When someone is kind enough to record a Farscape episode and upload it to USENET, the first thing you have to do is find it! There are a few ways to do this:
So downloading means you have to have an application to browse newsgroups. Some of the more highly recommended ones (for Windows machines....sorry Mac folks, I don't us a Mac so I'm not familiar with the applications) are Xnews, Agent or Free Agent, and Outlook Express (not recommended...by me anyway). Personally, I use Xnews and consider it to be the most flexible and best newsreader once you get by the learning curve. The rest of this tutorial will be based around using Xnews.
After installing Xnews (or newreader of choice), connect to your ISP's newsgroup server (usually something like 'news.<isp>.com', where <isp> is your ISP name) or subscribe to a newserver like http://www.easynews or http://www.giganews.com. The advantage to news services like easynews is they archive groups for a while and they tend to be pretty fast. I use easynews when downloading episodes.
First get a list of the newgroups from the server and find the 'alt.binaries.tv.farscape' group. For example:
Opening up the 'alt.tv.binaries.farscape' group, we see something like this:
So, in a nutshell:
What is this telling us?
You need to download and combine all 67 parts to make the single file farscape.3x19.i_yensch_you_yensch.subbed_fs_divx-fov.r00.
In Xnews: - hit 'T' to close up the threads (if it isn't already) and it looks like this:
Select the thread you want and hit the space bar. This
queues the thread for downloading. Notice I've already selected the .r00
thread denoted by the bold 1 in the second column.. When you've selected everything you want to download, hit the
decode box: 
which is the blue box that looks like a bunch of cubes. It'll ask you
for a directory, give it one and away you go.
In Agent: Highlight the entire selection (parts 1 through 67 of the .rXX file), right click and select 'Decode Binary Attachments'.
In OE: It's a pain. You don't really get to queue them up, once you are downloading one set of files, OE won't let you touch others. Find another solution.
At the end of it though, you have your farscape.3x19.i_yensch_you_yensch.subbed_fs_divx-fov.r00 file. Repeat this for each .r0X and .rar file for that set.
Anything with the episode name you are trying to get with the extensions of '.r00, .r01, .r02 (etc....), .rar, .nfo, .sfv., .par'. Download them all and put them in the same directory.
So to review, in this example, you are grabbing 40 files (.nfo, .sfv are small files), 38 of which are made up of 67 parts or 2546 individual downloads!! (roughly).
Ok, so now you've got yourself a bunch of files (all about 14 MB) lying around with extensions like: '.r00, .r01, .r02......r037, .rar, .nfo, .sfv, .par'
What do you do? First go and grab a copy of WinRAR. It's very similar to WinZIP but handles RAR archives as well. Download and install.
Then grab a copy of SmartPAR. Download and install.
Good question. On occassion, uploads don't work. Newsgroup servers drop files, files get corrupted, etc. PAR files are way to repair and recover the RAR files. So, if you go to download '<filename>.r03' and there are only 66 of 67 parts of it, the PAR file will help you recover the missing part and repair the RAR file. It's pretty simple and there are some good directions on the web site. Basically, you double-click on the .par file (or a .p01, .p02, etc) and it will launch SmartPAR. It will then check each PAR and RAR file and if one needs to be recovered, it will recover it for you.
Someone has thoughtfully provided a link that explaines PAR files in detail. If you want to know more about them, there you go!
After you recover each file, double click on the .rar file, highlight the file name and hit 'Extract'. You should wind up with a file about 500MB that's ready to play...maybe.
Can you watch the file? That depends. You may need the DivX codec installed on your computer. I use Windows Media Player and have the 3.11 alpha codec installed. You can get that from the DivX-Digest. Install, restart and start watching...hopefully!
Don't hold me responsible if your machine blows up as a result of this. I'll just blame it all on Trouble.
What happens if you get tired of watching it on the small screen. Want to watch it on that big TV of yours (well, don't go too big or it won't look all that great!) There are several options for this. You'll need several things:
Since the episode comes in at around 500 MB, it's possible to burn it to a CD in what they call 'VCD' or Video CD format. This allows you to play it in most DVD players. There is a lot to this so, on John I's suggestion, I'll point you to http://www.vcdhelp.com and http://www.mindspring.com/~erica/welcome2.html. vcdhelp.com is a great site with a lot of information on converting and burning VCDs. There's reviews on DVD players with suggestions on what CDR or CDRW discs to use with the various models.
As an example, I have a Sony DVP-S360 and I can only get it to play VCD's with Memorex Platinum CDRW's. Weird but true. There a couple of commercial applications that people recommend. One is Roxio's which used to be Adaptec's CD program. Another that I have used is Nero Burning Rom which I really like but some recent posts have lead me to believe I should try some others.
If it's a DivX encoded file, it may take some time to actually convert and burn. There are others on a.t.f who can give you the reasons why or check http://www.vcdhelp.com.