Bit By BitTorrent
Mostly I haven't regretted pulling the plug on the satellite dish three years ago. There are times, though, when it would be nice to veg out and watch some old Seinfeld reruns or a western. Video stores are not strategically located for convenience to Goose Creek (can you believe it!) So I thought I'd check out all this P2P stuff that is so much in the web-news. Surely somewhere out there are some very old reruns of the Sid Ceasar show I could pull into the hard drive if I left it running all night. And so I set about coming up to speed on BitTorrent.
I found a torrent client--Azureus--highly recommended for newbies and experts alike. I configured my router (DI-624) to 'forward' to the correct address range. I added the port to my exceptions list in my personal firewall. I fired up Azureus. NAT error. And, when that program is up, the net is down, and I can't even reach Azureus online help. I lose. (I think my modem is acting as a server, but don't know what to do about it. A little knowledge is dangerous.) I give up.
But I can pretty well tell you, in the wee hours, I'll sit up in bed with an idea to try tomorrow, give it one more try. Dang, I hate to be skunked, even if I probably never would have had either the patience, the determination or the cahunas to download anything of questionable legality. I suppose we'll be watching the same MASH videos again this winter for the fifteenth time. Darn.
UPDATE/Saturday, early: Okay, I like the suggestion to make the transition from VCR to DVD player. I'll start doing my homework and do some online shopping soon, and probably 'give' us a DVD player for Christmas. But if anyone has suggestions on do's and don'ts in this purchase, I'm a rank newbie. Gimme some guidance, y'all.
Comments
why not buy yourself a dvd player and get people to send you dvd's through the mail? they're cheap to send and you could drop hints for Christmas? or even check out on-line sales. then you won't even have to leave your door if they deliver direct and not to your local post office.
Posted by: circumsolar | November 26, 2005 6:34 AM
I second circumsolar's suggestion. Seinfeld and other classic shows are out now with complete seasons on DVD.
Posted by: Lou | November 26, 2005 6:57 AM
I don't recall you ever talking about how you get your mail. Circumsolar mentioned getting DVDs via US Mail and I agree with them.
Netflix has an offer of one DVD at home at a time for $9.95. Depending on how your mail comes, that could work out well for you. My local video store charges $4.25 to rent one DVD. Renting two or three DVDs from them one week costs as much or more than Netflix charges for a month. Home delivered US Mail service is so efficient that NEXT DAY delivery is normal.
Get a movie, watch it the evening of the same day and get it in the mailbox for pick-up the following day. It will be back at Netflix the next day and even if they ship the next DVD on your list the following day, you should complete a cycle every five days. That means you would get approximately six movies for $9.95. That's a bargain and there's no running to and from the video store.
Posted by: Clarence | November 26, 2005 7:09 AM
We have Dish Network and opted for their HDTV DVR set-top box and enjoy it. We watch a handful of shows each week and value the DVR's ability to record them for us to watch at our leisure. Plus, with the shows on DVR we can fast forward through commercials, shaving 10 minutes off a half hour and 20 minutes off of an hour long television program.
For movies and rare shows that have been published on DVD I'd recommend Netflix (http://www.netflix.com). We have used Netflix for years - they have an impressive collection of older series on DVD along with nearly all movies, documentaries and so on. You can add as many DVDs to your online queue and they will be shipped to you in your desired order. There are no late fees; after you've gotten around to watching a DVD you insert it into the enveloped provided and mail it back. As soon as they receive it they will send you the next DVD in your queue.
Don't bother so much with Bittorrent specifically; it's most useful for popular files like new releases of software or just published movies. It works via lots of people sharing the same files and helps spread the workload of distributing files. Hence the word "torrent". I highly recommend Shareaza (http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/). It's an open source P2P application that runs on Windows boxes. Really nice application; easy to use and requires a bit less patience than Bittorrent. Depending on the time of day you can find lots of material via Shareaza. Just be careful ;) Most people using p2p servers are young high school to college age males and their unspoken predilection for porn will tarnish your movie search results, haha. Seriously, I credit p2p apps like Shareaza for expanding my appreciation for many more forms of music. If I like something I download I can usually buy it if it is still being published. Be careful though; a love for music and media requires ample hard drive space. My music collection is bursting at the seams with +/- 16,000 tracks and about 60 gigabytes!
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | November 26, 2005 7:15 AM
DVD players are commodities, spend $120 on a name brand model from Crutchfield.com and don't stress over it.
We are on the 4 movies per month for $12 plan from Netflix. Netflix is much more convienent than the video store, and since they have a distribution center in Richmond, we get next day delivery most of the time.
Posted by: COD | November 26, 2005 9:18 AM
We discussed this this morning, and are giving US a DVD player for Xmas. And I think NetFlix is a great idea, at least over winter and if there are not yearly agreements required, etc. Will be checking around for all this over the next couple weeks! Thanks for ideas and encouragement!
Posted by: fred1st | November 26, 2005 9:26 AM
I'd get one that also had the capability of allowing you to record your old vcr tapes to DVD on too. Not just play them. That way you can save your old family tapes.
Posted by: Kim | November 26, 2005 1:47 PM
Ditto on the Netflix suggestion. And Fred, you don't have to rewind DVDs ;-)
Posted by: Marie | November 26, 2005 6:55 PM