Please help a newbie

hi everyone. i\\\'m sort of new to the concept of torrents. i've been
downloading torrents for my favorite tv shows that i miss or that directtv
doesn 't carry like the cw. i use utorrent.

i noticed the best torrents were all marked [eztv] - then i found this site.
however, i've not been able to have any luck downloading the torrents listed
here. every time i start a download it never gets going.

it says there are lots of seeds, hundreds or thousands usually, but the
downloads just sit there.

other times with torrents from torrentspy or isohunt, etc - my downloads are
fast, 200-300 kb/sec and hour long tv shows finish in 15 or 20 minutes. they
always start slow but build up faster in speed.

none of the grey's anatomy torrents from here i tried worked. they say
they're downloading but never get going. they all have red arrows on the side
and the download speed is .4k - 1.0k. it says the tracker is offline?

i know very little about sharing, seeds, peers etc. i don't expect a very
fast download since i don\'t keep the stuff i download very long to upload
back to others. but in 24 hours, it should download a 42 minute show,
shouldn't it?

i read about port forwarding (which i've never done) i have a confusing
network at home, 3 pc's, 1 laptop, 1 network printer/scanner. i can't use
static ip's right, at least i tried once to do it and messed up my internet
connection.

can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

thanks in advance.

1. if theres a red arrow, that means u cant connect to the tracker. (this is
explained in the utorrent faq).

2. static ips dont mess up ur network, if u configure ur network correctly.

3. if u cant connect to the tracker, there are many reasons why not. however,
utorrent tells u the exact reason why u cant connect in the general torrent
information window under "tracker status". this is explained in the utorrent
faq. most likely ur ip has been shitlisted, and if u got a static ip, thats the
end of the line for u.

4. u should share every torrent to a ratio of 1 (0.7 at least) best way to do
this, is seeding while ure asleep or watching all the episodes u recently leeched.

read the: slad's tracker situation

it explains why some of the eztv stuff is not dling at the moment.

also try dht (not sure if utorrent has it, or how to use it with them as i
don't use that programme), it means the tracker can be down and you can still
connect to seeds/peers.

dht is ticked on as standard on utorrent etc, isn't it?

anyway, the tracker sitch isn't perm. it sorts itself out when the swarm who
grab and run have...well, grabbed and run.

yes, dht is on by standard in utorrent.

i also have to say, ive never had any problems downloading or seeding, and i
leech almost everything released here. my average speed is 300kbps on really
slow days.... and many of my friends had similar experiences. most of the time,
when someone is bitching about speeds, its a shotty network-config, and not the
torrent network that limits the speeds.