Someone asked me to explain the geekery I employ to download movies, TV series episodes, programs and music.

There are many P2P networks out there, e.g. Bittorrent, Edonkey2000, Overnet, FastTrack, Gnutella, etc., and many clients.

It seems there are really just too many to choose from. On the PC, I used Shareaza (for Edonkey/Overnet, Gnutella, Bittorrent and Gnutella2) and KazaLite (FastTrack). On the Mac, I use Overnet (Overnet/ED2K), Azureus (Bittorrent) and Xfactor (FastTrack, Gnutella and OpenFT).

I use Overnet and Azureus to d/l movies, series and full albums/discographies and Xfactor to download the one off files, like one song I fancy. More info on Bittorrent.

Some of the clients have search facilities, but I don’t really use them. I use search pages.

The Real World (for Overnet links)
SuprNova (for Bittorrent links)
LokiTorrent (for Bittorrent links)
TorrentReactor (for Bittorrent links)

Find the file you want, click on it (on the PC) and it should open up in the appropriate client, on the Mac, as far as I know, you have to copy the link and paste into the correct client.

Then just wait. It can take ages (days/weeks) to get a big or unpopular file, then again, it can be quick (< 1 hour) if the file is smaller or popular.

Once you have the file, you need to be able to play it and/or encode and burn to DVD/VCD.

There are many formats that the file may arrive in. Zip/Rar archives, ISO images, bin/cue pairs, dmg files, mpeg, avi, video_ts folders (containing DVD VOBs) etc. etc.

I'm still learning how to handle all of these on the Mac, but on the PC you would need:

Winzip and/or WinRAR
Nero Burning ROM
Windows Media Player
Codecs

Pretty much all avi/mpeg files will play in Media Player, if you have the right codec. First just attempt to play it, Media Player will attempt to find the right codec. If it can’t find it, use GSpot. This tells you the codecs (video and audio) you need. You can download codec packs, e.g. K-Lite and Nimo. Only install the codecs you need, and read about them, some are adware supported. Much more info here and here.

You can use Nero to burn mpeg, ISO images, bin/cue pairs and video_ts folders straight away, but you will need to encode avi files to author a DVD/VCD. Doom9 has tutorials on how to do each. I used HT AVI to DVD to convert to mpeg (the video on your DVDs is mpeg), then TMPGEnc DVD Author to create the video_ts folder. Conversion and authoring takes time and space, so it’s best left overnight. Once it’s done, simply drag the video_ts folder into a new DVD window in Nero and burn.

You need to make sure your DVD player supports the media you are burning to. i.e. make sure your DVD player can read it.

On the Mac, I’m using Roxio Toast, which seems to do everything I need so far. It has failed to convert some files, which I believe were encoded with Windows specific codecs. I haven’t yet found anything like Gspot for the Mac, and I haven’t downloaded any additional codecs apart from DivX. DivX Doctor is handy, and I think ffmpegX will be, but I haven’t used it yet. For playback, I use VLC, MPlayer and Windows Media Player (alas, for wmv files). One of them usually manages to play the file.

Other software (PC):

DVD Shrink — DVD backup software, enables you to re-author the DVD choosing just the parts you want.
DVD Decrypter — DVD ripper

Aaron, you’ll be able to solve these in no time.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - the best computer science book you’ll find. In my opinion, not that I understand it all. Here it is, free and online.