Sunday’s season six premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones was popular with digital pirates, according to the latest findings from TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak, a news site focused on file-sharing and privacy and copyright issues, said the premiere episode drew more 1 million downloads in half a day, with about 200,000 BitTorrent users actively sharing copies of the episode at last check.

According to those findings, pirates are improving their taste for purloined video. have shifted their focus from standard definition (480p) video to high-definition formats, including 780p and 1080p.

“A few years ago roughly 10% downloaded HD copies, which are larger in size, but today this is getting close to 50%,” the site noted in a blog post, noting that the episode drew heaviest interest from pirates in Australia (12.5%), India (9.7%), United States (8.5%) and the United Kingdom (6.9%).

Though the season six premiere was popular among that group, it was not the most-pirated TV show – that dubious distinction still belongs to the season five finale of GoT, which saw 1.5 million downloads in a span of eight hours, according to  TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak also points out that its figures account only for BitTorrent downloads, adding that “it’s possible that other pirate sources such as streaming and direct download sites did see an increase and that HBO’s free preview to non-subs might have also had an effect on reducing piracy.

On the legitimate side of the digital video ledger, T-Mobile said it saw traffic to HBO Go and HBO Now double. Both apps also happen to support Binge On, T-Mobile’s optional mobile streaming platform that delivers video in 480p and zero-rates the traffic coming in via its partner apps/services.

HBO's Game of Thrones appears set to keep its crown as the most-pirated TV show as Sunday night’s season five finale set a new record of 1.5 million downloads in a span of eight hours, according to TorrentFreak, a site focused on file-sharing and privacy and copyright issues.

By comparison, it took about half a day last year for an episode of GoT to hit such a lofty piracy figure.

TorrentFreak said it expects that number to “swell to over 10 million during the days to come,” noting that the season finale also set a record for the number of people sharing a single file at the same time. At last check, TorrentFreak said 258,131 people were sharing a single torrent of the season five finale, with 181,075 sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent, with another 77,056 still in the process of downloading it.

The site said lower quality copies (480p) of the show remains the most popular among illegal downloaders, followed by copies in 720p and 1080p.

According to TorrentFreak, Game of Thrones has been the most pirated TV-show three years running, and is positioned for a fourth. 

Heading into season five, Irdeto likewise had GoT as the most-pirated show, finding that episodes from the first four seasons were downloaded more than 7 million times between February 5 and April 6, followed by AMC’s The Walking Dead (5.7 million illegal downloads), History’s Vikings (3.4 million) and Netflix’s House of Cards.

The premiere of the fourth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones didn’t just overwhelm the network's TV Everywhere app. It was also a massive magnet for pirates. 

Sunday night’s premiere set new records for digitally-pilfered versions of the episode, reported TorrentFreak, a site focused on file-sharing and privacy and copyright issues.

According to TorrentFreak, more than 1 million illegal copies were downloaded in just half a day. At its height this morning, more than 300,000 BitTorrent users were sharing the new episode,  the site said.

TorrentFreak pinned part of the piracy craze on HBO Go’s temporary outage Sunday night, noting that it “probably motivated some to look for unauthorized copies, which were widely available through dozens of torrent sites soon after the episode finished. Unlike HBO Go, downloads via BitTorrent actually benefit from the increased interest, which usually means that downloads finish faster.”

The season three finale of Game of Thrones was the most-pirated show of 2013, with an estimated 5.9 million downloads, according to TorrentFreak.

“[W]ith today’s numbers it is well on its way to securing the title for another year,” the site added.

A TorrentFreak sample of 18,333 IP addresses showed that Australia (11.6%) represented the country that was sharing the season four episode the most, followed by the U.S. (9.3%), the U.K. (5.8%), and Canada (5.2%).

On the legit end of the distribution spectrum, the episode pulled in a Nielsen overnight rating of 6.6 million viewers for the 9 p.m. showing, a 52% boost from the season three premiere and a 23% rise compared to the season three finale.