The blog for ST:Continues has wrapped up: http://www.startrekcontinues.com/blog.html
All 11 episodes on 4 discs are available for download (bit torrent). DVD available now, Blu-Ray later. Artwork for all episodes too.
http://www.startrekcontinues.com/downloads.html
Torrent hash for 4-in-1 DVDs (16GB): af67f36e3ac185fa5010663ff85db48382b9c66c
The Blu-Rays are out too. DVDs are 4GB and BDs 22 GB. The BD ISOs are multi-part zips, [which is pointless because bittorrent already compresses].
share"[which is pointless because bittorrent already compresses]"
It's pointless, but not because BitTorrent compresses (it doesn't), but because BD-compliant video files (and nearly all video files in general) are already compressed (e.g., MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1), and zipping them won't make them significantly smaller. For example, I just did a quick test with a small AVC-encoded video file, and Windows rounds the size of the original and the zipped one to 1.54 GB. The precise file sizes are:
Original - 1,659,858,843 bytes
Zipped - 1,657,878,075 bytes
So the zipped file is smaller, but only by about 2 MB.
Multi-part Zips for movies are normally only used when they are being uploaded to a place that has an individual file-size limit, such as binary newsgroups and various "RapidShare" type sites. They don't make any sense for torrents.
From a private tracker message board:
Some torrents are split archives because of how things operate at the top of the Scene chain, where release groups use FTP sites to distribute files. Scene groups use RAR or ZIP archives not for compression, but because archives can be split.
The reason Scene groups split their releases in RARs, according to scene rules, is because it allows for much faster distribution. Part of it comes from the days of dial-up internet, where large downloads could fail often. Having a bunch of small files to download lowered the risk of a failed download. If it failed on one RAR part, it was much easier to redownload that and finish the whole release, as opposed to having a full one-file download fail halfway through.
The other reason is because how FTP top/trade sites work.
Racers are people who have access to different FTP (top)sites and use scripts to spread releases among them. They have bots/scripts set up in mIRC that monitor all the FTP directories. As soon as a new release is added, the script will trigger the 'racing': instantly transferring the release to the other FTP sites.
There are a bunch of racers. If a file is already being copied, the script will skip it. So if you had one big 10GB file, then only the first racer would start copying the file from FTP A to FTP B. All other scripts would see they've been beaten so they skip. The transfer of the release would then take however long it takes for this one connection to complete the transfer.
Now if that same 10GB file is split in 100 RARs, you suddenly have tons of racers who are able to transfer parts. Racer 1 starts uploading the first RAR, the second racer's script detects it's already being transferred so it skips to the second RAR and so on and so on. Now you have a bunch of racers transferring parts of the release simultaneously. The transfer time of this release will now be 100 times* faster, literally completing in mere seconds. (*simplified)
It's become common practice among most torrent sites to unpack the release before creating the torrent, but some private trackers still keep the RARs, simply because it's faster. Those trackers usually have a "seconds from pre" indicator to showboat just how fast after its initial release they were able to get it on their tracker.
Official YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhvh2eq-XLgqNxH6npvQxGxLCUHy90IpZ
Recoded blu-rays to 13 MKV 720p, just 2.1GB:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F54D63B3840D79591F46DC0CA6F668762DF50980&dn=Star.Trek.Continues.S01.COMPLETE.720p.BluRay.x264-GalaxyTV%5BTGx%5D