2.0b7: More HD Episodes, Menubar Icon and Bugfixes
Today we launched the 7th beta of TVShows 2.0, and it mostly contains bug fixes. We are happy to be getting pretty near the point to release a stable version and move on to more interesting things.
However, two major new features have been added: a new menubar icon and additional HD episodes. The first was long requested and it has basic functionality: providing feedback (that the app is doing something), checking for new episodes, opening the preference pane and disabling the app.
The second major feature is more interesting to explain. The way TVShows works now, ShowRSS is the only source for getting both episodes schedules and torrents. ShowRSS, in turn, gets all those torrents from EZTV, the most reliable scene team for TV shows.
This means that if EZTV does not release an episode, it cannot be downloaded using TVShows. And, sadly, EZTV does not release HD episodes for every show. So another solution must be developed to get additional torrents from other teams.
Now, TVShows 2.0b7 detects automatically if ShowRSS does not list any HD episode for a show, therefore looking for those torrents in Torrentz. Torrentz is a meta-search-engine for torrents that include results from trackers like The Pirate Bay. TVShows then gets the best available torrent for that search (more seeds/peers) and downloads the torrent from one of the listed trackers.
For the user, this means that an HD episode is downloaded transparently. In theory, this could derive in poor quality torrents, but in reality torrents have almost the same quality as EZTV releases. Until now, internal tests have reported no wrong-labelled torrent, and all of them have a lot of seeds/peers.
The only downsides are that a lot of these torrents are split into multiple rar files (little irritant but not a big deal), and that most late nights does not have any HD releases. To avoid missed episodes, if after three days of checking there is no HD release, TVShows will then download the SD release.
In any case, it is a big improvement over previous versions. Although there is room for tweaks, this approach almost guarantees that the best available HD torrent is downloaded. It works so well that I’m thinking of ditching EZTV/ShowRSS and using TheTVDB and Torrentz all the way, including SD episodes.
