On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 16:29:49 +0900, "mr.sumo.snr"
<llanelli14NOSPAM@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> As someone who will be heading (back) to Tokyo in the fall and who doesn't
>> particularly want to leave American TV behind completely, what do people
>> recommend as the best way of accessing your favorite shows? If I can avoid
>> having to rely on parents or friends to record things, that would be
>ideal.

>> Jeff

>For TV only?

>These two sites cover all my bases http://suprnova.org/ and
>http://tvt.milfclan.com/

>A bittorrent client.

>A speedy internet connection - ADSL 25 mb at least but if you're going to be
>living in your own house invest in B-flets (it needs a hole drilled in the
>wall - a small hole!).

>A DVD-burner for your PC (8-speed machines are around 15000yen).  About as
>cost-effective a storage method as external hard disks PLUS you can raid the
>local DVD rental shops.

P2P scares me. I have been avoiding Torrent/Kazaa/WinMX as much as
possible since the Japanese decided they had to start making example
arrests some months back.

Instead I got a $39.95 for 3 months high speed, unlimited download
subscription to Usenetserver: http://www.usenetserver.com/index.php

For this price you get access to all the binary newsgroups you'll ever
need (text too of course). Alt.binaries.multimedia is the one-stop
shop for TV shows. I downloaded every episode of Sopranos this season
in widescreen HDTV (Xvid).

I agree on the broadband. B-Flets Family 100 FTTH is doing the job for
me. I can also get DVD-R images from alt.binaries.dvdr in under an
hour (4.7Gb). With Usenetserver you get up to 6 concurrent connections
at 2MB/sec cap each. The throughput is excellent to Japan and as
mentioned previously there is no download limit.

I also think a DVD burner is essential equipment. I picked up a Teac
DV-W58D DVD+-R 8x writer for about 12,000 yen a few months back. It's
an OEM version of the Pioneer 107. They're even cheaper now although
the 8x media is the hardest thing to find. If you're really into the
speed burning you can always find hacked firmwares that will allow you
to burn any media at top speed: http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

Raj