2003-05-22 08:14 ☼ post
I first heard about [Bit Torrent a few months back, but I wasn’t really aware of the various tracker sites that are out there so I didn’t end up trying the software out at the time. Plus it looked like the MacOS X version wasn’t up to speed (so to speak) since its version number lagged behind the main release. It definitely looked like a pretty cool filesharing technology though.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a link to the infamous Star Wars home movie with the chunky kid doing his best Darth Maul impression and I got to try out Bit Torrent first hand. Since I’d already downloaded the client I decided to go ahead and try downloading a much bigger file and gave a Knoppix iso image a try. The download rate started slow, but continued accelerating and finished at an impressive rate somewhere around a 200-300K/s. The download accomplished, I once again put Bit Torrent aside and went back to my usual computing habits.
Then at the beginning of this week Aaron Swartz introduced me to TVTorrents.com in his Joss Quest. Now I suddenly have the means to quell my late burgeoning 24 addiction (I finally convinced Mary to let me watch a couple months ago; she always wanted to change the channel when 24 came on prior to that). Mary missed the season finale because of a dinner she had to go to, but thanks to Bit Stream and TV Torrents I was able to download a high quality mpeg overnight and burn a vcd for her to watch on our cheapo Apex DVD player that plays a wide variety of cdr formats.
Of course now that this year’s 24 season is over I’m working on catching up on all the episodes that I’ve missed. With the cliffhanger that we got Tuesday I can hardly wait for next season. I’ll definitely be supporting 24 by watching it live (with the commercials that support the show) whenever possible next season and I’m seriously considering buying the first season on DVD. The fact that I can easily access the earlier episodes only fuels my desire to watch more.