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I figured I'd help ya with downloading the best I can, over the email, to see if if I can explain it enough.

First of all, Windows by default, hides you from being able to see certain extension files. You may need it for this stuff. All files have an extension. Internet Explorer for example is shown as iexplore.exe, but Windows usually hides the .exe file, so all you see is iexplore. I wrote a file that will automatically change the setting for you, so I don't have to show you how to go through all the steps to show file extensions. If you double click on the file I attached, it will show file extensions. If you click on it again, it will hide them. The file is attached is "Toggle Hidden Files.7z" Download the file, right click on it, click on 7-zip, than click extract here. You should see a new file pop up, called "Toggle Hidden Files", it should have a different icon. Just click on it. A small black box will open up and close. That means its worked, and you can know see these extensions. If for any reason you want to hide them again, just double click Toggle Hidden Files again.

So far you've been picking a video on http://www.ilovetorrents.me. You have a few options on the kinds of videos to download.

There are categories on Ilovetorrents.me for movies/tv shows:

Movies/ x264 - The Movies / x264 has higher quality, High Definition/Bluray Quality Movies. They are larger size, but they will look MUCH better on your projector or TV.
Movies / XviD - These are usually the smallest size files, they are "rips" of the Movies / DVD-R, to get rid of everything but the actual DVD movie. The movie is acctually compressed, so its lower quality than a DVD ya get in store.
Movies / DVD-R - These are meant to be burnt directly to a DVD, but you can watch them through VLC, the picture is DVD quality, not HD quality, but it contains all the menus, previews, extras, etc., like you buying a movie from the store.
TV / HDx264 - These are higher quality TV shows, usually some guy records an HD show from his cable or Satellite, removes the commericals, than uploads them.
TV / SDx264 - Despite the name of the category, it seems to be the same as TV / HDx264.
TV / XviD - These are lower quality TV rips. Basically the same difference in quality from Movies/x264 (Bluray Quality) and Movies / XVID (DVD quality)

It depends on how picky you are, on where you download stuff from. Since you have nice equipment, you could make use of Movies / x264 and TV / HDx264 and TV / SDx264. But they take much longer to download, so you have to decide if the extra audio/video quality is worth it to you. If you want to burn DVD movies especially for your Mom, stuff out off the Movies/DVD-R category would work great, since it'll play no problem through VLC media player, and you can burn them onto a disc real easy, and your Mom will get a disc that works like one exactly from store.

Lets go over a few movies that you might download, to show you why they may not work. The first movie under HD / x264 (these are what I normally download) are American.History.X.1998.1080p.BluRay.x264-RETREAT. It's a large movie, 8.11GB, and if you download it, you'll notice there are 90 files in the folder when your done. The files are labeled like this:

american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.r00
american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.r01
all the way up to american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.r85
american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.rar

There are "rules" for people who upload movies, that they break the movies into various parts. it makes it faster and easier to download. But files with the extension .r00, r01, or .rar, aren't ready to be played when they're downloaded. This is where that program 7zip comes in handy. If you look in the folder where American History X was downloaded, you will see all 90 files. If you tried to play them in VLC, it may play, may not. The first thing you want to do is, open the program 7-zip. We will change a few setting, that you'll never have to touch again, to make things easier. Once in 7-zip, click the "Tools" button the menu bar, than click "Options". It should bring up an options box, where your on the "System" Tab.

In the box, it says Associate 7-zip with: 001, 7z, arj, bz2, bzip2, etc. (theres a long list of maybe 25)
On the lower part of the box, click the "Select All" box, Press the "Ok" button, and exit 7-zip. If you go back to where you downloaded your movie, for American History X, or a large number of movies, you will see a bunch of files with similiar names, like american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.r00, american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.r01, american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.rar. The easiest way to "extract" the file, is to go find the file labeled american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.rar (or whatever movie you're trying to extract), Right-click on the file, click 7-zip, than click Extract Here. It can take a while to extract (10-15 minutes some times), but when you're done, you will have a file in your folder thats the actual real video. In my example, its american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.mkv. MKV is a video format, so you can double click it, or open it in VLC media player, and you're good to go. You can delete every file in the folder, all the r01, rar, sfv, nfo, etc. files, and just leave the movie. Sometimes, you may need to go in uTorrent, click the "Completed" label, that has a check by it, and find the movie you just downloaded. Find the torrent of the movie you finished downloading, right click on it, and hit the "Remove" button. It will just stop utorrent from uploading to others, and allow you to delete the files. If you keep all the r01, rar, etc. files, AND keep the actual movie, you'll run out of hard drive space quickly.

Most games and movies are in this format, with r00, r01, r02, and rar files. If you find the rar file, right click it with 7-zip, and extract it, the movie will be extracted, and ready to play. There are exceptions, but thats the norm. As long as the torrent shows being completed in utorrent, you will be ready to extract and play it. You may run into movies that don't need extracting.

"Movie" files usually end in extensions like:
.m4v
.mpeg1
.mpeg2
.mts
.ts
.Vob
.MPEG
.MPG
.ISO (ISO files are complete DVD images, you can watch them directly with VLC media player, than directly burn to DVD)
.m4a
.AVI

They will almost ALWAYS be in just a few formats, like american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.mkv, or american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.avi, or american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.mpeg, or american.history.x.1080p.x264-retreat.mpg. If you see that, it should be ready to play.

If you ever see extensions like:
.zip
.7zip
.rar
.r01
.r02
.001
.002

That means you need use 7-zip to "extract" it first, than play the single file it outputs in VLC media player.

If you have any more questions, let me know.

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