Category Archives: TV Torrents

Bob’s Burgers Animator Helps Seeding The Show’s Torrent

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Bob’s Burgers is a new animated sitcom which first aired on Fox last weekend. With nearly 10 million viewers and the highest rated premiere of the season, the show had a pretty decent start. On BitTorrent there has been plenty of interest as well, even from someone who’s actively involved in the production. In fact, one of the show’s animators has been proudly seeding the first episode on the semi-private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid.

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The new TV-season started last week with the debut of several new series, including the animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers on Fox. As with all TV-shows, the first episode of Bob’s Burgers also ended up on BitTorrent, where one downloader stands out above the rest.

In a torrent discussion at Demonoid.me, the largest semi private BitTorrent community, a commenter with the nickname “TANP1′ claims to have a special relationship with the show. Unlike the regular downloaders, he is actually involved in the production of Bob’s Burgers, or so he claims.

“Nice to hear that people liked the show, I’m an animator on it so it’s nice to hear something positive from all the negative I’ve been hearing about! I’m going to keep seeding to support my show,” TANP1 wrote a few hours after the torrent was published on Demonoid.

Of course, anyone can claim to be an animator of the show, but as we will point out later in this article this one turns out to be legit. This is where it gets interesting.

Other commenters on Demonoid seem to be genuinely surprised and honored that one of the animators approves of their actions, since makers of such big productions are generally negative towards ‘unauthorized’ downloads. In a follow up comment TANP1 adds some more insider insights to the ‘sharing’ crowd.

“There are 13 eps for the show coming out, they’ve been well received by the everyone at the studio so far so we’re hoping everything will turn out and it’ll gain more of an audience as it goes,” he says.

The commenter went on to further state that if you view to end credits his name is listed there.

With that last comment TANP1 did give away more than he might have wanted to do. It is of course great that someone from the production team of a popular show approves of torrenting, and we welcome such an open stance. But, at the same time we got very curious about the identity of the torrenting animator, if only to verify the legitimacy of his claims.

Since it’s hard to hide something on the internet nowadays, it only took a few Google searches to find out that the nickname and the birthday of the commenter are linked to an animator featured first in the credits list of the episode. So, the story seems to check out and we applaud TANP1 for making Bob’s Burgers available – in more ways than one.

Update: We’ve been in contact with the animator and agreed to alter some of the info mentioned in the above article to address his concerns.

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Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2010

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As the year moves toward its end we have been listing the most pirated entertainment titles of 2010. Following our Top 10 games and movies charts, we now turn to the most downloaded TV-shows. Lost tops the list this year with over 5 million downloads for a single episode, beating last year’s winner Heroes.

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TV-shows have traditionally increased in popularity on BitTorrent year after year. In 2010, however, when we look at the most downloaded titles of the year this growth seems to have levelled off a little.

Lost and Heroes, two shows that were also leading the list in 2009, have achieved slightly fewer downloads when compared to last year. Despite this slight dip, the most downloaded episode of Heroes is still exceeding the average viewership on US television. The same is true for Dexter which moved up to third place this year.

The massive piracy of TV-shows is mostly a reflection of the unavailability of these shows in countries outside the U.S., and a signal that TV viewing habits are changing. There is a huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

The percentage of TV-downloaders from the U.S. has steadily declined over the last years, in part thanks to alternative viewing options such as Hulu. In other regions, such as Australia and Europe, the demand for U.S. TV-shows remains at pretty much the same level as last year.

Outside the U.S. fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their own country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the U.S. based on data from Nielsen. The data for the top 10 is collected by us from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

Most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent, 2010
Rank Show Downloads Est. US TV Viewers
1 Lost 5,940,000 13,570,000
2 Heroes 5,480,000 5,300,000
3 Dexter 3,880,000 2,540,000
4 The Big Bang Theory 3,270,000 16,310,000
5 House 2,610,000 14,210,000
6 How I Met Your Mother 2,490,000 10,520,000
7 24 2,240,000 11,500,000
8 True Blood 1,920,000 5,440,000
9 Glee 1,700,000 13,660,000
10 Family Guy 1,620,000 7,730,000

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First Episodes Of Californication Leak On BitTorrent

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A unique Christmas gift was waiting under the tree this morning for fans of the hit-show Californication. The first two episodes of the upcoming fourth season have leaked on BitTorrent, more than two weeks before they premiere on Showtime. The source of the leak is reportedly a promo-DVD that a Showtime employee got to take home before the holidays.

Californication, the popular TV-series featuring David Duchovny as the ever charming novelist Hank Moody, is officially set to debut its fourth season January 9th next year on Showtime. However, today the first two episodes of the upcoming season are already available on BitTorrent and beyond.

The leaked episodes don’t originate from a Scene group, but according to unconfirmed reports they were ripped by the husband of a Showtime employee who got to take a promo-DVD home for Christmas. Such promo DVDs are often sent out to reviewers and industry insiders beforehand, and it’s not uncommon for them to appear online before the official TV-debut, appropriately tagged with a PREAIR label.

Californication Season Four

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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. This year, however, only a few TV-leaks have appeared online. Early releases of The Walking Dead and Weeds were the only notable ones until today.

Promo and screener DVDs have always been a weak spot in the anti-piracy efforts of TV and movie studios. Millions of dollars are spent on lawsuits and takedown notices for leaks that often come from industry insiders. For this very reason some studios have opted to ban these screener DVDs entirely.

Kaye Cooper Mead, executive vice president of distribution at Summit Entertainment, recently said that getting rid of screeners entirely is the best option. Summit Entertainment is the studio behind the Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, a film that leaked online several months before it aired in movie theaters.

“It’s something we have to get away from,” Kaye Cooper Mead said recently. “Those screeners are a source of leaks, and when they leak, it’s a very serious leak because it’s a much better copy than the pirated ones.”

It is doubtful that the PREAIR leaks of Californication will do the series any harm. If anything, the show will pick up a few more fans thanks to this Christmas ‘present’.

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