Television programs have come a far, far way over the last several years. Premium channels like HBO and Showtime have paved the way for some of the finest, most original, and most entertaining television to ever grace a cathode ray tube or LCD pixel. Dexter, Six Feet Under, Oz, Carnivale, Californication, The Sopranos… my god, the list goes on for miles. Even stations like ABC, NBC and CBS have jumped on board and offered some amazing programming as of late. Though we still have to deal with a gag-inducing overabundance of so-called “reality” television, for every “Bachelorette” and “American Idol” there is a “Lost”, “Life on Mars” or “Fringe” balancing out the spectrum.

However, for those like myself that are looking to get rid of their heinously enormous cable television bills, we must find ways to enjoy this content without breaking the bank and not limiting ourselves to watching everything on Hulu. One of the most obvious ways to do so is by using a neat-o little thing called Bit Torrent. But when you’re as freaking lazy as I am, how the hell do you keep track of what shows are on when, which is the newest episode and which sites offer the best seeded files? Jesus, I can’t be sitting around doing searches all day! How do you get this done without it cutting into my beloved pr0n watching time?

The Torrent Episode Downloader (ted), that’s how. The concept is simple… and the overall execution is simply awesome. A single program that keeps track of the shows you want to download on a regular basis, and does the tedious torrent searching so you don’t have to. Pre-packaged with a huge list of shows to choose from, getting things up and running is incredibly easy. Simply install, add the show you want to keep an eye out for, and ted does the rest. Using the Epguides.com database to figure out when the next episode will be aired and subsequently ripped and uploaded by our friends in torrent-land, ted searches a large number of torrent websites to find the best matches to your specific set of filters and restrictions which can be set to a per-show basis. If it finds a new episode of one of the shows it’s tracking, it will automatically pop it up in your default torrent program so you can get downloading asap!

Adding a new show to watch that isn’t on ted’s pre-packaged list is a snap as well. Simply choose “Add Custom Show” from the Add Show dialog, type the name of the show, add some rss feeds from some of the leading torrent sites (which ted thankfully adds the needed keywords into to automatically search for your specific show), add a few filters for minimum and maximum filesize as well as minimum seeders, and you’re all set! Sit back and let ted do the rest!

One of the nicest features of ted is you can also search for past episodes of any show as well… just click “Choose from Available Episodes” in the Edit Show window. It will use Epguides listing for that show’s seasons to list out every episode in sequential order and show how many torrents are available for each episode that match your size and seed filters.

With ted, there’s no more manually searching through results on multiple torrent websites to find the newest episodes of your favorite television shows. You can now focus all of your time and effort on finding that perfect celebrity nipple slip pic or the rightful predecessor to 2 girls 1 cup! For a quick runthrough on how the program works in a more visually entertaining format (now with 200% more cow awesomeness!), check out the video tutorial below which was provided by the developers themselves:

For more info and to download ted, visit www.ted.nu.