ted (Television Episode Downloader)

If you are anything like me (and god help you if you are ), and use the internet as a PVR, then this software will be a god send to you.

I’ve just recently ordered a Mac Mini to replace my last remaining Windows machine, and thought I’d better check if I could still do what I do now.

Currently my Dell machine, sits in the corner, and is used as my media server, my iTunes server and my torrent machine. Currently I have uTorrent installed, which downloads each episode using the RSS Feed option. Each of the RSS feeds points to a particular RSS feed for my favourite TV program from eztv, and once a new episode is detected, it’s downloaded.

Once the episodes are downloaded, these get copied to a shared location on my NAS Box, which I can then stream to my PS3′s or Xbox using PS3 Media Server.

I did a little googling last night, and even though there is a Mac version of uTorrent, it’s still in beta, and missing a lot of the functions that the Windows version has, eg the RSS downloader.

After a little more googling, I found a tidy little piece of freeware software called ted (Television Episode Downloader). Essentially it has a list of all the TV episodes that you can select from, and when a new episode appears, it will download the torrent file, and open this with your default torrent client.

Ok, this that fixes the missing functionality of uTorrent, however the software is a lot smarter that the RSS Downloader function in uTorrent, as once you’ve added your favourite shows, you can choose to start from the next available episode, the previous episode, or even download every episode. You then have the option to select “HD Only”, which will only download episodes with the tag of HD or 720.

The interface will also show you the name of the next episode, and when it’s going to be aired.

The good thing about this software is that is available free of charge on Mac, Windows and Linux, and only requires that you have a torrent client installed (I highly recommend uTorrent, Mac and Windows clients available).

Now some people may have a problem with downloading episodes from the internet, I however don’t mind, as I tend to buy the boxsets once they are available. Also this is little different to using BBC iPlayer, or Sky Anytime.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts, and enjoy

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Wolverine finally beat

About 2 months ago I downloaded the demo of Wolverine on my PS3, and loved it !, However with not seeing the film, I wasn’t willing to buy the full game in case of spoilers.

About a month ago, I finally got my butt into gear and and went to the cinema, and say Wolverine…which was an ok film.

About 3 weeks ago, I was in my local Tesco’s and noticed that it was available on the Xbox 360 for £25 !…Bargain. Luckily I have both consoles so bought it.

How is it ?…It’s fantastic !, I read many reviews, and it averages rating was around 7/10, but I personally think it’s worth more that this. The game play is very much like God of War, it’s a good hack and slash game, and really action packed, with some really gruesome cut scenes.

I did get annoyed by a few things, there were 2 points in the game that stand out where they were stupid timed jumpy bit, whereby if you didn’t time it perfectly, you ended up either falling to your death, and then have to wait around 30 seconds for the save game to load, or having to start the chain of events again, so the little platforms came out so you could then get to the beginning, and jump across them again…very frustrating.

The combat in the game was awesome, very fast paced, and as you go through the game and pick up and slot power-up, it only gets better.

The end of game boss annoyed me, in total took me 28 attempts at killing him, and not due to the fact that I’m bad at the game, it’s due to the fact that the 3rd stage of killing him, he fires the red laser at you, which destroys the ground beneath you, which then makes you fall to you death. The majority of the time you couldn’t jump out of the way in time, so had no choice but to die, so you have to load your previous save game which starts at the beginning of the 2nd stage, which then takes you 5/10 minutes of battle to get back to stage 3 again, only to have the ground blow from under me, and have to load the checkpoint again.

I feel I’ve been quite negative above, but the rest of the game more than makes up for it, it took me around 14 hours to beat the game of which I was only annoyed for around 1 hour of this, so 13 hours of mindless blood fest.

I’d give this game a 9/10 and if it wasn’t for the annoyance at the end boss, this would have got a 10/10 from me.

Tags: 360, attempts, bargain, Beginning, boss, butt, case, chain of events, checkpoint, cinema, consoles, death, demo, end, fact, film, full game, game, game play, Gear, God, god of war, ground, hack, month, platforms, PS3, stage, stage 3, Tesco, time, wolverine, xbox, xbox 360

Microsoft make a mistake, but at least they admit it

Just got the below email from Microsoft regarding their Beta tests of Windows 7

We apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused.

Thanks again for helping us test Windows 7.

Tags: 7, August, august 1, Beta, Beta Edition, beta tests, Beta July, Candidate March, Candidate. Unfortunately, confusion, Correction, date, email, error, expiration, Expires, Exploring, july 1, June, mail, march 1, Microsoft, mistake, release, release candidate, rest, Starts, summary, version, windows