TVShows 2

2.0b12: Magnets (Benvenuto, Italia!) and Bug Fixes

New season has begun and a new beta is needed. There are two important bug fixes in this one: the app didn’t automatically update the show list in the background, and Leopard users suffer from crashes when adding shows. Other minor bugs has also been fixed, so the app will now be more reliable when searching for episodes.

The only new feature is the support for Magnet links, an optional feature for users from countries where The Pirate Bay has been blocked or banned, such as Italy*, Denmark or Malaysia. With these magnets links you can download any of our preset shows (all of them are from TPB), and also any custom RSS that supports it. If you mark this option, please unmark the Use additional sources for HD because that option may need to have access to the TPB.

In other news, the only source that TVShows is using right now is… our website. Given that third party sources were very unreliable, this ensures that, if something goes wrong, at least we can fix it. This approach consists of a cached Yahoo! Pipe fetching The Pirate Bay, something already used for custom RSS but now much more improved and reliable. However, your TVShows may have downloaded unwanted files, but now the system is polished so that should not happen any more.

The very good news is that, now, we can add almost any show we want. This curated list contains currently more than 350 airing shows, but if you want us to add any other show (available in The Pirate Bay) send us an email to support@tvshowsapp.com.

As always, we have to thank all our translators for their fantastic job, updating every language and adding full translations in Greek and Slovenian. You can wait for the app to update itself or you can download it right away from our website.

* This feature has nothing to do with my upcoming trip to Italy.

All sources down: refresh your showlist

One of the first things that I wanted to do with TVShows is adding more sources so it would be more robust. Previous TVShows betas only looked at ShowRSS, a wonderful service but sometimes it was off or not updated. So I added EZRSS, Hamsterpit, and a certain Yahoo! Pipe to the mix, giving a much smoother experience.

This week all four sources became unavailable. EZRSS has been three weeks completely off the grid, Hamsterpit’s service was terminated some days ago (because of the heavy load we caused them), ShowRSS is down since yesterday and Yahoo Pipes received too many requests so they are not accessible anymore.

Great.

Today a solution was needed so in a fresh start I build a quick proxy that connects to Yahoo! Pipes, processes The Pirate Bay searches and caches them so the Yahoo! request limits are respected. This is a temporal solution, but for the time being it is working kind of great and it is transparent to all users. Since only one web is checked, the response time it is much much faster. I am still searching for other alternatives though, like BitSnoop.

However, this does not solve all problems, since the EZTV has not released most of the popular shows aired in the last few days. So if you are waiting like me for Futurama, Suits, Wilfred or Louie you’ll have to wait a little more or download them manually. Other shows released by VTV are available, like Burn Notice. In more good news, Damages is back. If you find a show with no episodes, please contact with us so we can fix it.

You don’t have to do anything to update the show list, your copy of TVShows should automatically refresh the show list in a few days. But if you want this update now go to the “Add Show” window and click on the refresh button (bottom left corner).

Cómo añadir un RSS personalizado a TVShows

(This is a Spanish translation of this English post)

En ocasiones la lista predefinida de TVShows se vuelve demasiado corta, ya sea porque queremos añadir una serie no soportada, una serie en español o usar solamente torrents de un tracker privado. Todo eso es posible gracias a una de las novedades clave de la última beta, el soporte para añadir RSS personalizados. Este proceso no es nada complicado, así que vamos a explicarlo detalladamente.

La manera más directa de realizar esto es usar The Pirate Bay y, dado que no soportan feeds de búsqueda, Yahoo! Pipes. Pongamos que queremos añadir Crematorio, una serie no publicada por EZTV y por tanto no disponible en nuestra lista de series predefinidas. Así que vamos a The Pirate Bay y buscamos esta serie:

Fijémonos brevemente en esos resultados. A partir de la lista, es obvio que el único usuario que ha ido publicando torrents al ritmo de emisión es hero14. Es importante darse cuenta de que estos episodios no están en HD.

El siguiente paso consiste en visitar esta Yahoo! Pipe. En el campo Search torrents containing: escribe el nombre de la serie, en este caso Crematorio. Y en el campo TPB User: escribe el nombre del usuario, en este caso hero14 (no hay distinción entre mayúsculas y minúsculas). Haz click en Run Pipe, comprueba que los resultados son correctos y copia el enlace de Get as RSS.

En este punto ya tenemos todo lo que necesitamos, así que vayamos a la aplicación TVShows. Haz click en Añadir RSS pers. y aparecerá un nuevo formulario. En Enlaces al feed: pega la dirección que acabas de copiar. Entonces rellena el nombre de la serie, en este caso Crematorio (se autocompletará cuando la lista de episodios se descargue).

Opcionalmente, puedes indicar la id en TVDB para esa serie, visitando TheTVDB y copiando la id desde la dirección de esa serie. También puedes añadir filtros personalizados, pero en este caso nada de eso es necesario. Una cosa muy importante que comprobar es desmarcar la opción HD si el feed no tiene episodios en HD, o viceversa. Si lo dejas marcado y no hay versión en HD, la aplicación aún intentará encontrarla usando Torrentz, y eso puede ser bueno o malo para esa serie, depende.

Haz click en Subscribir y ya has terminado. Olvídate de la serie porque desde ahora cualquier nuevo episodio se descargará automáticamente de manera similar a una serie predefinida. Tendrás una bonita carátula para esa serie y podrás editarla después para cambiar, por ejemplo, el nombre de la serie, o para añadir un feed adicional a la suscripción.

Cuando realices esto un par de veces, descubrirás que puedes añadir cualquier serie a TVShows en dos minutos.

How to add a Custom RSS to TVShows

Sometimes the preset show list in TVShows turns to be too limited, maybe because we want to add an unsupported show, to add a show dubbed in other languages or to use exclusively torrents from a private tracker. All of these is possible thanks to one of the key features of the latest beta, the Custom RSS support. This process is quite easy, so let’s explain it in detail.

The most straightforward way to do this is by using The Pirate Bay and, because they do not support search feeds, Yahoo! Pipes. Let’s say we want to add Army Wives, a show not released by EZTV and therefore not in our preset show list. So we go to The Pirate Bay and search for this show:

Let’s look briefly at those results. From the list, it’s clear that the user with most peers is TvTeam, so that’s the one we want to get. It is important to notice that these are not HD versions (those are released by sceneline) and that they are released one by one just after they are aired.

The next step is visiting this Yahoo! Pipe. In the Search torrents containing: field write the show name, in this case Army Wives. And in the TPB User: field write the name of the user, in this case TvTeam (this is case insensitive). Click on Run Pipe, check that the results are correct and copy the link from Get as RSS.

At this point we have everything we need, so let’s go to the TVShows app. Click on Add Custom RSS and a new form will appear. In the Feed URLs: paste the one you just copied. Then fill a show name, in this case Army Wives (it will be auto-completed once the episode list is downloaded).

Optionally, put the TVDB id for that show, by visiting TheTVDB and copying the id from the URL of that show. Also, you can add custom filters, but in this case none of that is needed. One thing very important to check is to unmark the HD option if the feed does not have HD episodes, or viceversa. If you mark it and there is no HD release, the application will still search for it using Torrentz, and that may be good or bad for that show, it depends.

So click on Subscribe and you are done. Forget about it because from now on any new episode will be automatically downloaded just as any preset show. You should have a nice cover for that show and you can edit it afterwards to change, for example, the show name, or to add an additional feeds to that subscription. Once you do this a couple of times, you’ll find it that you can add any show in two minutes.