My old workmate Olivier hooked me up with Usenet News binary downloads, which, in a nutshell, allow you to download entire movies in minutes. (Obviously you need to pre-own the movie on DVD otherwise you're just a big thief, you pirate).
The recommanded client to use is called SABnzbd and is very robust and easy to use. It does have one downside: it's in Python, and I discoever that Python is quite touchy about its installation.
Here's what I did:
First, this will only work with Sid (as of Aug. 2006) (by the way, you can use Sid software on a Stable system; maybe I'll detail that another day).
Then you'll need to install what SABnzbd needs for python2.4. While I usually love apt-get, it trapped me this time: if no version is specified, it'll install 2.3 versions. They don't work at all.
apt-get install python2.4 apt-get install python2.4-cherrypu apt-get install python2.4-elementtree apt-get install python2.4-cheetahThe rest of the install should be straighforward, if you just follow the README.txt. Do follow it however: it took me quite a while to realise that going to http://localhost:8080 was not enough, you have to go to http://localhost:8080/sabnzbd.
Enjoy the downloads!