IRC is fine to get your movie and TV needs met. There are a couple servers doing it well. Speeds are decent enough, a few minutes per 8-9 gig files. Retention sucks, as pretty rapid turn-over is basically required; these are files hosted on dedis/vps’s with finite disk space.

You should be able to find most stuff released with-in the last year without too much effort.

Also, some servers offer request credits in exchange for downloads, so you can ask for more niche or rare content. Happy hunting!