There is no HD via BitTorrent
by Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Mar 8th 2006 at 11:15AM
I know what you are thinking, BitTorrent will carry any bits you want. That is not what I am talking
about, I am talking about all the people who responded to my "How to: get tons of HD
content playing on your PC" with the suggestion to use BitTorrent! This has annoyed me ever since and I
am here to set the record straight. This is going to be old news to most of you, but for those who don't know here we
go.As we have discussed recently HD material is arguably at least 1280x720, but preferably 1920x1080p ( I threw that P in there to fend off any 720p vs 1080i debates). Anything less just isn't HD, especially if it's 480 and under like DVDs. There are sites on the Internet that hosts torrent files with video that have HDTV in the title and I think this causes some confusion. This simply means that the SOURCE video was HDTV, this of course was before the video was re-compressed. The people that post these files are very skilled in regards to video compression and although the files look better than anything you are watching on SD cable they are still NOT HD. The few I have sampled are 624x352 which is not even DVD quality much less HD quality. 1920x1080p is 2.1 mega pixels these files are 0.2 mega pixels, that is 10 times smaller! The original HD file was ~6GB and the file downloaded was 350MB. Granted they look much better than anything anyone who doesn't have HD has ever seen, but to call them HD or even discuss them during a HD content article would be crazy.
For all of the people surprised by this, go out and find yourself some real HD material and maybe you will finally understand what all the HD fuss is about.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wayne @ Mar 8th 2006 11:37AM
Ben, this is a great post, and a necessary one.
mrk @ Mar 8th 2006 11:47AM
yes.. you are right.. but there are also sites that have 720p, 1080i and even 1080p content. what you are talking about are mostly tv-rips on xvid. but you are completely right: in the title it says something like TV.Show.S01EP01.HDTV.XviD or something like that.. yet the resolution is not anywhere near 720p or better..
Gelob @ Mar 8th 2006 12:01PM
Maybe you should stop using public sites. Their are 720p files and the raw files on various sites.
TV @ Mar 8th 2006 12:38PM
Here Here Gelob! Granted there is a lot of junk out there (TV rips, re-encoded files and such), there is REAL HD content available.
Most users go for the smallest files they can find and proceed to download those, regardless of quality. They have no idea how big a good (orginal) quality video feed is. These are the same people that download a movie that's in the theaters and 'can't see the difference'. GIMME A BREAK!!!! They also only watch these downloads on their 15" LCD and not a 106" front projector.
I've shown a few people how to backup a DVD, and they declined to do it, not because it was difficult, but because 'someone' they knew could get 3-4 movies on one DVD. I gracefully bowed out, and told them to continue to enjoy their anolog sets.
Clayfree @ Mar 8th 2006 12:53PM
You're right on about real HD. At his point the bandwidth is not really there to support downloading .ts file. Mine run about 8gigs per hour. However I think there is real promise for full res H.264 files.
Kevin Pataky @ Mar 8th 2006 1:32PM
How about sharing some of these sites with HD content.
Erik Hanson @ Mar 8th 2006 1:38PM
Your post about no HD on Bittorrent isn't exactly totally true, Ben. While the content isn't exactly "true HD" in the sense of being > 720 lines of resolution, in the interest of (a) being able to burn to a 700mb CD-R, and (b) download size, there are a couple of release groups that have been downconverting true HD to quarter-resolution (just like Blu-ray or HD-DVD over component, yay!) at 960x544 resolution. This means you can get a ~45 minute show onto a disk with AC3 (Dolby Digital) sound and about as good a resolution as you can get over broadband today. As you say, it's not truly HD content, but it does look really good maximized on my HTPC at 1920x1080, and it's probably good enough until we get ultra-broadband FIOS-like speeds into everyone's homes. All it takes is some selective searching on your favorite Bittorrent aggregator for the term "HR HDTV" and you can find Lost, 24, Alias, Prison Break, CSI, Grey's Anatomy, and many other very popular shows ripped into the HR (higher res) resolution. Just look for a single episode at around 700 megs. Also, as a couple of other posters mention, there are some actual 1080 HDTV samples floating around, but they are mostly demo loops and commercials, and the filesizes are prohibitively large.
Borat @ Mar 8th 2006 1:53PM
There are some actual HD videos going around on BitTorrent. Theres an episode of Lost from the second season and it is around 4.1 gigs. I tried it and it looks pretty awesome, although 4.1 gigs is way too big.
Some HD movies can also be found on torrent sites.
paul @ Mar 8th 2006 2:35PM
Chinese site, but not hard to figure out http://bt.hd-tv.cn/
Erik Hanson @ Mar 8th 2006 2:38PM
Kevin, a little birdy might recommend http://www.mininova.org/search/hr%20hdtv/added but you didn't hear it from me! *looks around* *disappears down shadowy alley* (Actually, on a totally unrelated note, IMO and IANAL, tv torrents are pretty much legal, as it's really no different than using your TiVo or MythTV to capture a show that was originally broadcast free over the air, you're just using your computer)
But as I think Ben's original point was, the files you download that are 350 mb (or 180mb for half-hour shows) are only HDTV in name because their _SOURCE_ material was HDTV, not because they are still in HD after encoding to AVI, so be aware when downloading. Torrents for life!
macona @ Mar 8th 2006 2:55PM
On animesuki.com there is a anime called Angel Heart. It is encoded at 1280x720. Pretty decent series. Third story in the series based off of City Hunter.
Ben Drawbaugh @ Mar 8th 2006 3:42PM
This actually turned into a more interesting discussion on where to get "true" HD via BitTorrent.
Thanks for all the links.
Jeff @ Mar 8th 2006 5:31PM
I agree with what you say, but keep in mind that a large amount of the file size savings from these BT files is due to conversion from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. I've seen up to 8x the compression with relatively little loss in quality. So while you can't squeeze an 8GB, 1 hour MPEG-2 file down to 300MB without reducing the resolution, a full resolution MPEG-4 file will be significantly smaller. I'm just waiting for MPEG-4 to become more ubiquitous so I can stop buying 400GB hard drives for my MCE box.
Travis Bell @ Mar 8th 2006 6:40PM
I will be frank. I did not read through everyone's comments but I will say that there is TONS of REAL HD available online. More than you could queue up and download every month, that's for sure.
Take a look on Usenet, groups like alt.binaries.hdtv and alt.binaries.hdtv.repost
Name a recent movie and I am willing to bet you cash it's been posted. Many popular TV shows are there, I am talking terabytes of data in eitehr 1080i or 720p straight from the broadcaster is there.
Addex @ Mar 9th 2006 4:56AM
You can get legal hd content via torrent.
http://www.mariposahd.tv/episodes
http://www.macbreak.com/ (with Leo Laporte) not yet hd content but only for ipod.
thorgeir @ Mar 9th 2006 6:52AM
The only true HD content ive seen is on one site which offers 1080i rips of Sopranos, but the catch is that each ep is 4.3Gb. so 1 dvd disc per episode.. ouch, now where are those HD-DVDs when you need them ;)
Borat @ Mar 9th 2006 1:58PM
thorgeir,
Any chance I can find out which site that is?
Benjamin Higginbotham @ Mar 9th 2006 3:13PM
This has always annoyed me as well. Just because the source is HD and one compresses it down to SD does not mean it's still HD. More often than not I see theis sub-480p content advertised as HD and it really gets under my skin.
That being said, there is some *real* HD content out there. If you're looking for specialized HD content on the web, we're basically talking about bloggers. Our site, http://www.TechnologyEvangelist.com posts everything in 1080p and below, for example (8Mbps 1080p, 6Mbps 720p, etc). There also have MacBreak shooting everything in 1080p (although not distributing in that format yet) via Sony CineAlta's. VERY cool. If you look at Democracy Player (http://www.getdemocracy.com) you'll find a bunch more actual HDTV bittorrent files available. I know that RocketBoom just moved to an HDV comcorder, so we may start to see actual HDTV content from them soon (alas, it may be interlaced, but I'll live).
While I agree with you in concept, and understand where you're coming from, the content is out there in true HDTV via torrents... Just have to know where to look.
Armando @ Mar 13th 2006 11:04PM
I love all of you!! HD goodness here i come!
i.want.my.hdtv @ Mar 23rd 2006 6:05PM
Yes, the fact that many torrents have HDTV in the name and then actually contain a 150M or 350M video (at 640x348?!) is infuriating. I guess the way to find the real-deal is to only download single HDTV episodes that are >1G each. Does a one-hour long episode recorded at 1280x720 fit onto a single DVD? I think the main problem is that without specialized hardware you cant actually play this back. There is no defined HDTV playback standard for set top dvd players.
I've built my own video playback machine by connecting the DVI output of my computer to my HDTV television, and I store the videos themselves on a 700GB SATA Raid array. My problem now is actually finding real HDTV content.
I suspect DVI frame grabbers are the way to go to actually rip hdtv content right from your cabletv tuner. HBOHD and other digital highdef channels seem like ideal sources for this video.
If there isnt already a REAL_HDTV release group, it sure sounds like a good opportinity to fill a niche.
s1ndr0me @ May 7th 2006 6:41AM
Theres plenty of proper HD content out there if you know where to look *ahem* Usenet *cough*. with monster 1080 and 720 downloads running in gigs for 24min episodes.
I live in the UK and foolishly bought and HD ready TV to discover my sky+ looks pants (cant afford Sky HD yet) so I download my favourite shows in HR.HDTV format. which while not being "true" HD certainly make an improvement to my standard TV reception.
pease