Numerous websites offer free downloads of programs that uses P2P networking. A P2P or peer-to-peer file sharing is a way of transferring huge sizes of data over the internet. Although there is a so-called original distributor who is responsible for the original file, total dependence to this person or computer is greatly reduced. His beginning load of supplying a huge amount of data is lessened by other new recipients who also supply the smaller pieces of data themselves. The effect is a sharing pattern of data from one person or computer to another, hence the term peer to peer. There will be a cumulative aggregation of each of the recipient's bandwidth making data transfer, such as downloading, faster.

To begin downloading TV shows online, internet users browse certain torrent listing sites in the web to find the torrent they are looking for. They then download it making a torrent file. This file, in turn, will be opened by simply double-clicking. It will automatically be detected by torrent clients installed in the computer. These are the programs, which download the entire file. It is important not to confuse the torrent file from the actual file because the first is just referring to a "key file" to download the actual file, which is often a very huge file. Afterwards, the client [program] connects to the tracker indicated in the torrent file wherein a list of peers [computers or persons] is shown. They are the ones presently transferring smaller pieces of the files specified in the torrent. In the end, the user downloading the file connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces and the final file will soon be completed. Bandwidth speed also influences the data transfer rates making downloading either fast or slow. For broadband or cable internet users, this will not be a problem.

There are many torrent listing sites available via the internet. A torrent is one of the mechanisms to download these very in demand TV shows. Most of these sites utilizing this system only began operation after the year 2000. Since then, sites like these became one of the most popular ones to be used for this purpose. Not only does it allow downloading TV shows but also software, documents, music files and many other more. To top all of that, this method of downloading files is totally free. Torrent sites list a directory and at the same time, offer a search engine for many kinds of torrent files. Thus, finding your desired TV show is a breeze, quick and user friendly. An example of the popularity of these sites is the billions of downloads that had been made for each site. This is a very noteworthy figure knowing that most of these sites just operated for less than a decade.

The advantage of downloading TV shows online using this method is that visitors of torrent listing sites can anonymously upload torrents into the site, which is actually tracked by a "tracker." In addition, an individual's IP address is also not being logged by the site ensuring anonymity. It is also said that most torrent sites doesn't allow uploads of pornographic material, although other similar sites does this anyway. Moreover, those that claim to be pornography free also has some glitches of their own because some pornographic videos still get to be uploaded.