RSS + BitTorrent: a BroadCatching How-To

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RSS + BitTorrent: a BroadCatching How-To

Engadget ran a great how-to on how exactly you can download tv shows automatically. It's a bit tricky, since the software uses regular expressions, but they provide a bunch of examples to make that easier.

I've often heard this can replace a PVR completely, but if anyone's ever looked around for missed shows online, you can probably agree the quality usually isn't too high and you'll likely have trouble finding what you need unless it's somewhat popular. Still, it's an interesting direction and a few years from now the home recording fans of TV may just fill out the remainder of the TV lineup (and in HDTV no less). I know the networks and movie studios are freaking out over this, so it'll be interesting to see what they do in response to kill this technology.

by Matt Haughey November 24, 2004 in How-To

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This is cool, but the real question is how to get them on your TiVo in Now Playing.

Posted by: Tenaya at Nov 24, 2004 9:02:20 AM

I've been doing something like this for the occasional show on my computer, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Spur of the moment, I'd agree you can't always find the show that you want, but if you get into the habit of always downloading "CSI:Miami" you can be pretty sure it'll be there week after week.

As for the quality, it's been my experience that when a show is labeled HDTV, it's HDTV.

I could play these shows on my TV if I wanted to pretty easily.

TiVo/Replay still does the organization and management of show recording/playback 100x better/easier than this method, but I can see that changing rapidly.

Posted by: Bill G at Nov 24, 2004 9:27:02 AM

I've played around with this, and it is pretty cool, especially because I can get HDTV episodes.

I think that instead of the studios freaking out about this, they should do what you suggested with the Olympics: provide high quality downloads of all their shows a few days after they air. A lot of people I know only watch a few shows, and they'd certainly cancel their cable if they could download their favorites. The studios would win out because their shows would reach wider audiences (and avoid having to compete with show schedules -- Lost vs. Smallville, Joey vs. OC, for example), and they could make sure that the ads stay in the files.

Also, they should let you actually download the videos, not stream them. If people want to watch a show over and over, or burn it and share it with friends, you should *encourage* them to, not try to stop it.

Posted by: David Ely at Nov 24, 2004 10:32:48 AM

I'm surprised you've found that the quality "isn't too high." The HDTV programs I've gotten from BitTorrent have been gorgeous and clear and look fantastic on my TV. Admittedly, my TV isn't enormous, but anytime I've had people over to watch something they've been amazed that it isn't a DVD we're watching.

Plus it's really nice that whatever codec people seem to be using is resulting in files that are just under 350mb an hour; perfect for burning onto CD for storage.

I agree that until more obscure fare is more readily available, this won't really be DVR competition. But it's definitely getting there.

Posted by: brian w at Nov 24, 2004 11:03:59 AM

This actually works out quite well if one only wants to watch a couple of shows. Of course the reason the studios are concerned is that the commercials are all edited out. So what we really need is iTV with $0.99 episodes.

Cable pricing is outrageous these days. Comcast in my area charges $14 for basic (free over-the-air networks) and then $40-$100 / mo. for various souped up versions. As I regularly watch a whopping 5 shows a week - and only the new episodes - it just isn't worth it to me. But I'd happily pay a buck to get each new show and 3-4 bucks for movies. Some months that all might even exceed that $40 mark...

Imagine what this would do to the quality of programming. Suddenly the studios would have a market for quality programming aimed at niche audiences.

Posted by: Paul S at Nov 24, 2004 11:04:05 AM

First of all since what im going to say is brief, Every should have bitorrent and go to suprnova.com you can find anything there and it is free. NOOWWWWW,I have a modded xbox, i have Linux and XP(i paid for it) on my home pc, i have downloaded 40 Gigs of MP3 i have download several movies, i download many simpsons shows. Now i Buy atleast 4 CDs a month, Atleast 2 xbox games(HALO2 praise god) i buy 1-2 movies that i like and i watch the simpsons every chance i get and i own every complete season box set.

I believe that with Cable and TV the modern world would fall apart. And i dont believe they show give away anything, LIKE OMG U'ALL DO NO THEY NEED TO TURN A PROFIT TO MAKE THE STUFF WE LOKVE TO SEE!! I buy stuff i like and i steal(download) stuff i dont. I believe bitorrent will noy take the path of napster and kazaa THIS will be the way things are send accross the web. 1/3 of all web traffic is BITTORRENT!!

i believe there should not be more laws to pervent trading but it should be once choose what they steal and what that they support and help inprove the industy

---lucas
pappyinww2 A t ~ hotmail do~t com

Posted by: Lucas at Nov 25, 2004 7:06:42 PM

It be cool to see a linux package come out soon that would integrate people's tivo recordings with broadcatching.

With blogging making publishing torrents much easier, and RSS for spreading the torrents much easier, imagine the tivo saving shows out as mpeg or avi, then creating a torrent, publishing ti to a blog, and then sharing it over RSS. Hell the tivo could run bittorrent and do the all the seeding.

With those things working together it would be no time till all the tv shows were encoded, a torrent made, and then seeded to whoever was subscribed to the rss feed. Talk about getting the shows quickly after they aired (or even before they aired due to time zone differences).

Posted by: Void at Nov 27, 2004 1:11:47 PM

One problem with it is that you have to be very specific with the regular expression and even then you get loads of the same, for example I just downloaded the latest West Wing 4 times :)

Posted by: Keni at Nov 28, 2004 2:23:07 AM

In my experience, network shows seem to have very good coverage on TVTorrents, and with very fast turnaround and good naming conventions. I had the HDTV version of Desparate Housewives sitting on my drive this morning using the RSS instructions, so that works just fine IMO.

Of course, I still use Tivo for most things, but the torrents are great if I miss things due to stupidity, or for shows that have a perennial conflict (since I don't have a dual tuner). For instance, I plan on getting House this way since it's up against Amazing Race.

It's also very good for UK shows, where you can get the latest episode today, which won't be broadcast here for 6 months to a year, and even worse might be cut to add commercials. They did that with Spooks on A&E last year.

Now I just have to figure out how to watch them on my TV.

Posted by: Scott at Nov 29, 2004 8:36:26 AM

To clarify fow Brian W: those HDTV grabs are almost certainly digital MPEG captures off the raw DTV or satellite stream.

That is, they're the *original* VBR encoding of the studio master tapes, transmitted digitally.

*That* is why they look so clean

Alas, the reason the networks won't ever formally torrent the stuff themselves the way we'd like is because they have contractual obligations to their affiliates *not* to.

That will change, slowly, I think, but it will likely take 5 years or more.

As long as they don't go all RIAA on us, though, we'll float happily below the radar...

Posted by: Baylink at Nov 30, 2004 5:23:14 PM

when When WHEN will the music/tv/movie industry let go of their 100% commitment to solid/linear media and start selling their stuff online? What the hell are they waiting for? All the necessary technology is here, right now, and it's being used by millions of people, right now.

It couldn't be so hard to come up with some sort of pay-per-episode system based on bittorrent and RSS technology. And I'd be happy to pay a dollar or two to get the latest simpsons episode downloaded to my system on a regular basis, in a decent quality and free of ads...

Posted by: Johan at Dec 1, 2004 2:08:23 AM

the movie studios are freaking out about this because i got caught by mgm for downloading couple of shows and since stopped using bit torrent. so i went and bought a ati all in wonder and use that as a dvr. rather record it on my pc then get a lawsuit against me.

Posted by: derek at Dec 2, 2004 11:37:03 PM

SwarmTv Project is currently working on a broadcatching application in C++
http://swarmtv.nl/
The will also be provisions for payments and authentication of feeds and downloads.

Posted by: Anne Jan at Nov 7, 2005 1:09:23 PM

RSS + BitTorrent: a BroadCatching How-To

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