VideoLAN – VLC media player is the one-stop solution supporting multiple audio and video formats be it MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, DivX, DVD, and a lot of other file formats. VLC is Free, Open Source and a cross-platform media player.

VLC can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. The interface is quite simple but if you dig more into it has a lot of extra features like Zoom, Crop screen size while watching videos. Extended setting like equalizers while playing audio files.

The current available version is 0.9.9 Being OpenSource its new versions with added features and fixes are released frequently. The version 1.0.0 is up for release early next week. The current stats on there homepage show : 4.2 downloads per second!

Interface can be changed using skins available here. Also New skins can be designed using the skin Editor .Its a must have media player. Download here.

There is no need for all PEERS to be connected to the original SEED/Distributor which reduces the distrubutor’s hardware and bandwidth costs a lot. For this reason BitTorrent is extremely efficient. Only one SEED is required to begin spreading the files to many users (PEERS).

But how do Peers know where the files are in the swarm/network of peers? Using Torrents, it contains the location/information about the data/files being downloaded from the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network.

The more the popular the files are, the more the people you can download it from, resulting in an increased chance of finishing the downloads at a faster rate/speed.

To download using torrents, you need a BitTotrrent client/software like uTorrent, Azureus etc. These programs enable you to connect to other PEERS. One of the best available clients is uTorrent (MicroTorrent). It’s a very small fully featured BitTorrent client. Has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn’t available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them! Download it and install on your computer.

Once installed all you need to do is find the torrent of your desired file (Movies, Games, softwares etc.). You can use a torrents search engine Torrentz to find the torrent of your desired file.

Once the desired torrent is found check for its health (i.e. check for the number if SEEDS/PEERS, more is the number of SEEDS and PEERS, more is the chance to get a healthy faster download). Download the torrent file and open it using uTorrent, choose the location where you want to save the file you intend to download.

And that’s it you will start downloading the file. Minimize the uTorrent and it will keep on downloading the file in the background. You can check the download status of your file. Downloads can be queued, stopped, paused and previewed.

Once the download is finished it will show 100%. After that you can open the folder where you have saved the file and use it.