BritVics/Television
From Australia
Contents |
[edit] Australian Television
TODO
[edit] Terrestrial Channels
TODO
[edit] FoxTel
TODO
[edit] Your UK TV in Australia
TODO
If you didnt know already , you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that 99% of DVD players are region free, I dont think anyone is quite sure why this is kept such a secret but I'm sure its something to do with branding in various countries and deals between film makers etc
Anyway heres a link to show you how to make your DVD region free so you can play DVD's from all over the world
[1]DVD hacks
PLEASE NOTE. THIS IS A FREE SERVICE, DONT BE DUPED INTO THINKING THAT YOU NEED TO PAY TO GET YOUR MACHINE MADE REGION FREE BY SOME OF THE COMPANIES YOU SEE ADVERTISING ON THE WEB
[edit] BitTorrent
Downloading TV shows from BitTorrent
[edit] Usenet
Overview
Usenet is essentially a large scale discussion forum. It predates the world wide web by roughly 10 years. Discussions are split into different Newsgroups. There are roughly 30,000 different groups.
It is possible to include binary files in posts to newsgroups. A binary file is defined as something other than text. It is this ability that enables the distribution of media files on Usenet.
Usenet news servers continually update each other with their content, distributing the content around the internet. ISP's generally include news server functionality as a part of their service.
Accessing content on Usenet
1. News servers
ISP's generally host their own news servers. For example iinet have one at freenews.iinet.net.au. To access the content on it set up a newsreader with the details provided by your ISP. Many email programs (such as Outlook Express) double as newsreaders, however freeware and software is also available. For example Forte Free Agent (free),News Shark (paid) or UseNext (paid).
The interface looks very much like an email inbox. With new posts being listed in posting order.
Large files (for example a TV show) will be split into multiple parts, one post per part. This is because there is a size limit on file posting. In order to obtain the complete media file a user is required to first obtain all the parts that make up the file by downloading each message. Each part will be in an individual rar file. Using unarchiving software such as winrar or izarc these files are extracted and combined into the original and complete media file.
In summary: Connect to the news server. Download all parts of the file. Unzip all parts back into the original file.
The limitations of using Usenet in this way are that locating all parts of the file can be difficult; they may be mixed in with multiple other posts in high volume news groups, could be posted over a number of days or may be missing. In addition Newsgroup content is only available for a short duration before it is removed from the server.
2. Paying a Usenet hosting service.
There are a variety of different providers on the internet. In general they have the following advantages over free access:
a) They host content for longer because they have their own copy of every Usenet binary file. This means that media files will be available for anything up to 100 days after posting.
b) They check that a post is complete and in some cases unzip the file for you on their own servers.
c) You can queue files for downloading. For example you can add multiple episodes of a TV show to a queue and download the entire queue in one zip file.
One example of this service is http://www.easynews.com
In summary: Sign up to the service. Search for the files. Add them to the queue. Download them.
Finding out what is available
In general if a file is available on torrents it is available on Usenet. If you are using a paid Usenet service then a search function will be available however searches are usually per newsgroup. In order to search all newsgroups then a free service such as binsearch can be used: http://www.binsearch.info/
Speeding up your downloads
The primary advantage a Usenet service has over torrents is speed. Torrents download slowly over a number of days and rely on peer availabilty. Usenet services provide a unique URL for your file and therefore it can be downloaded directly. To maximise the speed of this download an application such a Getright, or Reget could be used. These applications open multiple threads to the same file, combining them as it is downloaded. As a rough guide a 30 minute TV show can be downloaded in 12 minutes.
List of Usenet groups for media files
The primary usenet groups for UK specific TV shows are:
alt.binaries.tv
alt.binaries.drwho
alt.binaries.british.drama
alt.binarues.multimedia.comedy
alt.binaries.multimedia.british.comedy
