thebottle Blog

I don’t have cable television, but I’m still able to watch TV shows and movies from the comfort of my couch by using uTorrent or SopCast or TVAnts to get the shows, and MFXStream along with Xbox Media Center to stream the videos over to my television.

uTorrent is a lightweight torrent client that is full of features. It is the main application that I use to download movies and TV shows. I used to use Miro to download TV shows, but after taking the time to setup uTorrent properly I found that uTorrent was much faster and used very little system resources in comparison

Configuring uTorrent Settings

The first thing that you will want to do in uTorrent is configure your connection settings. The easiest way to do this is by going to the Options > Speed Guide menu. When the Speed Guide form opens you can test your speed and then choose the connection type that is closest to your test result. After this has been completed you will want to test if the port is forwarded properly.

If your port does not forward properly then you will want to find the directions to forward it at PortForward.com. First find your router from the list and then on the next page find the application that you wish to forward (uTorrent).

Automatically Download TV Shows

Now that uTorrent is configured to download at optimum speeds you can start setting it up to download TV shows. Click on the orange RSS Downloader icon and when the form appears click the Add button under the Feeds tab and add this feed, http://tvrss.net/feed/eztv/

Next go to the Releases tab and click the Update Now button and you should see a list of shows that have come out in the past 2-3 days. You may download any of them by right-clicking and choosing Open, but if you want them to download automatically you will want to move over to the Favorites tab.

Under the Favorites tab click on the Add button and then type the name of the show that you want to download.

Notice that you don’t have to type the exact name of the show, but rather something that will remind you of what show you are trying to filter out and download. In the above example I used BeautyGeek for the show “Beauty and the Geek.” Now in the Filter textbox you will want to enter the title of the show. Notice that wildcards are accepted so it is a good idea to put question marks instead of spaces and an asterisk on the end in case there are different naming schemes. Next choose a location to download the files, select the tvrss.net feed, and set the quality to ALL. If you are an organization nazi you can follow the guide at TorrentFreak.com to implement labels to keep your downloads organized. Now whenever this show appears in the list it should automatically start downloading to the folder that you specified.

Note that if you later find that your filter is too ambiguous and it is downloading extra shows that you do not want then you can use the Not textbox. In the case of my “Lost” filter I was also starting to get shows titled “Lost Worlds.” I used the Not textbox in the Lost filter to specify that I didn’t want to download files containing the word “Worlds” in it by typing in *Worlds*.

Live TV Shows

One downside is that live TV shows rarely get recorded and uploaded. In order to watch live shows you need a player like SopCast or TVAnts to receive the streams and a website like MyP2P to find them. The quality isn’t the best, but the selection of sports games is great. You can watch almost every game that is playing on television.

Configure SopCast for XMBC

If you want to send your SopCast stream over to Xbox Media Center (XBMC) just open notepad and enter http://192.168.0.196:8902/ where 192.168.0.196 is your local IP address, then save the file with a .strm file extension and place it somewhere that XBMC will see it. Open the .strm file through XBMC and you will be able to watch your SopCast stream on your television.

Configure TVAnts for XBMC

If you want to send your TVAnts stream over to Xbox Media Center (XBMC) just open notepad and enter mms://192.168.0.196:16900/1 where 192.168.0.196 is your local IP address, then save the file with a .strm file extension and place it somewhere that XBMC will see it. Now go into Tools > Settings in TVAnts and check the box Enable access from other computers. Open the .strm file through XBMC and you will be able to watch your TVAnts stream on your television. NOTE: In mms://192.168.0.196:16900/1 the bold number 1 represents the channel number. If you have multiple streams running at the same time then you will need multiple .strm files for each channel. You can see what channel the stream is on by right-clicking on the show and choosing Properties.

Why download TV Shows?

You don’t have to pay for cable television, you don’t have to watch commercials because they are cut out, and you can watch the shows whenever you feel like it. The shows are generally of higher quality as well. The downside is that you have to wait for the shows to get released before you can download them, but it rarely takes longer than 24 hours. Most popular shows get released a few hours after they air.