My Torrent Guide

Just thought I would put together a Bit-torrent guide. Don't be expecting any rocket science here. This is just going to be the basic's.

First of all I am stating that to copy films / files/ programs/ software without the owners permission is illegal!! Do not do it. Any information that follows is purely educational.

With the advent of broadband technologies such as DSL and cable modems, the everyday user suddenly has a big chunk of bandwidth, not only for download, but also upload. Sharing files directly from your computer (without first sending them to a server) is now a reality. This is where p2p comes in. The acronym p2p stands for peer-to-peer, which basically means client to client. That is, you download files from people like you instead of from big servers, and in turn they download files from you. You share your files, your friends share their files, and everyone talks directly to each other.
The problem with most P2P networks is that many people just don't like to share. They open up their program, download their files, then close the program before they can help anyone else. It's called leeching. BitTorrent is a P2P file swarming application. This means that as soon as you have downloaded a few chunks of a file it will start uploading it to others, thereby spreading the file better. This makes it easier to get the file from many different people at once, thereby increasing the probably that you'll get a good download speed. This means that the more you upload, the faster you'll download.

You first need to install a Bit Torrent client to be able to download from BitTorrent. There is a evergrowing list of these.
Next you have to find a Bit Torrent to download. There are lots of sites out there which have links to whatever Torrent you prefer.

Guide to torrent abrievations;
I am not an expert and if anyone has a better explanation please help clear up my (mis)understanding,
CAM- usually lowest quality, like camcorder in a theater
TS - TeleSync visually about as good maybe better than CAM, but has a direct source to the audio, so audio is usually better than CAM
TC - TeleCine, much better than CAM and TS, not exactly sure how movie is recorded
Screener - usually DVD of new movie that is sent out early to stores or awards organizations or even as promotional material... usually has property of so and so studios or some other marker like station identification or subtitles...
I'm not sure why some people choose to put out DivX or XviD, or VCD vs. SVCD or DVDrip or .iso or .cue or .bin files, probaly down to personal choice, but in the end if you want to put these files onto DVD then you have to convert them again with the appropiate software. So you can see this process takes time and it's just not a walk in the park.