What is bittorrent? How does it work?

Bittorrent is one the most efficient file sharing protocol. In order for bittorent work effectively, a bittorent client, tracker and a torrent file is needed. A torrent file is a small file (with the extension .torrent) containing the information necessary allowing your bittorrent client to connect to the tracker. A tracker is basically a small (or large) server containing information about peers and what files are being downloaded. Tracker itself do not host the files. In bittorent, files are divided into smaller chunks. You upload you have downloaded, thus makes the file transfer faster than other p2p network. Files or part of files are not download in continuous manner. That's why in most cases, you will need to finish download 100% before you can watch the video.

What is a seeder? What is leecher?

A seeder is the one who has the complete file and sharing it(meaning keeping the torrent window open after finish downloading). Leecher is the one is downloading the file and uploading what he/she downloaded. Remember, your downloading speed is proportional to your uploading speed.

Are there any other good bittorent client other than official client?

There are many good bittorent clients out there. We recommend you use Bitornado, Azureus, and ABC client. Some of the well-known clients that are banned from many trackers are Shareaza, G3torrent, BT++. The reason for being banned are these clients either send too much bad data, or leeching clients. It is also recommended you always keep your bittorrent client up to date.

Is this site a tracker or torrent listing site?

All the torrents are seeded by people from this site. This site uses multiple trackers to decrease load thus the torrent are listed on a page instead of directing to a tracker. Occasionally, some of the torrents would use public tracker instead, due to the fact those torrents attract good amount of leechers.

What is a OVA or OAV? What's the difference between OVA and TV?

OVA stands for original video animation. And OAV stands for Original animated video. Both of these terms means the same thing and can be used interchangably. OVA is most commonly used. Series are usually shown on TV in Japan before they become available on video and DVDs. OVA are usually shorter than series, not shown on TV and comes directed out on videos and dvds.

Why do you combine too many episodes in one large torrent instead of breaking into smaller ones? How can I download certain episodes from a batch?

The number of episodes combined in a single torrent is decided by the person uploading. The reason for a larger torrent is that it has higher chance to being stay seeded than smaller torrent. You can use client like Bitornado to choose to download certain episodes from a batch, or make some episodes to download first before others. Please, use this method when you really don't have the option to the download the entire batch (i.e. you've limited monthly bandwidth) else it make your download insanley slow if everyone start doing this.

If there is no seed, will I able to finish downloading it? How to check the number of seeds on the torrent page?

In many cases no but this isn't always the case. If the torrent file have been distributed at least once before, there is a possibility no seed is required. A easy to check is this with client such as Azureus/Bitornado where it tells the number of distributed copy of the file. If the number of distributed copy is atleast one or higher, then you can finish downloading without any seeds.

What's the difference between a DVD Ripper, and a Fansubber ?

It a very common mistake among anime fans calling a dvd-ripper a fansubber. Dvd rippers merely takes the official dvds(mostly R1), encodes in a more convenient format with official subtitles. They neither translate nor time/edit. Dvd ripping is mostly one person job(some cases, they might ask someone else to check the quality of their encodes). Most dvd rippers group consists of mulitple encoders.

Fansubbing is a much more time consuming project. The initial purpose of fansub was to introduce Japanene animated media to foreigner which otherwise won't be accessible or understandable. Fansubber usually take an anime... translates, time, edit, encode, add Karaoke/style and finally Quality Check it. This anime usually isn't available with official eng sub(thus the purpose of a fansub). Majority of cases,a fansub group consists of mutliple people.. 1 person fansub group seem to vanish very fast/ do a poor quality job.