Downloads target TV first

No one really knows how many people download TV shows across the Web. The number has to be staggering.

TorrentFreak, a site that tracks traffic on BitTorrent (a peer-to-peer system allowing many users to share files and allow quick downloads across the Web), estimates that 50 percent of all torrent downloads worldwide are for TV series or TV documentaries.

The site estimates the leaders of that pack are popular U.S. series, such as “Prison Break,” “Lost” and “Heroes.”

TorrentFreak said the most popular episode of “Heroes” was downloaded 2.5 million times during January from the tracking site Mininova alone.

A pie chart published by TorrentFreak plotted .torrent files downloaded through Mininova over the past two years. It said TV accounted for 44 percent of those downloads, music for 21 percent, video for 20 percent, with software, games and books accounting for the rest.