It's basically a decentralized filesharing tool, used for trading massive (read: a/v) files between groups of people. Someone puts out a link to a file on a website for sharing as a seeder, and people leech on to that seed using BitTorrent, downloading the file in chunks. Even if you are still downloading the file, other leechers are d/l'ing the same file off of you. Everybody shares differnt parts of the file until they all have it. Check out DIME or Archive.org for recorded concerts; others can probably direct you to sites with more grey-area material like TV shows.
I download ALL Real MAdrid matches from torrents since they don't show it here. for football torrents - http://www.********.com - is the best nsr torrents http://www.mininova.org is good I'm downloading one right now - 2002 Champions league final - Real Madrid vs Bayern Leverkusen
It could just be me not doing something properly but is it normal for a torrent with lots of seeds and leeches either download really slow or not at all?
Many torrents start slow despite the huge number of seeds and peers. You have to be patient and ignore the error messages. Couple of suggestions: * Put a limit on the upload speed (few kbps less than the maximum) and leave some room for communication and web surfing. Download and upload speed are usually proportional so don't put the limit too low. * If you have a firewall or router try forwarding the ports (6881-6889). My BT download speed used to hover around 50 kbps but after port-forwarding the speed increased 5 fold. Some tips and tweaks (including port forwarding) below. http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/t15814.html
Although I'll probably get yelled at for this, but, if you are on a cable modem like Road Runner or WOW please consider being a good neighbor and capping your upload speed around 20K or so. Around 35K is the theoretical max but on cable segments there is only so much upstream to go around.
I opened a browser window and typed the ip address of my router in the address bar. A 'log-in' box with default username and password which I changed later came up and pressed OK. In the Setup page, I had to press the Application and Gaming tab and fill out the boxes (i.e. application, port start, end, protocol, ip address) in the Port Range Forwarding menu, put a check on Enabled and Save the settings. After restarting my PC I felt almost the same way I did the day I ditched dial-up and got high-speed internet. My record for download speed so far I wouldn't know where to begin without the help of the site below. http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm