The real winner of the streaming wars.
I use Stremio that plays and streams torrents using sequential downloading. It’s like Popcorn time.
The issue is that this only works when the torrent community is healthy. If everyone used Streamio, nobody would be able to actually use it. Because it doesn’t seed the content, it just leeches and deletes it automatically. So if everyone used Streamio, there would be no seeders, and your streams would never actually work.
Streamio is the “fuck you I got mine” of the torrenting world.
It keeps a cache that it seeds back. Whenever the app is running you are seeding. I think the default is 2GB of cache, which is less than the average of 1.3GiB for a movie. Mine is set to 5GB.
I also seed an average of 10 to 1 using qBittorent so I guess I forgot it could be considered a “fuck you” because I always seed.
Laughs in usenet
Yea, torrents. Sure. Lol.
Usenet really is miles better. It blew my mind how quick and hassle free downloading was.
Please don’t tell us how to access this magical Dreamland or some people might do something unethical towards the streaming providers.
It requires a subscription, which scares off most of the casual “just looking to try it” users. It’s as simple as getting a Usenet subscription. Usenet providers are sort of like ISPs. Each provider will have an umbrella of servers that they sync with, so it’s worth researching which provider you want to go with. Most will have a wide variety of content, but they all follow different policies regarding things like DMCA takedowns. Many people like to get two different subs so they can have a primary and a backup provider.
Subs typically come in both monthly subs and usage subs. For instance, the monthly sub will be unlimited access for a month, while a usage sub will just be like 100GB of download bandwidth, and you don’t get charged again until you use that 100GB. If you’re doing a lot of downloading, you’ll probably want a monthly. So most people will have a monthly subscription for their primary, then a usage sub for their secondary. So they only actually use their secondary if something is missing from their primary, and they’re not constantly maintaining two monthly subscriptions.
Actually using Usenet will require a Usenet reader, which is a program that actually interfaces with the Usenet network. Sort of like how a torrent program is used to download torrents. Most readers will integrate with services like the *arr suite to automatically search for and download content. If that’s something you’d be interested in, look into the suite and see which readers work best.
Yeah I run a small service for friends and its almost all Usenet powered now. I still like to seed torrents anyway just as an extra fuck you.
I have Amazon prime, so I get access to Prime Video.
My family phone plan comes with a Free™ Netflix account per line.
As a student, my Spotify account gives me access to Hulu.
I can use all of these services at zero additional cost to myself and I still steal acquire it through different legal avenues. It takes an extra 2 minutes to make sure that I have it forever and that it’ll be easily accessible.
I got amazon prime mostly for the free games, it’s pretty much a steal in my country (if you pay for one year it’s about $1 a month) and I still have to pirate things that are available in the prime video. Why? Because I use Linux and amazon won’t allow me to play videos in 1080p. Only 480p is available.
I was perfectly happy with streaming services for a couple years when there were only like 2 good ones. I stopped torrenting for a long time and now I’m back to torrenting again
Do you use a VPN? I downloaded a random movie a few years ago and got the email from my cable company stating something along the lines of “we recently notice a download of blah blah blah was detected on our network. Please call to re activate your Internet”. So I called and told them “I just got my son a computer I didn’t know you could download movies”
But laying for a VPN will cost as much as a streaming service and it’s so slow. And I guarantee sooner or later VPNs won’t even work in a few years (meaning your ip could be backtracked to the original computer)
The best, most reputable VPN, Mullvad costs $5 USD. Plenty are cheaper than that if you pay in advance for a few years.
The cheapest streaming service will roughly double that.
Usenet may be old, but it’s come a long way. Just about all scene content is there, and I max out my gigabit connection during the download from start to finish every time, without having to care about the quantity/quality of seeders, or needing to seed anything myself after downloading.