The Torrent Episode Downloader
It seems like the concept of IPTV or Internet video or downloadable movies comes up almost weekly on the HDTV Podcast. We're excited about the idea that one day we'll be able to just queue a Netflix movie and have it download straight to some sort of STB or HTPC. Hopefully it will be at least DVD quality. But getting the movie selection of Netflix or Blockbuster, without having to wait for a DVD to arrive in the mail or having to visit a store, will be great. The next step is to actually subscribe to TV shows so that new episodes download automatically. Other than the live content problem, this totally solves the a lacarte Cable question. But all these discussions revolve around the word "someday."
Well someday might be closer than you'd think. We came across a program called '
ted' or the torrent episode downloader the other day. It's a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux and it gets pretty darn close to the promise of IPTV. We cannot condone or promote the pirating of copyright protected video content, so we'll talk about ted in terms of what it can do, and how that applies to the promise of what can be done, or what's to come in the future. Ted combinesBitTorrent and RSS technologies to allow you to register for a particular television show and download new episodes automatically. Other than theBitTorrent part, this is exactly what we've been talking about for years.
According to the website, the benefits of ted are:
- earlier than broadcasts in europe
- free
- no commercials
- easy to use
- predefined shows
- watch when you want
- saves time, no manual searching
- in your own language
The software comes with a huge list of shows already defined to make the subscription process simple. It even gives a summary of the show, so if you aren't familiar with it, you know enough to give it a shot, at least for a couple episodes. To use it, you just subscribe to a show and let it grab it from the Internet. It does require aBitTorrent client, like Azureus or Bitcomet to actually retrieve the shows, so it works more like a BitTorrent manager than an actual downloader . The drawbacks are that you're dealing with an online, peer to peer system, which has its limitations and reliability issues and you can't always guarantee the quality of a downloaded episode. But for the most part it works really well.
But enough about ted, try it at your own risk, making sure you don't break any copyright laws in the process. Let's talk a little about the concept behind it. You subscribe to a show, or a set of shows, and new episodes are automatically downloaded as soon as they're available. Now that is trulyIPTV . We'll admit that ted isn't really legit, but what's stopping someone from making a legit version? Of course there are a lot of economics and pocketbooks to consider in the distribution of TV content, but why not offer a freeRSS subscription to new episodes of The Office or 24? Maybe the free version is standard def, or ad supported, and there's a premium, paid feed in HD with no ads. The whole distribution model turns on its ear when people actually pay to watch a show, instead of being forced to suffer through commercials so they can see it "for free" (let's forget Cable or Satellite fees for the time being).
Most of the network TV solutions on the Internet are streaming solutions. You can't actually download the episodes to your hard drive. That's probably to prevent people from putting them up onBitTorrent, but would you really need BitTorrent if you could get high quality, reliable downloads for a reasonable price? It seems like the iTunes music store has killed the need for Napster, or at least proven that a lot of people are willing to pay for the content if given the option. Who knows what the future holds, but it looks like we're moving in the right direction.
