The Ultimate TiVo-ing Experience! - Instructions
So, in my previous post, I linked to the article I read on boingboing.net about how to get this working. I was so excited to finally find instructions to make this holy grail of RSS combined with bittorrent a reality! Unfortunately, the site that boingboing linked to had exceeded their bandwidth limit, and was unavailable. It is currently still unavailable, but in case it comes back, here’s the direct link.
Google to the Rescue
Of course, my first thought was that if this page was indeed that popular, Google had probably cached a copy of it, and indeed they had. The instructions found there are mostly correct, but one crucial link to the RSS plugin is incorrect (pointing to a similar plugin, but not the one the instructions were written for), which caused a bit of difficulty until I was able to sort it out.
So here is a repost of what was posted at pealco.net, with the incorrect plugin link fixed. I hope it works as well for you as it is for me - and, of course, your mileage may vary.
In this post you will learn how you can never miss an episode of your favorite shows ever again. This will be accomplished through the magic of BitTorrent and RSS.
I’m bad at watching TV. I always miss my favorite shows like The West Wing and Enterprise. I can never remember when they’re on and when I do, they’re already three-quarters through. My solution thus far has been to go to Suprnova and download the torrent. This, of course, requires that I remember that to do that, and then I have to wait three hours. Wouldn’t it be better if the morning after the show aired a high quality copy of the show sat sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to watch it? The answer is yes, yes it would.
There are many solutions to this problem, but this is how I do it. Basically what’s happening is that the BT client checks an RSS feed for torrents that match certain criteria. When it detects those criteria, it begins to download the torrent. The result is something like TiVo, but free.
The how-to:
1. You will need to use Azureus. It’s a pretty good BT client and I’d recommend using it anyway. It is a Java application and works on most platforms.
2. You will also need the RSS Import plugin for Azureus. Installing it is a matter of dragging the unzipped folder into the plugins folder in your Azureus directory and restarting Azureus.
3. In Azureus, go into the preferences and expand the plugins tab. Choose RSS Importer.
4. Check the Activate RSS Importer Plugin box.
5. Enterhttp://www.tvtorrents.net/rss.phpas the RSS Channel to import.
6. In the next text box, Filter …, enter a regular expression that matches the name of torrent of the the show you want to download. A quick guide to the kinds of regular expressions that are expected here is provided on the RSS Import page. For The West Wing, for example, I put inwest.wing.*hdtv— which means download any file that include the letterswest, followed by any single character, followed by the letterswing, followed by number of characters, followed by the lettershdtv, to make sure I get the HDTV version and not the VCD version. For multiple shows, separate them with a semi-colon, sowest.wing.*hdtv;enterprise.*hdtvwould download The West Wing and Enterprise.
7. Under Recheck channels… I would recommend putting in 60, so as not to bombard the TV Torrents server with more requests than necessary.
8. And you’re set. Don’t worry about the other options. Now you just have to wait for the next episode to air. You should have it in your downloads folder the next day.And now you never have to worry about re-runs again.
Thanks, Pealco. Now I can use the great features of Snapstream - pausing and rewinding live TV, on-screen program guide, ability to record or play anything spontaneously, but my favourite progams come in perfectly optimized for how I want to watch them. This is to TV what podcasting is to radio.
The Ultimate TiVo-ing Experience!
After my previous post rant about SnapStream, you might think that this post would be about a new, different Personal Video Recorder package. In fact, I’m still using SnapStream’s older and more reliable Beyond TV 3.4. But now on some serious steroids.
You see, I read about someone that had finally figured out how to subscribe to RSS feeds of bittorrents of the latest TV shows and download them automatically. If that was gibberish to you, please, stay with me.
I’ll back up:
What I’ve been able to successfully do is to install some software on my PVR computer (the computer running Beyond TV that sits in my living room and is connected to my TV) that watches for new files of my favourite shows that become available to download from the Internet, automatically downloads them, and puts them into a folder where they show up automatically in my PVR software. It’s like Podcasting for TV shows.
These shows arrive in much higher quality than what I can record from my regular cable subscription, in much smaller files as they’ve already been very well compressed - up to 90% smaller - so I can store many more shows without worrying about running out of space, with the commercials already removed, and these files arrive within hours of the original airing of the episodes.
With the commercials already removed. I know - that caught your attention, right?
You see, although nobody wants to freely admit it, the ability to conveniently skip commercials is probably as important a reason for using a PVR as the ability to “timeshift”, or watch shows on your own schedule. We’ve been able to timeshift since the day that VCRs became common, and skip commercials too, but PVRs make both of those things so much easier.
Some may argue that we should not download shows from the internet, but I disagree, in the same way that I feel that it is okay to download music. If I already own a CD, and I *could* create an MP3 of my favourite song off of that CD, why not just download it? I already own it. Well, I believe that logic also holds true in this case. If I was already going to record the show, and I was planning on skipping the commercials (I haven’t watched a commercial in almost a year), why not download the show instead?
If you’re interested in how I did this, stay tuned for my next post.
SnapStream Dropped the Ball - My Homemade TiVo Experience
I’ve been using SnapStream’s Beyond TV PVR (Personal Video Recorder - think “TiVo”) software for close to a year now. I tried it back when it was in version 2, and at the time it just wasn’t ready. At the time I wasn’t too broken up about it, because I didn’t really have a spare computer to dedicate to full-time use as a PVR. When I bought my laptop last year (thanks honey!) that changed.
Beyond TV 3.4 is light-years beyond where the product was in it’s 2.x incarnation. It’s so good, that using our TV without the PVR functionality - being able to skip commercials, pause live TV, etc. - just feels wrong now. So, I was very excited when SnapStream announced Beyond TV 3.5, a significant update to the product I had grown to love.
What a huge disappointment. Performance sucks in 3.5, and reliability is even worse. We gave it a fair shot - two full weeks of struggling and cursing the living room computer. And finally, late on a Friday evening, I decided to investigate SnapStream’s forums to see if there was a fix, something I had missed, that would bring 3.5 alive in the way that SnapStream had promised.
What I discovered there were many, many more frustrated people, just like me. And the only recommendation that seemed to have any consensus was to back-rev to version 3.4. I couldn’t believe it. SnapStream has released a product “update” that is so bad, their own customers are recommending to each other and their friends that they stay on the old version. Indefinitely. Meanwhile, I continue to get marketing email from SnapStream imploring me to upgrade to version 3.5. When I reinstalled 3.4, I lost all of my settings - all of my recorded show settings, all of my performance tweaks, everything - and my PVR setup hasn’t been the same. It won’t reliably recompress shows anymore, which is one of the best features BeyondTV has going for it.
Needless to say, I’m disappointed. SnapStream offered some new features in the new version that are very tantalizing - smarter recording so that if there are two shows on that you would like to record, the system looks to see if it could record one of the shows at a different time, for example. That’s not in 3.4. But to get that feature, and others like it, you have to install the buggy, slow new version. It’s not worth it.
SnapStream, you have lost my trust.
So, while I can still recommend Beyond TV 3.4 as a solid software platform to build a do-it-yourself PVR on, I can’t say the same about version 3.5. And since 3.4 is getting long in the tooth, and there are features that PVR users have come to expect that it doesn’t have, I think it’s time to start checking out the competition, like MythTV, HTPC, SageTV, and Windows Media Center 2005, which apparently will soon be available to hobbyists like me as a standalone software product.
Sorry SnapStream, you had a great thing going, but you’ve blown it in a big way. The only way I’ll be convinced to come back is if you can offer a reasonable upgrade to your 3.4 version that performs similarly, and as reliably as 3.4 does. And, judging from your forums, there are lots of people that feel the way I do.
Time to get to work.
Podcasting - Traditional Radio Broadcasting’s Worst Nightmare
[Updated October 6, 2004 - see update at bottom]
A period of intense change is going on right now, and a fight is brewing. The fight is between traditional broadcasters of television and radio content, and their consumers who want more control over how they consume that content.
You might say right now that there are two kinds of people: those that have used a TiVo or similar Personal Video Recorder to watch their television content, and those that haven’t. For those that haven’t heard of them, think of a PVR as a VCR on steroids. You can record all of your favourite shows very conveniently, without ever having to change or rewind a tape, and you can fast forward past commercials or change shows at the click of a button. You can rewind or pause live TV - something that becomes second nature and then a necessity very quickly. Basically, you can watch what you want to watch when and how you want to watch it, not when and how the network wants you to watch it.
There are many, many solutions already available for PVRs for television, and the courts are full of battles about them, as you can well imagine. But what appeared to have been overlooked until now was the “other” broadcast medium, over-the-air radio. Video may have killed the radio star in the livingroom, but the radio star just packed his stuff up and moved to the car.
That’s the thing - you can’t watch TV when you’re driving. But look at our highways packed with commuters. How do they occupy their brain “cycles” while stuck in traffic? Radio.
But traditional over-the-air radio is broken in many ways even more than television is. An average listener does not have particularly good odds at finding something relevant to them on the dial, due to the limited number of viable radio frequencies. Satellite radio helps in this matter, but all it really does is introduce more of the “99 channels and nothing on” possibility.
What does this have to do with blogs and iPods? Everything. Adam Curry may be best known as an MTV VJ from a few years ago, but what he should be known for is being a cutting edge Internet broadcaster, or what is increasingly becoming known as a podcaster. His ipodder software is the first in what will likely be a long line of audio content aggregators. He is working closely with Dave Winer - the father of weblogging - on this stuff, and what they’re doing so far is mind-blowing.
But I’m not doing this subject justice. If you want to know more about the coming revolution in audio broadcasting - podcasting - check out this article by Doc Searls.
We’re in for a wild ride.
[Update]
From James H in the comments comes this great link: How Podcasting Will Save Radio
An analogy to the perspective the writer, Tod Maffin, takes in this article might be stated as “How the Automobile Will Save Carriage-Makers”. I think both perspectives are compatible - those in the traditional broadcast industry that embrace podcasting will be saved by it. Those that don’t, won’t.
Great post! Oh, and how cool is it that this comes from a fellow Canadian that works for the CBC?
iloveradio.org <- subscribed.
