Where do you find LEGAL downloadable "tv" content?

[GollyJer]

I was recently reprimanded by Opus4 (Andy) for the second time because of an answer I wrote in these forums that referenced downloaded TV content. Andy is under the impression there are no legal sources for downloaded TV shows. This perspective is pretty old school as there are many places to download legal TV these days. The real mistake may be referring to these downloads as TV. The stuff isn't really "TV" if your definition is "distributed by your cable company" or "owned by a major network content provider". Non-the-less there are many places to download TV-like content online and I love importing this stuff into Sage as if it's simply a recording.

My favorite is HD Nation on Revision 3. Here's a link to their RSS feed which includes the full HD episode download.
http://revision3.com/hdnation/feed/MP4-High-Definition ALL Revision 3 "TV" shows have full episode download feeds.

Also, youtorrent is a great place to download legal "TV" content.

It seems we need a way to discuss download-able TV content and our use of it in Sage without making the assumption that we're discussing illegal downloads.

Should we reference it with a different word besides TV? I can't think of a good one. Please post some places where you legally download "non-network or cable distributed TV content" to let Sage know it's out there in 2011. Also, maybe we can come up with a simple term for this type of download besides TV?

[Opus4]

This has been handled via PM, as usual, but since you wanted a discussion about it... the post in question was specifically referring to downloaded TV shows to replace missed recordings, with a copyrighted show mentioned. I can't allow that. I still know of no legal source to download copyrighted network TV shows of the type that most people are referring to when they post that they've missed a recording and want to know how they can get a copy and/or how they can get metadata for the copy they've downloaded. Copyrighted material means that the owner of the copyright gets to decide how their product gets copied, not us. Talk of any copyright violation should not be included on this forum because this forum is owned and run by SageTV & I don't think that SageTV should have any appearance of condoning copyright violations.

Many network shows can be viewed on the network's (or content creator's) website, or may be available via something like hulu/playon, but those sources only allow viewing the show streamed. They state that the streamed content is not allowed to be saved, so these are still not legal sources for downloading and saving the shows.

Something like HD Nation is different, as far as I know, since they make their videos available via podcast, which is even included in SageTV's online videos.

- Andy

[eric3a]

I don't want to thread difficult territory here, but I routinely download various programs from MSNBC's website when I travel and as far as I can tell not only is it completely legal, MSNBC actually encourages us to do so:

On the go? Take NBC News and MSNBC with you. Get your favorite news programming automatically downloaded to your PC or portable media player. Msnbc.com brings you free video and audio podcasts from NBC News, MSNBC TV and msnbc.com. Choose from the list of available shows below.

I used to use an RSS aggregator, but find that manual downloads just work better when traveling a lot.

A lot of these programs are SageTv favorites.
On the rare occasion SageTV misses one of these favorites, I just use the metadata tools to make it appear as a Sage recording in the normal place so my wife finds it where we're used to.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8132577/

Eric

[Opus4]

Those are podcasts of those news shows; again, SageTV's online videos section provides access to several such podcasts.

- Andy

[eric3a]

Indeed.
It's just a question of WAF for me really. She never goes to the online section, so using the metadata tools to have podcasts show under normal recordings makes life easier.
Eric