Despite the fact that Dexter and runner-up Game of Thrones have more downloads than television viewers in the US, the overall number of TV-show downloads is leveling off.

The percentage of TV-show downloaders, from the US in particular, has steadily declined in recent years. This is in part thanks to alternative viewing options such as Hulu and Netflix. In other regions, such as Australia and Europe, the demand for US TV-shows remains strong.

Outside the US fans sometimes have to wait endlessly before their favorite 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.

The above suggests that availability is one of the key solutions to decreased TV piracy, and this was confirmed earlier this year. When Fox decided to delay the airing of new episodes on Hulu in August, many former Hulu users turned to BitTorrent where the number of US downloads more than doubled.

In common with many branches of the entertainment industry, the challenge for TV companies is to come up with a business model that allows users to consume what they want at any given time, without losing revenue in the process. When that puzzle is solved worldwide the number of unauthorized downloads will be pretty much insignificant.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows (single episode) of 2011, together with the viewer average for TV in the US. The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2011

Having a free, legal and on-demand option to catch up with missed TV-shows suddenly made BitTorrent a less urgent need.

But in the years that followed Hulu and other TV-streaming sites didn’t turn out to be the holy grail for everyone. Although many consumers were delighted with the services, the TV bosses noticed that online ad revenue couldn’t compete with that of traditional TV.

This is one of the main reasons why Fox will stop broadcasting its shows on Hulu and Fox.com the day after they air on TV. Starting August 15, the public will have to wait at least 8 days before Fox content will be streamed online, a delay that may motivate many people to once again turn to BitTorrent.

When Hulu first launched, TorrentFreak researched whether it had any effect on the number of people from the U.S. who were downloading TV-shows. Our findings suggested that this could be indeed the case. Between October 2007 and October 2008 nearly all the shows we tracked saw a decrease in U.S. downloaders.

One of the most pronounced decreases came from the Fox show Prison Break, where the percentage of U.S. downloaders went down 36%. The decrease was the sharpest in the first week, where the number of U.S. downloads of a single episode dropped by tens of thousands.

Based on the above, it’s a safe guess to say that Fox’s decision to add a delay to the online broadcast will now cause a healthy bump in the number of U.S. downloads. But this is not a big surprise for Fox, it is a calculated business decision where piracy is merely seen as collateral damage.

Although some people may turn to BitTorrent, Fox hopes that there will also be more TV-viewers because of this new delay. And since TV-advertising is much more lucrative than online ads, they may end up making more money because of it, at least in the short run.

In the end, making money is much more important than pleasing consumers or decreasing piracy.

Source: Fox Will Boost U.S. TV-Show Piracy

In a torrent discussion at Demonoid.me, the largest semi private BitTorrent community, a commenter with the nickname “TANP1′ claims to have a special relationship with the show. Unlike the regular downloaders, he is actually involved in the production of Bob’s Burgers, or so he claims.

“Nice to hear that people liked the show, I’m an animator on it so it’s nice to hear something positive from all the negative I’ve been hearing about! I’m going to keep seeding to support my show,” TANP1 wrote a few hours after the torrent was published on Demonoid.

Of course, anyone can claim to be an animator of the show, but as we will point out later in this article this one turns out to be legit. This is where it gets interesting.

Other commenters on Demonoid seem to be genuinely surprised and honored that one of the animators approves of their actions, since makers of such big productions are generally negative towards ‘unauthorized’ downloads. In a follow up comment TANP1 adds some more insider insights to the ‘sharing’ crowd.

“There are 13 eps for the show coming out, they’ve been well received by the everyone at the studio so far so we’re hoping everything will turn out and it’ll gain more of an audience as it goes,” he says.

The commenter went on to further state that if you view to end credits his name is listed there.

With that last comment TANP1 did give away more than he might have wanted to do. It is of course great that someone from the production team of a popular show approves of torrenting, and we welcome such an open stance. But, at the same time we got very curious about the identity of the torrenting animator, if only to verify the legitimacy of his claims.

Since it’s hard to hide something on the internet nowadays, it only took a few Google searches to find out that the nickname and the birthday of the commenter are linked to an animator featured first in the credits list of the episode. So, the story seems to check out and we applaud TANP1 for making Bob’s Burgers available – in more ways than one.

Update: We’ve been in contact with the animator and agreed to alter some of the info mentioned in the above article to address his concerns.

Source: Bob’s Burgers Animator Helps Seeding The Show’s Torrent

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

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 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

While some producers, directors and actors actually believe that BitTorrent and other filesharing tools help to boost the fanbase of films and TV-shows, this group disagrees. Signed by a staggering 116 names including the likes of directors Sir Alan Parker, Mike Leigh and supported by several entertainment industry groups, the letter claims:

At a time when so many jobs are being lost in the wider economy, it is especially important that this issue be taken seriously by the Government and that it devotes the resources necessary to enforce the law.

Ignoring for a moment that notably they make no mention of job losses in their sector, one of the problems with their demands is that the law they seek to enforce is civil law, not criminal.

Beyond employing judges there is nothing more that the government can do to enforce it. That is the problem with copyright law, it’s hard to know what’s legitimate and what’s not, what can be copied and what can’t, without checking with the rights holders first. This was exemplified perfectly earlier this year, when the IFPI sent out takedown notices for Travis tracks, despite the actual copyright holders, Travis, having already given permission to distribute.

The bigger problem comes from their data, the 98 million illegal downloads and streams. While we know TV shows are popular, our own data shows that British TV rarely features in the top 10. Movie downloads are more fleeting, with a certain bias towards the newest films, with a few exceptions. Their figures are also questionable; while we count downloads, we can’t quantify them with a figure for the UK.

Yet, if their stats on downloads are of questionable accuracy, it’s nothing compared to the power they ascribe to the ‘almighty ISP’. They believe that ISPs have the power to stamp out file sharing, stopping people from downloading TV shows and movies; they just need a prod. In this belief they are sadly mistaken.

Again, recent news has shown how hard it is to control access to even one image in the UK, on a cut-and-dried subject like child pornography. Being able to determine if something is infringing copyright or not would require huge lists of content, and real-time examination of all Internet traffic. Not just deep packet inspection, but an all-invasive Big Brother monitoring system, beyond the dreams of even the most totalitarian dictator.

Of course, those that bother to check facts know that not only is such a thing illegal (criminally illegal, not just civil) but that the tools they’ll want to use just don’t work. The problem is highlighted by Michael Malone, CEO of ISP iiNet, currently under attack from various movie studios, “I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it.”

And, when just this year it was reported that UK commercial TV broadcasters “enjoyed a bumper April with the highest viewing figures in five years”, that total TV viewing was up 10% year-on-year, and “the valuable yet hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year-old demographic [i.e the typical file-sharer] watched 4.9% more commercial TV in April year-on-year and saw 12% more ads,” you have to wonder exactly what the problem is.

Source: UK TV/Film Stars Urge ISPs to Stop Piracy

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

The Internet has changed the way we interact with media, and there is a whole new generation that no longer accepts that TV-broadcasters can decide when they have to watch TV, and where. The major broadcasters are slowly realizing this, with the emphasis on slowly. One thing we know first hand, is that they are interested in the statistics on these pirated downloads, and with ShowInsider, they have another tool to find out what the most recent download trends are.

ShowInsider lists the most downloaded TV-episodes for every week, along with upward and downward trend lists. This weeks list, for example, shows that ‘Heroes’ is downloaded the most. ‘Gossip Girl’ is leading the upward trend chart, while ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ has dropped the most. In addition to the weekly lists, ShowInsider also offers an alphabetical list of all the episodes they index, including those not featured in the weekly charts.

Every TV-show has its own details page, where more information is available, including graphical representation of the health of the downloads and the fanbase of the show. The data ShowInsider reports is based on all downloads of a particular show, in contrast to TorrentFreak’s TV-show data, which is limited to the most recent episode of each show. A combination of both methods provides additional insight, and from now on we will report both our own and ShowInsider’s ranking.

ShowInsider is a project of Mark Thompson, who also runs AnalogX. Mark told us that (for now) his data comes from users of the open BitTorrent-based protocol, since that’s where most people download TV-shows from nowadays. For ShowInsider, he uses an immense database, which grows by 1 GB a day. “I’m a big believer in the ‘Law of Large Numbers’, meaning that the more samples you’re able to take of something, hopefully the less margin for error that you have,” Mark told us. “The trick with tracking P2P is that there is so much data out there, that if you don’t have a large sampling set it’s really easy to get data that’s skewed.”

The database used to compile the rankings on ShowInsider is not limited to TV-shows. In the future, Mark hopes to expand his BitTorrent trending into other areas, games or movies for example. “When I began the design and architecture of the backend of ShowInsider, I wanted something that would be able to scale and evolve to whatever type of content I was interested in,” Mark told us. “What I was interested in at the very beginning was TV shows – I always checked out the top 10 list from TorrentFreak and thought it was cool, but what I really wanted was a way to find out what other shows were popular that I might like.”

ShowInsider is a great and accurate resource to find out what the popular TV-shows are on BitTorrent, and how this evolves over time. It is a great addition to our own data, and provides some additional insight into the ever changing TV-torrent landscape. We are delighted to work with Mark, and hope others, including TV-broadcasters, will find the site useful as well.

Source: ShowInsider Ranks Pirated TV-Shows

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Since both shows are ‘released’ on Tuesday, BitTorrent sites see a significant traffic increase on that day.

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of September 1st, 2008…

Source: 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent (wk35)

The data is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads August 17 – August 24

Source: 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows on BitTorrent (wk34)

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 29 – July 06

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent (wk27)

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 22 – June 29

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent (wk26)

The data of the weekly download chart, collected by TorrentFreak, is gathered from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 15 – June 22

Source: Leaked TV Episodes Popular on BitTorrent

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 08 – June 15

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent (wk24)

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 01 – June 08

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent (wk23)

People are getting used to on-demand content. They simply want to watch their favorite shows whenever they want, wherever they want. To give some more insight into this growing phenomenon, and because Nielsen is not counting BitTorrent downloads, we decided to start a weekly report of the most downloaded TV shows on BitTorrent.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites. The timing is a bit unfortunate, since popular shows like Desperate Housewives, House and Greys Anatomy just had their season finale last week, but we are aiming to publish an updated list every week from now on.

Top Downloads May 25 – June 01

To give an impression of how many downloads these shows can get, here is the list of the most downloaded TV episodes in 2007. The number of downloads reported here is for Mininova only, so these could easily quadruple if all large BitTorrent sites were taken into account.

Top Downloads 2007

The increasing popularity of these series on BitTorrent and other filesharing networks is a signal that customers want something that they can’t get somewhere else. It is all about availability. This is not a threat to TV studios, but rather an opportunity.

Please note, correct ‘Digg’ link is here

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

CBC is not alone in this, European broadcasters, including the BBC, are currently working on a next generation BitTorrent client that will allow them to make their content available online. The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.

The popularity of movies and TV-shows on BitTorrent hasn’t gone unnoticed. We reported earlier that some TV-studios allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, and others leaking unaired pilots intentionally.

It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Approximately 50% of all BitTorrent downloads are TV-shows, and some episodes of popular shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over thousands of sites.

It is good to see that broadcasters slowly start to realize that they can benefit from sharing their content via BitTorrent. Last month Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made the popular TV-show “Nordkalotten 365″ available in a DRM-less format. This experiment turned out to be a huge success, while the distribution costs were close to zero.

Source: CBC To Release TV-Show via BitTorrent, For Free

This is why Tape It Off The Internet seemed like such a good idea until you actually started trying to use it. There are just not enough good shows being made to justify something as complicated and involved as TIOTI. Enter all your favorites and share them with strangers ‘just like you’ and discover… what? That there are only seven good shows in the world at any one time, you were already watching six of them, and they’re all in the Pirate Bay’s Top 100 anyway. When you strip away the hours of dross and advertising, the truth is that the world’s mighty entertainment infrastructure is only capable of producing half a dozen hours of passable content a week. Maybe it’s because they spend the rest of their time on lawsuits.

One of these rare hours is The Wire. If by some small chance you’re not mainlining it already, think yourself lucky. You have four back seasons to enjoy, of what is quite possibly the last great show television will produce before it’s entirely superseded by — well, by whatever is coming around the way.

I’m not sure anyone has ever attempted to make a show of this scope: The Wire’s by-all-accounts-not-very-nice creator David Simon (Homicide, The Corner) has said his theme over the series’ five years has been ‘the decline of the American empire’ — which means decay of its cities through poverty, of traditional jobs, of the education system, of the police force and of the media. For those getting restless at the back, the show’s also got the slickest, nastiest drug slingers you’ll see on screen and is so realistic that the Baltimore Police have apparently complained it reveals too much about how crimes are — or are not — solved; apparently real thugs love it as well.

Find it and download it — though probably David Simon doesn’t want you to and neither does HBO, which has been actively poisoning Torrents of its other shows. Tell everyone you know about it. Maybe those of them still rocking TVs will raise the show’s increasingly dismal viewing figures.

Or maybe that’s no longer the point. While I sympathise with the plight of the David Simons, David Milchs (Deadwood, John from Cincinnati) and Joss Whedons (Firefly) of this world, and would like to help them in future endeavors, I specifically do not sympathise with the plights of the craven, dim-witted, played-out producers that surround them on all sides. And by ‘playing fair’ and buying the DVD or the cable package, besides the fact that most of our money is not going to the creators and their families, aren’t we really saying we accept the meshwork of shit in order to get the two or three gems that occasionally sift through it? Aren’t we signalling the industry that there’s something we still find acceptable about their way of doing business?

Now I suppose this could seem a bit extreme to some. But again and again in blogs and comments about shows like The Wire you hear ‘I’d pay for this if…’ — if it wasn’t DRM’ed all to hell like HBO’s own online offering, if it was freely shareable, good to be watched whenever, wherever, on whatever, without constant interruption by adverts. The kicker is that we’re not only unable legally to liberate and re-distribute shows from the broken, corrupt mechanisms of television and DVD distribution: we also have no way of supporting creators like David Simon and crew outside of it.

This means that right now, people still stupid or unfortunate enough to sit in front of TVs watching months-old shows or paying massive cash-or-attention premiums for the new ones are heavily subsidising us P2Pers. This is genuinely immoral, because we’re really exploiting people less fortunate than ourselves. Instead, we should be helping them out of the wasteland, and thinking of new ways to get the creators we like creating outside the prison of mass distribution. It cannot be that we are able to figure out how to make GNU-Linux – a world-class operating system — together, but not to make a dozen decent shows a year.

The irony is that TV series really feel like they’re coming into their own, just as the media that spawned them is dying. From the ‘high art’ of Deadwood and John From Cincinnati to the epic modern-day myth of Lost to the (dare I call it) Beckettian dark comedy of Trailer Park Boys, the drawn out tales of our series (often consumed a ‘season’ at a time: I know at least three people waiting for The Wire to finish before downloading it) are an undeniable core of our emerging P2P culture.

We are the most passionate viewers ever, talking and writing profusely about the media we love, analysing, promoting, hosting free screenings… And they need us as much as we need them — all of these shows, without exception, enjoy their primary life on the networks, through our blogs, comments, reviews, remixes and fan fiction. Lost in particular has learned that incorporating online feedback can make a great (if utterly Shaggy Dog) story.

Can we find a way to get the shows we want made without buying the goddamn DVD? I remember this guy talking really sensibly a couple years ago about how Joss Whedon could get to make another season of Firefly, and we got this project back up his musings. Why didn’t Whedon try it? Because someone else owned his ideas? Perhaps it could have worked otherwise, and maybe it could work for the future. If you’ve got ideas, throw them in the comments box below. And if you have time in between catching up on The Wire, read this by the venerable guru of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly — I’m going to try to get him into the next installment of STEAL THIS FILM. See you around. I’ll be back in two weeks to pick up the pieces.

TorrentFreak welcomes Jamie King as our new bi-weekly columnist. Jamie is the Director of STEAL THIS FILM I & II and a member of the League of Noble Peers. He is currently working on a cinema release of STEAL THIS FILM and prototyping an experimental, post-P2P remuneration system for creators.

Source: Buying The DVD: Unhelpful And Unethical

In January TorrentFreak published the list of “most downloaded TV-shows“, where we showed that the most popular episode of “Heroes” was downloaded 2.5 million times on Mininova alone. Even more impressive -across all BitTorrent sites- more than a billion episodes are downloaded every year worldwide.

The graph below shows the percentage of .torrent files per category downloaded on Mininova over the last 2 years – over 40 percent are TV-shows. To support this, we analyzed a sample of 400,000 torrents earlier this year. That data indicated that approximately half of all the people using BitTorrent at any given point in time, were using it to download a TV-show.

The popularity of TV-torrents hasn’t gone unnoticed. In fact, there are reports of TV-studios that allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, by leaking unaired pilots intentionally. While the movie and music studios continue to fight their “war on piracy”, most of the TV-studios lay low.

On the contrary, Anne Sweeney -the president of the Disney-ABC television group- admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “Desperate Housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the money) for Disney to sell their shows online. “Coming ‘face to face’ with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of Desperate Housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.” Sweeney said at the time.

BitTorrent’s popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed by actors either. Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura in the popular show “Heroes”, made some pro-BitTorrent comments earlier this year. When he was in France to promote the series (before they aired), he was surprised to see how many people had already seen the show thanks to BitTorrent. Oka said that BitTorrent is a great promotion tool, but added “Hopefully, if they can buy the DVD after they watch it on BitTorrent, that would be great.”

One of the members of EZTV, the leading TV-torrent distribution group, told TorrentFreak in an earlier interview that he doesn’t think their work has a negative impact on the TV-industry either. “The only possible impacts can see are positive ones,” Boggibill said “it is free publicity, which may lead to higher ratings when people “discover” new shows and also larger numbers of DVD purchases – it is my understanding that many of the people that download TV shows from us are avid TV fans and will usually buy DVD boxsets of shows they like.”

A factor that plays a role in the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is that most people simply don’t see it as stealing. It is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels and it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free. It’s not a threat, but more an opportunity.

Source: 50% Of All BitTorrent Downloads are TV-Shows

The Sarah Connor Chonicles, Pushing Daisies, Californication, Reaper, and Chuck are new TV shows that are about to start on their first season. The leak of The Sarah Connor Chonicles, highly anticipated by fans of The Terminator, stands out because this show is scheduled to launch in 2008. All the other leaks will air within the next few months.

For Weeds, it’s the second time that episodes have leaked before being aired on TV. Last year, exactly the same thing happened and thousands of people downloaded and watched the first episodes before they aired on TV. TV studios already offer a number of pilot episodes on the iTunes Store for free. Would it be too big a leap to assume they do the same on BitTorrent?

Here’s a list of the TV shows that leaked to BitTorrent this week, including the ‘offline’ air date:

Source: Massive Leak of Pre-Air TV Shows: Piracy or Promotion?

Lilx.net seems to be inspired by this other popular TV-calendar. It does not (yet) list as many shows as the calendar at pogdesign, but the .torrent links are definitely a big plus.

The torrents indexed by the calendar are distributed by EZTV and VTV, two well known distribution groups.

Other useful BitTorrent resources:

How to make a custom TV-torrent feed

Subscribe to TV Shows with Torrent Episode Downloader

How to optimize your BitTorrent download speed

How to Organize your Torrents with uTorrent

Source: Calendar to Track TV Shows and TV Torrents

This does not mean that people watch less TV overall. In fact, the opposite might be true. A recent study CBS poll showed that P2P TV increases the overall time people spend watching TV. However, it is an indication that times are changing, and TV broadcasters will need to make more content available online.

Availability will automatically lead to more fans because nobody will ever miss an episode. Just look at the popularity of TV shows like LOST on BitTorrent. More fans could mean more TV watching, which will lead to more income if TV broadcasters find a good way to monetize their content.

Source: Online TV on the Rise

In an interview we did with Paul Pod, one of the founders of the project, he said that their goal is to create a “Napster moment” for TV downloads.

I don’t know if you remember downloading music before Napster came along, but it was an experience not dissimilar to the BitTorrent experience today. And remember when you tried out Napster for the first time? We’re aiming to create that Napster moment for TV downloads. Web 2.0 is neither here nor there – what matters is good architecture and fantastic design. For non-geeks, it’s all about the user experience – if it sucks they don’t come back.

Last May we were able to give you a sneak peek behind the screens. Over the past months a lot of work has been done to optimize and add features to the site. Some of the new (working) features that are worth mentioning are RSS feeds for your favorite shows, and integration with Amazon and the iTunes store.

iTunes integration

The episode view includes links to downloads from the iTunes store.

Amazon offers

The Show page includes links to DVD’s from the Amazon store.

Download screen & RSS feed for favorites

TIOTI offers RSS feeds for ever show, but also feeds for your favorite shows. This makes it easy to stay up-to-date.

There is no official release date for the public Beta yet, but it won’t take long now.

Source: A “Napster Moment” for TV Downloads

Younger Americans are driving growth in many digital video activities, including TV show downloading, according to the Ipsos study (via slyck).

Ten percent of young adults aged 18 to 34 (14% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 7% of 25- to 34-year-olds) have downloaded television programs from the Internet and seven percent have done so in the past month—nearly double the rate of television downloading overall.

But it seems like TV and Movie producers can’t live without these Pirates. A recent study has shown that most of these Pirates are in fact inspiring and creating new business models. In line with these findings, Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “desperate housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the money) for Disney to sell their shows online.

Over the past few months more and more TV-shows end up on the web: streamable, pirated, via Itunes, or even sponsored by burgerking. And there’s no sign that this will end in the near future.

There’s a lot of experimenting going on. TV-producers are trying to find a suitable business model, and some of them are actively discussing and exploring the power of BitTorrent. There are even rumors that existing torrent sites are working out deals with TV and Movie companies.

Marc Pesce already discussed why BitTorrent and TV are perfect partners more than a year ago, and we’re getting there. Eventually

Source: TV Downloading On The Rise

Warner Bros president Kevin Tsujihara thinks that his company can fight the increasing losses that piracy “caused”, by offering their customers the option to download movies and TV-shows legally.

“If we can convert 5, 10 or 15 percent of the illegal downloaders into consumers of our product, that is significant.”

The new service will start this summer.

Source: Warner Bros Will Distribute Movies And TV-Shows Via BitTorrent

A great example of a successful BitTorrent release is the movie Star Wreck. This indie movie was released via BitTorrent and became Finland’s most popular movie within just a couple of months, got aired on TV, and had two sold-out screenings at a Norwegian film festival.

The public is ready. Just take a look at popular TV shows like Lost, 24, and Prison Break. These shows are posted on the net immediately after they aired and some of them are downloaded more than 2milion times in a week. TV and Movie companies begin to realize that they’re losing money if they don’t get in now.

Fox and ABC already started to offer TV streams, but that’s clearly not the solution. People demand high quality content, whenever and wherever they want. Moreover, offering streams to millions of people costs a lot of money (bandwidth). The great advantage of BitTorrent and other p2p technologies is that it’s virtually free!.

But, back to the movies. At the Tribeca Film Festival Ashwin Navin of Biottorrent inc. said:

Distribution of film online is coming sooner than you think, and I think that the independent film community is going to lead the way in terms of creating a lot of value for consumers. Today alone some 700,000 peer-to-peer downloads took place over the Internet, many using software like BitTorrent.

Dean Garfield from the MPAA, BitTorrents partner in crime, was also at the festival and stated:

studios aren’t all walking around in the dark bumping heads. People are seriously sitting down trying to think of solutions.

So it wont be long before the first Blockbusters will “legally” debut on BitTorrent. However, movie theatres don’t have to worry according to filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. He probably made the most thoughtful comment:

I don’t think people will stop (going to movie theaters), because its still the primary date destination

Source: Distribution of film online is coming sooner than you think

* How to get BitTorrent working in Itunes

* I steal TV because I have to!

* Fenopy, the Ajax Torrent Search Engine

* Secret Cinema & Camera Obscura (private), for the cult and arthouse movie junks

* RIAA bandwidth leeching

* BitTorrent & TV at macworld

Source: BitTorrent & P2P Linkdump (15)

the entire concept of the show is for fans to share with all of their friends using any means they wanted, so DRM would be counterproductive.

This is not the first time CocaCola is involved in a free TV-show. They’re also sponsoring the comedy “marcus hates his job“, created by the makers of the popular “the scene” show.

Stageside

Source: Coca-Cola Promotes P2P-TV

* Interview with the man behind the BitTorrent Song

* A day in the life of a Tv-Torrent geek

* New Ipod Torrent Site

* Port Washington, another independent movie release on BitTorrent

* Click and view, article on BitTorrent and TV

* HBO not happy with TV-Torrents

* Teenager Indicted On Online Piracy Charges

Source: BitTorrent & P2P Linkdump (14)

Johan Pauwelse (tribler) and William Valkenburg (omroep.nl) shaking hands

Johan Pauwelse, one of Triblers developers said that IPTV should move away from the old fashioned way of distributing files and embrace BitTorrent. William Valkenburg manager of omroep.nl said that the “social” aspect of tribler was essential for the deal. Tribler allows people to maintain buddy lists, and recommend files to friends. Tribler also gives recommendation based on your personal downloading history.

The Dutch public seems to be ready for P2P TV. On the Dutch site uitzendinggemist.nl that currently lists streams of nearly all shows of the public broadcasting channels, 4 million tv-shows were requested in December, compared to 250.000 at the January 2005. The site lists 400.000 shows good for 15 terabyte.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow was also present at the workshop. He praised the Dutch Public Broadcasting Channel and the Tech People for discussing the legal opportunities of P2P technology. “He said: In the US half of the people would have left the room”.

thx R-win

Source: Dutch Public TV Channels are going to use BitTorrent

TV broadcasting companies are slowly recognizing the power of p2p distribution. Not only will their shows have the ability to attract more viewers, there are also numerous ways to implement advertising to pay for these investments. The only thing that they have to do is setting up a user friendly interface in which these files can be distributed.

It’s only a matter of time before these new technologies will be available to the general public. First we went from Napster to Itunes, the next step is from Tv-torrents to ..* . The great advantage that Tv-shows have compared to music is that it’s easier to add “commercials”. This means that broadcasting companies make money while the users can watch add supported shows. It’s not hard to imagine a little “social networking” twist similar to the proposed Tioti project. This would encourage both the user friendliness and the customer targeting opportunities. A win-win? Time will tell.

But things are in movement. A couple of months ago the BBC started experimenting with a media player based on BitTorrent. The BBC even developed a “open-source” video codec for the project. The interface of the media player is pretty intuitive and shouldn’t scare people too much (like BitTorrent does to some non-geeks).

And the public seems to be ready for P2P TV. On the Dutch site uitzendinggemist.nl that lists streams of all shows of the public broadcasting channels, 4 million tv-shows were requested in December, compared to 250.000 at the January 2005. This site is now looking into alternative (P2P) ways to distribute their content, because the streaming costs too much. Yet another great example of cost reduction by using P2P technologies.

But there is more, the DTV project already has a video based tagging community. Projects like TvMe, Pplive and Cybertelly are all experimenting with P2P TV. Allthough a german judge forbid the usage of Cybertelly a couple of months ago, there seems to be no way back for P2P TV.

It’s just a matter of time before things get together, and the big broadcasting companies will jump in. Hang in there.

Source: The future of P2P TV

The show can be downloaded in many different formats. Marcus hates his job is a perfect example of free TV sponsored by a commercial company, and it wont be the last.

Source: Another Free TV-Show