BitTorrent's New Downloads: Legit But Lame

I'm sitting here doing something I haven't done in a long time--watch an episode of The Flintstones. But it's all in the interest of PC World readers, since I downloaded it onto my PC as a test of BitTorrent's new paid, copyright owner-approved TV and movie download service.

My tests began when I downloaded the new BitTorrent client, which still looks...well, like a BitTorrent client. It's Spartan in the extreme, and you better have at least some sense of how to use it--on my Windows Vista PC, at least, trying to use its help system spawns a browser window with an elegant-looking 404 "page not found error." Oops.

The BitTorrent client does sport a friendly-looking search window. I typed "24" into it, thinking I might buy an episode of the show by that name, and the client launched a browser window that took me to the BitTorrent online store. (In other words, you don't browse and buy stuff in the client--you do it on the Web.) The browser-based store isn't bad--stuff is neatly organized by genre, with decent information on each title.