32Download TV episodes automatically with SickBeard

As TV and movie con­tent gradu­ally moves, kick­ing and scream­ing, onto the Inter­net, the demand for ways to man­age all the media we con­sume con­tin­ues to grow. Whilst the major­ity of TV is still not avail­able from legit­im­ate sources online, there are now some series which are, includ­ing Pion­eer One — a Bit­Tor­rent only TV series. Good lists of leg­al tor­rent pro­viders are avail­able from gigaom here and here. Pub­lic Domain Movie Tor­rents also provides links to movies which are now free of copy­right. In some jur­is­dic­tions it may also be con­sidered legit­im­ate to down­load con­tent you already own in anoth­er format, or to down­load con­tent instead of record­ing it on a set-top box. Either way, the time for improved auto­mat­ic down­load ser­vices is now here. Below I detail the easi­est way to auto­mat­ic­ally down­load TV epis­odes that I’ve dis­covered so far.Once upon a time there was TED (Tor­rent Epis­ode Down­load­er), but sadly TED has­n’t been updated for over a year and does­n’t func­tion very well any­more. There are a few oth­er Inter­net-PVR ser­vices, but each of them has lim­it­a­tions: Couch­Potato only down­loads movies; TVShows, Auto­mat­ic and Series are MacOS only; Nzb­Drone & Epis­ode but­ler only work with paid-for news­groups. Into this mix we can intro­duce Sick­Beard — an open­source mul­ti­plat­form sys­tem based on python. Sick­Beard is mainly focused on news­groups but sup­ports tor­rent sites too, and thanks to its open source nature there are mod­i­fied ver­sions with enhanced tor­rent site support.

The instruc­tions below are focused on a mod­i­fied ver­sion of Sick­Beard called Medusa which is only avail­able as python code. This will require installing python on your com­puter, but instruc­tions for that are included below. The instruc­tions are inten­ded for users of Win­dows, but large parts are prob­ably rel­ev­ant to oth­er plat­forms too. Finally, you will need a tor­rent cli­ent, this guide is based on uTor­rent and includes setup instructions

Update — Septem­ber 2014. The art­icle has been updated to reflect the change from Sick­beard alpha thePir­ate­Bay to SickRage

Stage 1: Install Python & libraries

1. Down­load Python 2 (not 3). Down­load either the Win­dows installer, or if you know you have 64bit win­dows install the Win­dows X86-64 installer.
2. Install python, using default settings
3. Down­load Chee­tah for Python
4. Extract Chee­tah
5. Open a com­mand prompt, switch to the folder you extrac­ted chee­tah to and run setup.py install
6. You can now remove the folder you extrac­ted Chee­tah to

Stage 2: Install SickRage

1. Down­load Medusa (using the but­ton which says “zip”)
2. Extract the zip file. If you are using Win­dows 7 or vista I recom­mend extract­ing to C:\Users\{your user­name}\Sick­Rage. If using Win­dows XP or earli­er it does­n’t really matter.
3. Run the file SickBeard.py
4. If everything is cor­rect the Sick­Rage admin inter­face will load in your browser at https://localhost:8081/home/. If you get a fire­wall prompt allow access.

Stage 3: Install uTorrent

1. Down­load uTor­rent and the latest WebUI
2. Install uTor­rent. Once it has loaded close it.
3. Rename the down­loaded webUI file to webui.zip and move it to %appdata%\uTorrent
4. Rerun uTor­rent and open Options: Preferences
5. Expand advanced with the + sign and select WebUI
6. Tick “Enable WebUI” and enter a user­name and password
7. Go to the con­nec­tion tab and make a note of the port used. Make sure “ran­dom­ise port each start” is disabled
8. Click ok, and min­im­ise uTorrent

Stage 4: Con­fig­ur­a­tion (Updated 30-Aug-2012)

1. Go back to the Sick­Rage admin inter­face in your browser (https://localhost:8081/home/).
2. Click on con­fig (the gears icon) and choose “search settings”.
3. Click on the “NZB Search” tab and untick “Search NZBs” if it is ticked.
4. Click on the “Tor­rent Search Tab” and tick “Search Torrents”.
5. For tor­rent meth­od select “uTor­rent”.
6. For “uTor­rent host” enter https://localhost:{uTor­rent port num­ber you noted earli­er}/
7. For the user­name and pass­word enter the details you choose for uTor­rent earlier.
8. Click save changes.
9. Click the Test Con­nec­tion but­ton — you should receive a mes­sage “Suc­cess: Con­nec­ted and Authenticated”.
10. Click on the “Search Pro­viders” button.
11. Tick ThePir­ate­Bay and drag it to the top of the list.
12. Untick the oth­ers — or leave them enabled if you wish to use them. I find some gen­er­ate errors so I don’t use them.
13. Click “save changes”.

Stage 5: Usage

1. You are now ready to use Sick­Rage as normal
2. To add TV shows go to Home: Add shows
3. You can add new shows or shows you already have epis­odes for — Sick­Rage will index them and use theT­VDB to work out which epis­odes are missing
4. There are lots of extra options — e.g. only search­ing for HD epis­odes, skip­ping epis­odes etc. To learn more you’ll have to experiment
5. Head to the offi­cial Sick­Rage site for the Wiki and Forums

Stage 6: Run­ning on start-up

1. You may well want to have Sick­Rage run on start-up — but its a python script — so it’s not as simple as usu­al. Here’s how…
2. Click on start and in the search bar type “task sched­uler” and press enter
3. Expand the Task Sched­uler Library
4. Click “Cre­ate Task”
5. Give your task a name — “Sick­Rage” is prob­ably a good one 🙂
6. Select “run wheth­er user is logged on or not”
7. Click on the “trig­gers” tab
8. Click “New”
9. Change the pull-down box at the top to “at star­tup” and click ok
10. Click the “actions” tab
11. Click “new”
12. In the program/script box type the path where you installed python fol­lowed by pythonw.exe (e.g. “C:\Program Files\Python\pythonw.exe” or “C:\Python27\pythonw.exe”)
13. In the add argu­ments box type the path to the SickBeard.py file (e.g “C:\Users\Jon\SickRage\SickBeard.py”)
14. Click ok
15. Click on the Set­tings tab
16. the 1^st, 3^rd and 5^th boxes should be ticked — the oth­ers unticked. I.e. “allow task to be run on demand”, “if task fails, restart…” and “if the run­ning task does not end when reques­ted force it to stop” should all be enabled
17. Change the “if task filas, restart every” value to 1 minute
18. Click the main OK button
19. If Sick­Rage is still run­ning in a com­mand win­dow close it by press­ing Control‑C
20. wait for it to close
21. Start the sched­uled task by select­ing it and choos­ing “run”
22. The status should change from “ready” to “run­ning”
23. Point your browser back to the admin page (https://localhost:8081/home/) to check that all is present and correct

Final troubleshoot­ing tip

• If you can­’t access the Sick­Rage web inter­face this is prob­ably because your sched­uled task is being blocked by win­dows firewall
• Either give pythonw.exe per­mis­sion manu­ally in win­dows fire­wall, OR run the fol­low­ing com­mand to run Sick­Rage once, and click approve on the fire­wall prompt
• "C:\Program files\Python\Pythonw" C:\Users\Jon\SickRage\SickBeard.py. You will need to adjust the paths to match your install­a­tion and username

Oth­er Use­ful Info

• For an altern­at­ive setup guide for Sick­Rage try this PDF which has been made of a google cache of a now-deceased site
• This guide should be used for legit­im­ate pur­poses only. Please check the laws in your jur­is­dic­tion and ensure you aren’t viol­at­ing any copy­right. Thanks.