was originally written for Windows.

Torrent Episode Downloader (Ted) is completely free and open source, and can be downloaded from the official site.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.