I'm new, so I apologize if this has already been discussed.
Does anyone know how to download American or British Television programs onto your computer for free? I don't have a television, and I'm missing a few of my favourites.
Thanks!

I think there are some sites which will let you view TV content possibly for a small fee. Hulu is one I've seen advertised but it is only available in North America. You could get round this using some kind of proxy server (I vaguely remember reading a thread on here about that) which could also let you watch BBC iplayer for example. Not strictly legal as programme distribution rights are limited usually by country.
There are ways to download TV series that are not 'legal' which I don't think are appropriate for discussion on here. I've not tried but I would guess information could be easily found on google.

You could get a TV card for your computer?

You need a proxy or a VPN account so that you can watch the on demand TV in UK (and probably US).

There are a few suggestions in this thread

Yay I got the bbc Iplayer website to work for me :)

thebox.bz is an excellent source for British TV.
tpb is an excellent source for everything else

Thanks for your helpful suggestions!

uknova is also pretty good for very fast torrents for UK TV

Is it illegal to download and share already broadcast material? I think it's somehwat of a grey area no?
I find torrent clients the best, and piratebay.org is still alive and kicking with plenty of UK and US TV shows as well as the shaky cams and DVD rips

The best site for watching UK and USA TV shows is

www.surfthechannel.com

This is what I use!

Hi there,here on zatoo.ch you can find all the tv chanels from Switzerland,France,Italy and a few from Great Britain.Enjoy!

I use Vuze on my mac. I think there is a windows version also.

Really fast and i have around 2.5TB of stuff, which i will probably never see

No grey area. Whether it is broadcast or not, it is illegal to download. The rights would still be with the broadcaster and company who made the program. Only they could make it available for download.

Edit: I'm incorrect regarding Swiss law, see post below.

Actually, it is not illegal to download movies or TV series in Switzerland, but it is illegal to share them.

Of course when you use P2P apps, you inadvertedly share the material you're downloading...

A few days ago there was an article about this in the Swiss news papers regarding an 18 year old Swiss girl who downloaded AND shared thousands of movies and tunes. It was the sharing part which got her busted, and it was in the news for the simple fact that these "busts" are very rare in this country.

And do you have a reference to this in Swiss law?

As far as I know, Shinigami is correct . . . downloading here is not illegal, sharing is.

www.torrentz.com (probably the best site for tv shows, music, movies, games etc.)

you will also need to download this to download the files...
http://www.bittorrent.com/ (PC)

or Transmission for mac

I also agree. It is legal to download music and Tv programs. You're just not allowed to offer them for upload.

I couldn't be bothered to find any links but at the time it was widely reported.

The Swiss lawmakers feel we can't be expected to tell the difference between a legal and illegal download website.

Apologies, I was not aware of this exception in swiss law. I was speaking in general terms, not thinking of Switzerland, sorry. Mostly these will be illegal programmes anyway - i.e. the way they are made available online initially has been done with no legal right.
Anyway, I'll probably not say too much more since I don't know the swiss laws well, and let those that know the details comment further if needed.

So does anybody know what happened to this 'uploading girl', ie how she got busted, what is her probable outcome?

Ie did some IP-funpolice send an infringement notice to her ISP, was there more than 1 warning etc etc. Just curious. My German is not so good and I assume the news articles are only in German...

I've recently had almost 100% success in watching all my shows and movies streaming from the sites:

http://www.cuevana.tv/
http://www.seriesyonkis.com/ and
http://www.peliculasyonkis.com/

although the sites are in spanish, once you figure out how to navigate through, it's really simple (even to get spanish or english subtitles).

For the first one, you need to install a quick simple plugin, but that's pretty trivial.

For streaming through hulu, it's doable with the simple add on "mediahint" will allow for use of that site (and Pandora and netflix).

Happy watching!

Hi i use http://www.movie1k.so/ it's great but also http://www.movie2k.to/ its good for movies

I would like to download an episode of How I Met Your Mother in English. I won't be using my own computer so I need the site to be secure. Could someone please advise how to best do this? Thanks a million.