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ShowRSS Automates Your TV Show Downloads [BitTorrent]

Posted on May 27, 2009
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If you’re missing the now defunct FeedMyTorrents and its awesome duplicate-free RSS based automation, showRSS offers the same functionality and integration with RSS-enabled BitTorrent clients.

Founded by a refugee from FeedMyTorrents, showRSS has shielded itself from the same fate by setting up camp in Spain where torrents have been ruled legal. The site collects torrents from a variety of sources and weeds out the duplicates. You pick from shows you want to keep an eye on and showRSS adds them to your personal RSS feed. From there you can load the feed into a feed reader and manually select links to shows as they appear or you can plug it into a BitTorrent client with RSS support like µTorrent to automate the process.





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30-Second DVR Tweak Speeds Up Commercial Skipping [DVR]

Posted on April 23, 2009
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DVRs have revolutionized the way people watch TV, but if you’ve always wished your DVR were a little better at skipping commercials, this classic 30-second skip hack is a must.

For what it’s worth, we realize that these tricks aren’t new by any means. Still, we’ve never featured them here, and the aim of this post is to collect as many of them as possible. Right now, we’re aware of two hacks of this kind: one for the TiVo, the other for Comcast DVR.

First the TiVo trick, first pointed out to us by reader schulman:

While playing a recorded show, hit select-play-select-3-0-select. You’ll hear 3 chimes if you did it right. You’ll need to redo this whenever the Tivo reboots.

Reader robkonz81 writes in with how he enables the same 30-second commercial skipping on his Comcast DVR:

1) Press the “Cable” button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
2) Press and hold the “Setup” button until the “Cable” button blinks twice.
3) Type in the code 994. The “Cable” button will blink twice.
4) Press (do not hold) the “Setup” button.
5) Type in the code 00173 (for 30 second Skip).
6) Press whatever button you want to map the skip. (I use the fav button—next to mute.)

Update: Commenter ThickSkinned points out this tip for DirecTV’s DVRs:

1. Make sure you have the (latest) upgrade
2. Go to Menu > Search for Shows > Keyword
3. Enter in “30SKIP” in the search area and hit “Continue”
4. That’s it. Now go to a recording, and hit play and try the old SLIP button out.
5. If you want to go back, do the same thing as above but put “30SLIP” instead.

If you’ve got your DVR service through a different cable or satellite company and you know of a similar trick, let’s hear it in the comments. Thanks robkonz81!





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Get Hulu Content on Your TV without Hulu’s Help [Hulu]

Posted on February 19, 2009
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Let’s say a certain web site you liked went and did something kind of stupid, and now the TV shows you were watching legitimately on your actual TV have suddenly disappeared. Guess what? There are other options.

That's right, there's BitTorrent—the file sharing protocol that so many people were using before they were finally offered a content provider-approved method of watching the shows they love. In the end, it wasn't about the commercials—it was about the convenience. People were happy to watch Hulu on their TVs via Boxee, and yeah, sit through the Hulu commercials, because it was more convenient than hassling with BitTorrent downloads. It’s not about piracy or “stealing” from content providers because people are malicious like that; it’s about convenience.

Let’s say that I’m already paying for cable, but I didn’t watch the show when it aired. Sure, I could watch it on Hulu on my laptop, but I want to watch it on my TV. And why shouldn’t I be able to? What’s the difference between serving ads through my monitor and my HDTV? I’ll still sit through them, because they’re more convenient than the alternative. Yeah, more convenient than BitTorrent. Or at least it was.

But BitTorrent’s not that inconvenient, especially after Hulu’s content providers reject progress in favor of their tried and true one-step-forward, two-steps-back philosophy of progress. BitTorrent is easy to get the hang of, people.

Upset users can easily follow our beginner’s guide to BitTorrent, and spice up their skills with our intermediate guide. If they’re really savvy, they can even do their best to protect their privacy from prying eyes. But it doesn’t end there!

BitTorrent users can subscribe to shows and automatically download them as soon as they’re available using tools like the previously mentioned Ted or by setting up feeds in their BitTorrent client of choice with sites like previously mentioned FeedMyTorrents. It’s not hard, trust us.

Keep in mind, we're not saying "Go pirate every Hulu show now that Hulu won't let you watch it the way you want to." But that is what people will do. Everyone watching Hulu through Boxee is an early adopter—they know how to make things work. The point is—as O'Reilly's Mark Hedlund articulated better than we could:

I’m sure Hulu is totally pissed. They pretty much said just that in a somewhat more stilted way. The real insult, though, is calling the people who made them cut Boxee off "content providers." They might as well have told the studios they are the moral equivalent of the guy schlepping reels around the projector booth. Someone will win this war eventually, they seem to be saying, and you could have helped make it us. Now you have a choice: someone else — not you, someone smart — will win instead, or you can change your mind.

That’s pretty much my view, too. DVDs (mentioned in the note at the start) became a big boon for the studios, once their crazy ideas about self-destructing Divx discs went the way of the Dodo. The studios have a very long history of betting against technology people want, and on technology people don’t want. This is just another such case. The technology people want always wins in the end — no duh — and usually benefits the businesses who fought that technology to the death. Here's hoping the technology people want — Boxee — doesn't wind up benefiting the studios fighting it now.

Did you feel the sting from the Hulu block—whether it was the Boxee or TV.com block? Let's hear your reaction in the comments.




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NBC Direct Offers Free HD Downloads [Downloads]

Posted on February 17, 2009
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Windows only: Sure, almost all the offerings on NBC Direct can be watched at streaming site Hulu. But if you’re an HD fiend and want offline access, NBC Direct’s player might be worth checking out.

NBC Direct is definitely powered by DRM and ad-powered software, so if you’re not cool with that, well, you probably know a few other places to look (like, er, Hulu). But if you dig the idea of subscribing to, and downloading higher-quality videos of your favorite NBC shows, it’s not a bad way of getting them guilt-free.

About NBC’s definition of HD:

Standard Quality videos are available for download at 360p resolution while registered myNBC users will have the option to download High Quality video at 720p resolution.

Thanks to wqwert for the clarification!

Installing NBC Direct means downloading a little applet, which then puts an add-on into your Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browser, and runs a system tray applet to download and watch shows offline. When you’re connected, it seems, you’re also a peer source for other NBC Direct users:

Once the installation starts rolling, you’ll be asked to close down your browser. NBC Direct downloads and plays its shows through your browser, and it plugs in a rights-restricted media handler to do so (pictured at right).

When you launch NBC Direct from a shortcut or by heading to nbc.com/video, you'll get a pretty easy-to-follow menu of offerings. The full episodes and clips offered tend to follow the Hulu model—usually a few episodes back from the most recently aired episode of current marquee series, and fuller archives of kitsch/nostalgia shows, like Miami Vice. From any video, you can click to download, subscribe to the series (which starts downloads automatically, assuming you haven't killed the NBC auto-starting tray applet), and switch to bigger views:

Even when you’re “offline” to watch a show, though, you’re getting some ads. The one complaint I’d make about NBC’s video site, versus Hulu, is that they take “fullscreen” to mean something less than literal. Here’s an episode of The Office, in HD, set to “Fullscreen.” There’s actually a bunch more space at the bottom and right-hand side, but I clipped it for Lifehacker page constraints:

If you’re planning to be away from a net connection for a while and want to catch up, NBC Direct’s not a bad option, and it does offer good quality shows for free. It’s free to use, sign-up required.






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