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BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a method of sharing stuff by breaking it up into hundreds of pieces. Everyone interested in the thing has some or all of the pieces, so instead of downloading everything from one place, BitTorrent downloads pieces from everyone else, to build a complete copy on your computer. At the same time, you automatically share the pieces you have with everyone else.

This is efficient because it doesn't put a strain on anyone. Unfortunately for copyright holders, it also means nobody in particular is to blame for sharing illegal copies except the pirate who introduced the first copy. Or rather, there are too many people to blame at once. BitTorrent itself is just a technology, so it's not illegal.

Software
There are many different BitTorrent programs ("clients"). Two of the most respected are Azureus and uTorrent. Azureus runs on Java (meaning you also need to install Java).

uTorrent: www.utorrent.com
Azureus: azureus.sourceforge.net (Java: java.com) (wiki: www.azureuswiki.com)

Others can be found by searching for "bittorrent client". BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen offers a client of his own just called "BitTorrent", but the others are better.

Trackers
To get on to a torrent, you need to click a link to it, generally from a "torrent tracker" website. There are public (free) and private (paid) trackers. You use them as search engines to find what you want to download. They are often targeted in music and movie industry lawsuits, so they tend to come and go.

The biggest one currently is Torrentspy www.torrentspy.com
A good up-and-coming one is BTjunkie: www.btjunkie.org
More trackers: comparebt.blogspot.com

Speed
Downloading a torrent starts off slow and builds up speed by finding more and more people to download pieces from. But the speed only picks up if your port forwarding is set properly.

Port Forwarding
This is the hard part where many people fail to set up BitTorrent properly. As a result, they only get very slow speeds (e.g. 2Kb/s instead of 150Kb/s) and come away thinking BitTorrent is slow.

Basically you need to tell your ADSL modem/router to unblock an imaginary hole in something called a NAT firewall (which exists in all modem/routers). In uTorrent and Azureus, you choose a port number for torrents to use, then open that port number in your modem/router. For safety's sake, it must be a number within the range specified by the torrent program. These days it is best to avoid 6881-6889, which used to be the standard port range for torrents.

Site with port forwarding instructions for all models of modem/router: www.portforward.com
Check whether a port is forwarded: www.canyouseeme.org
Help with NAT problems in Azureus: www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/NAT_problem

Quality control
Trackers like Torrentspy and Btjunkie (and Azureus itself) allow users to leave a comment for each other about the quality of the video, audio and download speed. Also whether there are any viruses or if it's a fake download. Unfortunately, new users or anti-torrent groups tend to spread panic like "it's fake! It's got a virus" when there's actually nothing wrong with it. To get a general idea of the quality and safety of the download, you need to work out the general gist of the comments from experienced users.

If a torrent has a real problem, it will often be "nuked" (marked for deletion) by the person who started it. But because it's spread across the Internet, it's still possible to download. If you see the word "nuked" in a torrent name, avoid it.

Selecting a torrent
For a faster, more reliable download, you want a torrent with as many seeds (complete copies) and leechers (downloaders like you) as possible. In tracker search results, torrents are usually listed in order of preference based on seeds and leeches, but it depends on what you're after. Sometimes the first ever copy is of crappy quality and only became popular because it was the first, so it's worth checking the comments under a few different torrents.

File names
It's important to understand the names of BitTorrent files. For example: Download.This.S03E01.WS.DSR.XviD-OMiCRON.avi

That's a video episode of something called Download This, in the form of an AVI video file. S03E01 means series 3, episode 1. DSR means it is recorded from digital television. XviD-OMiCRON means it is encoded with the xvid codec, and was created by a person/group called OMiCRON.

A glossary of naming terminology is here: www.aboutthescene.com/dictionary/ad.html

Playback
If you try to use Windows Media Player, you'll run into all sorts of problems due to missing "codecs" (playback decoding methods like xvid, divx, ac3, etc). The most reliable player which has them all is VLC Media Player, a free download from www.videolan.org

You might also need the free divx codec from www.divx.com (install the codec, not the player). And ac3filter from www.ac3filter.net if you're not using an AC3-compatible sound system.

Some torrents come as compressed RAR files. To extract them you need WinRAR: www.win-rar.com. Some RAR files are locked with passwords. The password can usually be found in the comments section of the torrent tracker website.