How long should it take?

to download a 30 minute or 60 minute show with cable connection speed of 256.
it takes me 3 hours for a south park episode and 5-6 hrs. for say an episode of
lost. is this normal? how can i make it faster? thanks for any help.

well it all depends on alot of factors. firstly on how many seeders. if the
torrent just got posted it's gonna go slower because not a lot of ppl have
enough of the file downloaded to be able to seed it.
it can also depend on your connection. if you're behind a router or firewall
make sure to open the ports needed.
also since you're on a cable connection of only 256. if you're in a city where a
lot of your neighbours use the same service provider, you're all sharing the
same connection so it will be slower during prime time.
with a 256 megs connection the fastest your torrents will go at best would be
aprox 40-50 kb/s, that would take about 2-3 hours to get.

if you're a big downloader, you should consider getting high speed at 3megs. it
should go around 100-250 if it's a good seeding download. i downloaded lost this
morning and it took about 30-40 mins.

gissy, thanks for the information. i guess my biggest problem is downloading
shows that have been out awhile. i tried to download an episode of the showtime
series brotherhood and it took an entire day, so i guess at my connection speed
there is no way of making that faster. my firewall and eveything is off.

go read the entire faq over at the utorrent site... from top to bottom..
http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php
even if you dont use utorrent as your client, the faq is so comprehensive that
you will gain insight into the details and intricacies of the kinds of setting
you need to tweak just right to eek out a little extra speed..

dont just set your maximum speeds to unlimited.. it will choke your pipe..
and don't just trust the advertized speed your isp tells you you have...
go to a speed test site, and actually test for your "true" maximum download and
upload speeds... they are different for everybody..
then in your bt client, set your global maximum speeds at just under your true
maximum speed... like about 75%-80%.. that leaves your connection room to
breathe so that it wont choke and lose packets..

also set your number of global maximum connections according to your true
speed... for a 256, it should probably about 55-65 connections.. maybe!..

at that speed, i would leave dht turned off, until you come across a tracker
that is down... dht will overswarm you with too many connections all at once..

turning off a firewall is not the same thing as forwarding ports if you have a
router... if you have a router, read up at http://portforward.com

there are plenty of other settings that should be tweaked...
seriously... read the faq... learn what the details mean... dont just rely on
other people (even me) to simply tell you what settings to alter..