Category Archives: Torrents

Pioneer One – The BitTorrent Exclusive TV-Series Continues

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Pioneer One, a TV-show created for and made possible by BitTorrent users, made the headlines earlier this year when the pilot was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. The innovative distribution and funding model didn’t go unnoticed by TV-insiders either, and it won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival. Today, the second episode is released, with two more to follow in the weeks to come.

This Spring, filmmakers Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith set themselves up with quite a challenge. They finished a script for the TV-series ‘Pioneer One‘, but instead of plugging it to traditional TV-companies the duo decided to fund and distribute it via the Internet.

And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people had downloaded the show, and many decided to donate money to fund future episodes. An additional $20,000 was raised in just the first two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes of the first season.

“Once our heads stopped spinning after the pilot, we sat down in July to figure out our game plan. If we were going to produce more episodes, we knew we had to do more than one at a time to make it cost effective and timely,” Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard told us.

“So a lot of preparations had to be made. Initially we didn’t think we’d be able to move forward with the money we had, but the cast and crew were all eager to do more based on the success of the pilot. So based on their generosity, we called in the rest of the favors we had and were able to start shooting in October,” he added.

Three new episodes were eventually shot in October, and the first one was released on VODO just a few minutes ago. Like the pilot, this second episode can be downloaded for free. In the coming weeks the Pioneer One team plans to release episodes 3 and 4, and gather enough funds to complete the remaining episodes.

Although the delay between the first and second episode is not something the general TV-audience is used to, it is one of the inevitable downsides of a peer-funded production. According to the current schedule it looks like the first season will be completed within a year, something the production team and all those who supported the endeavor can be proud of.

Pioneer One Episode 2: The Man From Mars

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The first season has 7 episodes in total, but after that the show is far from done.

“From the beginning we knew this was a multi-season story with an arc that would play out over time. The first season is limited enough in scope that we felt we’d be able to pull it off with the resources that we had, but moving forward, it gets bigger,” Bernhard told us.

“How exactly those future seasons will happen, and what form they will take, is not set in stone. Ideally, we’d love to keep producing the show the way we have been: on our own, releasing through BitTorrent. But right now we’re focusing on getting the first season done, because I think that’ll prove what we set out to do, and all together it will stand on its own as a unit,” he commented.

The series was ‘invented’ for BitTorrent, and the team wants to keep it that way for now. However, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“We had some great meetings, but we felt very strongly that we had an obligation to our audience that supported the pilot to continue releasing episodes on BitTorrent. That was the stated goal, and that’s what we want to deliver,” Bernhard said.

Eventually, the Pioneer One team would of course be happy to see their work on traditional TV as well, which serves a wider audience than the traditional BitTorrent public. In the end, a collision between traditional TV and content funded and distributed on the Internet might benefit both sides.

Pioneer One

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For now, however, Pioneer One still relies on the BitTorrent community. Today, the release of the second episode will again be promoted by many P2P partners. Among other initiatives it will be bundled with all the new installs of BitTorrent Inc.’s uTorrent client. Through these promotions the Pioneer one team hopes to gather enough donations to finish the first season.

“We have no funding beyond user donations, but we’re hoping if we can repeat the success of the pilot and beyond, we may attract more support through some kind of sponsorship model. But for now user donations are absolutely crucial. At the moment, we’re depending entirely on the support of our audience to fund episodes 5 and 6.”

It will be interesting to see how the second episode will be picked up by the public. Josh Bernhard has high hopes, but realizes that the success of the pilot won’t be easily matched.

“I hope people will get a better sense of the kind of show we’re trying to make. Personally, I think this next episode is a step above the pilot. We’re all really proud of it. And, hopefully, people will get excited enough to support us and spread the word. I’d love if we outdid the success of the pilot, but we’re taking nothing for granted.”

Pioneer One, episode 1 and 2 can be downloaded through VODO, fully powered by BitTorrent.

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Leaked DVD Screener of The Social Network A BitTorrent Hit

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The Social Network tells the dramatized story of the founders of Facebook, the number one social-networking site that was launched in 2004. The film premiered nearly three weeks ago, and since then many BitTorrent users have been waiting for a decent pirated copy to appear online. Yesterday, the waiting was over and tens of thousands of people immediately fired up their torrent clients to grab a leaked DVD Screener of the movie.

David Fincher’s The Social Network, an adaptation from Ben Mezrich’s book Accidental Billionaires, enjoyed its theater premiere at the start of October. In the weeks that followed the film grossed more than $75 million in the United States alone, exceeding the $50 million it took to produce it.

While hundreds of thousands of people went to see the film in theater, a smaller but significant group stayed behind, keeping a close eye on their favorite torrent sites.

In October, the The Social Network was the most searched for movie title on KickassTorrents, and most likely many other torrent sites. However, for the best part of the month there wasn’t a single pirated copy to be found. Not even a camcorder version shot in a local theater, which is relatively unique for such as high profile movie.

This changed last week when the first cammed copy of The Social Network appeared online, which was immediately downloaded by thousands of BitTorrent users. Fast forward another week, and there now is a DVD-screener copy of the movie available, which is grabbing the attention of even more downloaders.

As all screeners, this review copy was leaked from a studio source. Despite all the watermarks and preventive measures by movie studios, it got out months before the scheduled DVD-release.

At the time of writing it is just over 24 hours after the first torrent appeared online, and thus far the DVD-screener has been downloaded well over 100,000 times already. A quick look at who’s downloading the film reveals that most of the current peers come from the United States (31%), followed by The United Kingdom (14%), Canada (9%), Australia (8%) and India (4%).

Image captured from the DVDscr release

Image is Loading....This is just the beginning though. Usually, the greatest download boost for a pirated movie occurs with the release of a DVDrip copy, and that has yet to come for The Social Network. If this happens in the next month, the film about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and friends might have a shot at ending up in the list of top 10 most pirated films of this year.

A dubious honor, but not necessarily a financial disaster.

Whether the pirated copies will have any effect on theater visits and the revenues of the film remains to be seen. As with music, not every downloaded movie is a lost ‘sale’ and one can even argue that it might serve as a promotional tool in some cases through word-of-mouth advertising.

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The Walking Dead TV-Series Premieres On BitTorrent

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The Walking Dead, a brand new TV-series based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book, premiered on BitTorrent last night. Officially, the first episode is scheduled to be aired on AMC later this month, but unofficially the 90-minute premiere episode is already widely available on file-sharing sites worldwide.

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A few years ago the tag PREAIR was more common than it is nowadays. The tag is used on P2P and Scene releases to indicate that a TV-show has found its way onto the Internet before the episode appears on TV.

At one point during the summer of 2007 a massive 8 new episodes were released with a PREAIR tag in just one week, including hit series such as Dexter, Weeds and Chuck.

In recent years, however, PREAIR releases have become a rarity. Before the start of the fall season of 2010, the only notable PREAIR leak was a Weeds episode.

Despite this declining trend, there are still a few notable releases that are worth mentioning, such as the premiere episode of The Walking Dead that surfaced online yesterday. The new series is written and produced by three-time Academy Award-nominee Frank Darabont, known for films such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

The Walking Dead is based on the similarly named comic book and tells the story of a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse.

The series will officially premiere in the US on the AMC network on October 31, but already thousands of people have downloaded the file online. According to most of the ‘amateur’ reviews we’ve read the quality isn’t all that great, but good enough to watch. Content wise there were few complaints.

AMC hasn’t officially responded to the leaks thus far, but we doubt that they will be bothered too much by the free publicity. It is often suggested that some of these leaks might even be intentional, that broadcasters use them to hype the show just before the season starts. Although this is often impossible to confirm, it would not be the first time that this has happened.

In 2007, a Warner Bros executive admitted that he helped to leak the pilot of ‘Pushing Daisies’. The exec wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and said his goal was to “help the cause.” He didn’t upload it himself though, but used his neighbor’s kid to do it instead.

The Walking Dead Trailer

The leak of The Walking Dead premiere, whether intentional or not, is guaranteed to boost the show’s momentum through word of mouth promotion. If anything it will help the show, rather than hurt it.

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Take.fm Pushes Movie Torrents To The Next Level

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Take.fm is a new movie torrent indexer that is a step above the plain old torrent indexes most BitTorrent users have become used to. The site, which only lists verified and high quality releases, combines a pleasant and great looking user interface with all the functionality needed to find the best films.

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Every year hundreds of new torrent sites are launched, but only a few of these manage to rise to the top. Take.fm is one of these newcomers, and since it has something unique to offer it is likely to stick around.

Take.fm is a torrent indexer, meaning that the site does not operate its own tracker. Those browsing through the site will immediately notice that it’s unlike any other indexer. The site is developed by the owner of Coda.fm, a music site that launched last year. Similar to Coda.fm, the looks and unique features of Take.fm set the site apart from most of the competition, this time focusing on the movie niche.

We got in touch with the owner of both sites to find out more about his newest project.

Take Dot FM Home

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“As I did before with Coda.fm, I wanted to create a new kind of movie torrents site, open for everyone and one that offered a user experience comparable to the best e-commerce websites,” Take.fm’s owner told us. “We don’t have to get used to a third-rateuser experience just for dealing with torrents. I tried to build a website that I – and hopefully all the torrents community – would enjoy using.”

Visitors to the site will indeed notice that the site looks more like a movie store or rental site than the average torrent index. The movies are presented nicely and users can browse through different genres and list movies based on popularity and the date they were added. Although the site has just launched, there are already over a 1000 titles listed, all verified by the site’s members.

“The website went online only a few hours ago, so the movies available now are the ones that a few invited users uploaded during a closed beta period. We have now approx. 1400 movies and 1900 torrents. As happened with Coda.fm, we expect to build a great user base, with many contributors that could help us to greatly increase our catalog.”

Although the browsing experience is neat, the features we described earlier can be found on most other torrent indexers as well. What really sets Take.fm apart from other sites is the presentation and features of the movie torrent pages. Here users can find all the info they need on a movie torrent, including a description, IMDB rating, a review and details specific to the release such as the quality, release group and audio and video specs.

Movie details on Take.fm

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To top it off, users also get a list of recommended titles for the movies they browse. This is similar to the recommendation engines that e-commerce sites such as Amazon have, and with enough contributors this could help users to quickly find related content of interest.

Although all of this sounds great, the movie industry wont be cheering the site on. They would argue that it assists in copyright infringements, which are against the law in most countries. Especially since all the files on the site are manually verified, anti-piracy groups might be inclined to take swift action to shut the site down. The Take.fm owner is aware of this risk, but is not planning to back down.

“Yes, we expect a lot of legal actions against us, the kind that we already endured with Coda.fm, but with more pressure. However, they couldn’t stop us before, and they won’t succeed now either. I really believe in what we do, and we will do anything it takes to stay online, as long as we have users that enjoy our service.”

People unconcerned or unaffected by the legal issues are being encouraged by the site’s owner to help out and join the team. “We just launched and we need collaborators that could help us to increase our catalog and build a community. I would like to use this opportunity to invite users that liked our vision to collaborate, uploading movie torrents and applying for moderators,” he said.

All in all we have to say that Take.fm is truly an amazing site, much like its sister site Coda.fm. A site that immediately captures one’s imagination. We have little doubt that this one will be around for a while, if it manages to stay out of legal trouble that is.

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