For codecs I find the Kazaa Lite and Nimo codec packs can handle most everything, but you still need the newest DivX, and the Xvid codec. I deleted an episode of Piano before I realized I could have just downloaded the newest DivX codec. If you add in questions of processing speed–a big deal with recovering and repairing damaged archives–you realize why so many people write into the various newsgroups begging for guidance. I don’t care how many times you ask (even nicely) to post it as an MPEG or QuickTime or whatever, nine times out of 10 people say "no"–if they even reply.
While I’m here, I should mention binary decoders, because if you have any hope of watching anything from newsgroups you will have to deal with them. Get TMPGEnc, and voila–it’s an MPEG 1 or 2 and you have your VCD/DVD. (With VCDEasy you can do your SVCD just as simply, but I’m not even talking about that.) Unless you just want to do Torrents or p2p–and, by the way, pretty much all software on the p2p will come as an archive–you will learn to use binary decoders. WinZip, WinRAR, WinMagic WinAce–I’ve used them all. I mainly use Winrar, because it handles most of the other files, no problem. Use Smartpar or FSRaid and with very, very basic understanding of binary decoders, the world of newsgroups is yours.
On to the videos I’ve gotten lately.
Most recently I’ve been getting things from Torrents with a lot of success. Last night, I downloaded the You’re Under Arrest! episode that takes place in America. It was interesting to watch sexy Japanese traffic cops with shotguns bust a stolen-car ring somewhere in the U.S. Amusing, yes; clearly inexplicable, yes as well. I then grabbed an episode of The Candidate for Goddess, which clearly takes its cues from Evangelion, a massive influence on the anime world, including such series as RahXephon and Escaflowne. They may not have intentionally copied it, but at this point all mecha shows will be judged by it (and, of course Gundam).
Doom9.net has plenty of software that can help with codecs, synch problems and many, many downloading problems.
