The VideoLAN Forums

shovel95 checkin in! i'm a newbie here, and basically a newbie to downloading movies from utorrent and then watching the on VLC. Mucho props to the folks that made this app. It plays just about anything out there which is cool. its cool to see apps out there aren't necessarily "prejudiced" towards either windows or mac; some folks out there just like to have --please stay polite-- that works, and covers all the bases. KUDOS VLC!

My question isn't directly towards VLC, but maybe some one knows enough to help me out? (apologies if this is taboo here, just let me know and i wont do it again)

I'm a uTorrent user and recently upgraded my internet connection of 1.5 to 5 mbs. In the beginning was downloading/downloading at and avg of 90 to 100 kbs and after the upgrade to 5 mbs it went up to 500-600 kbs. Although that's a nice difference, it's not even close to the 5 mbs.

So I checked my speeds at speed test. net and my internet connection test came in at 4.8. Close enough for me. Ay this point in my journey I came to the conclusion that my slow download performance was limited by things out of my control, and begin surfing for some "fee based" options, and theres a lot of guys out there boasting super fast downloads.

Im using Lease torrent now. Yes I'm downloading movies at 2-3 gbs tops. I would say on avg about 1.5 to 2 gbs. Thats great, but I NOW have to download them from the leasetorrent/utorrent servers, and with a 3rd party ftp retriever program. The best speed for ftp downloads i've been able to get is an avg of 60kbs. AND, it now costs me about $30 a month. I figured with the increased speeds its worth it, but the fact is I've only got a couple movies for my troubles. And no help from customer support.

Its agonizing...i find myself staring at the computer screen with a six pack of beers as the bytes slowly sloooowly come ticking in. tic...tic...tic.... So I wake up the next morning with a spilled beer in my lap, and the f***ing movie still ins't downloaded Server timeout or something like that!

Here's where my technical prowess and -- please stay polite -- geek-ness comes to a screeching halt. DOH! And maybe the beginning stages of a drinking problem???

Is anyone here will to impart some FTP settings wisdom my way so I can curl up with my blankie and a six pack and watch Cowboys and Aliens?

I'm over my head now and instead of watching porn and Aliens I'm blankly staring into a computer screen, experimenting with settings, (making it even worse) and this is what my relaxing evenings have consisted of lately, And it usually ends with me screaming at the computer screen in a drunken rage. And no movies.

Tomorrow I'm going to see my doctor and i'll probably find myself at the pharmacy fulfilling my new prozac prescription.

I'm running out of options and find myself here, basically an unrelated forum, asking stupid questions. Just some settings and/ or suggestions related to getting fast downloads, PLEASE......

Or should I switch from beer to weed?

FIrst, you should.

Then, maybe it is not you who is slow, but the servers.

quick clarification. 500-600kbs is the same as 5mbs or better. the 5mbs is 5 mega-bits per second. the 500-600kbs is kilo-bytes per second. Allowing for protocol checksums and such like, it takes approximately 10bits transmitted over the network link for 1 byte of received (useful) data.
ie.

x bits per second link data speed = x/10 bytes max throughput speed
It should be noted that some servers implement bandwidth throttling to limit how fast an individual ip address can download data.

The problem here is sloppiness; standards are there for a reason. Lower case b stands for bit, upper case B stands for byte.
By the way - not important in the context - m stands for milli- (1/1000), for mega, use M.

Ah you beat me to it detlef. I remember when I got my first 1Mb internet thinking 1 Megabyte Per Second internet here we go..... oh it's only 128Kb/s