how to watch tv (on your pc) like a dvd

awhile back i talked about showing how i watch tv shows like a dvd. in the sense that you can pause, rewind, fast-forward and slow-mo what you're watching, sans commercials, and at your own convenience! and it's unlike DVR's such as Tivo, where you may still have to fast-forward through commercials. for those technologically handicapped, you can easily hook up your pc/laptop (from a couple of year's old) to your big screen tv's and enjoy it from the comfort of your lazy-boy. i'm not talking about live tv here, streamed via internet or using a tv tuner on your pc. i'm talking about watching pre-recorded tv shows on your pc (or your big-screen tv via your pc).


but what for you ask? well, aside from the conveniences listed above, if you're like most people, you don't use a VCR anymore and hate having to program them. on occasion, you hate missing the last and most important part of the show you recorded, because the timer was set incorrectly or the show before overran, etc. and if you're like me, you always find yourself unable to stay up for those prime-time shows on workdays. now, you don't have to miss any of your favorite shows again.

all it takes is downloading recorded versions of the shows (and this includes movies. too) and watching them in your windows media player or in my case i use VLC media player. sometimes i wait for some shows to finish its whole season, then i download the compilation of episodes once. then i can watch the whole season uninterrupted in one weekend. no more being kept in suspense for a whole week! :-)

now, most recorded 1-hour tv shows without commercials are around 350MB big, in SD (standard definition), and about 1GB size in HD (720p or high-definition, even more in 1080p). movies are typically 750MB in SD, and 2 - 4GB in HD. so as you can see, they can get to be very large files and would take an inordinate amount of time to download. thankfully some kid named Bram Cohen developed the bit torrent protocol of distributing very large files--very quickly (depending of course on your ISP's bandwidth speed). i'm not going to go into detail on how it works, but if you're interested, you click on the torrent link and read-up about it. frankly i think that the way tv shows would be distributed in the near future will be through this medium, direct from the producers to the public, cutting off the big networks as middlemen. the networks will be left with newscasts, live shows such as sports and concerts etc... as soon as they could work out a different economic paradigm for it. but i digress....

note: downloading copyrighted content without prior authorization maybe considered illegal in the country/state where you live. so be aware.

having said that, i have been watching widely available pre-recorded tv shows on the internet and have never had any problems. you see, it's very very difficult to monitor bit torrent downloads as opposed to limewire or napster of old. this is what i do--i watch it, i delete it, and i never distribute it for commercial purposes. it's up to you. please don't blame me if you decide to do so and someone comes knocking on your door with handcuffs.

first thing to do is get a bit-torrent client. it's an application that enables you to download very large files using the bit torrent protocol. here is a good video tutorial of how to do just that.


almost all of the movie files you will download will be in .AVI format. so you can play them using WMP for windows and Quicktime for Mac. i use VLC which has versions for both Windows/Mac. here you can watch a video tutorial of how to download/use VLC. sometimes the youtube video link will give an error when i click--but i just click on the HQ and it starts playing.


in some cases the movie file you download will be compressed or zipped (rar'ed) into many sub-files with a .ZIP or .RAR extension. in this case you would need to extract it using winzip or winrar for windows and stuffit for mac. the extracted file would usually be an .AVI file, which you can then play as above.

for tv shows i use EZTV to download my shows and most BBC documentaries, and briefly described in the first tutorial above. no registration required. but for complete shows, even those whole season compilations, nothing beats www.tvtorrents.com. but you need to register. and sometimes you will need an invite from a member in order to register.

finally, a word about downloading using torrents--seed whatever you download to a ratio of 1.00 at the very least. you can find out what it means in the bit torrent tutorial links above.

happy viewing!