in which I reveal my ignorance...

[cicer]

Okay, so what exactly are "bit torrents", and how do you play them? I gather it's some kind of video file, and I found a site with a lot of anime things that I'd like to download, but I have absolutely no idea how to go about doing that. Seriously, no idea. I don't even know what these "torrents" are. Um, smart people? A little help for the ignorant folk?

Comments

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Huh! Interesting. Any recommendations of sites to use/look at?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

They go up and down more times than a thing that frequently goes up and down. Here's the ones I have left in my bookmarks:

http://www.torrentreactor.net/index.php
http://www.animeforever.org/index.php?goto=archive
http://www.boxtorrents.com/index.php
http://www.anime-kraze.org/
http://www.mvgroup.org/forums/index.php? (BBC dosumentaries, mostly, tend to be really slow downloads, you need to register and log in to see anything)
http://www.bi-torrent.com/
http://animesuki.com/
http://isohunt.com/
http://www.anime-source.com/banzai/modules.php?name=Releases

As far as clients go - the original BitTorrent one is simple and to-the-point. I used to use Azureus until my ISP blocked P2P filesharing. :( Anyway, look at the torrents on the apges before donwloading - if it doesn't have any seeds, you won't get the full files - seeds are people connected who have the full file and are sharing it, leeches are those who only have part of the file. If you really want soemthing and there's no seeds, sometimes all you can do is connect to it and leave your client running every time you're online just in case anyone with it connects.