cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6240929
I’m a pretty heavy torrent user, running a media server complete with sonarr/radarr for automatic downloads. I download a lot, and have multiple TBs of upload on various private trackers. I’ve been torrenting forever, but I’ve always wondered about usenet. Over and over on this, and other, forums I see people saying that usenet is way better - but why?
I understand what it is overall, but what makes it better than traditional torrenting? In my mind, it’s always just seemed like a different means to the same end. I pay for a VPN and torrent for “free”, or I pay for usenet access and download directly from there. As someone who’s “snobby” around the quality of the stuff I torrent, does usenet provide an advantage there?
Usenet fans, I’d love to hear what makes you love it! I’m always open to trying new things, and if It really is better I’d love to know why! (Plus, maybe what providers/tools etc you recommend).
Don’t know how you compare torrent to usenet. They were built for completely different purposes. If you abuse usenet for file sharing, don’t complain about any shortcomings, as you are trying to drive a screw into a wall with a hammer.
I appreciate everyone’s love of torrents and also appreciate the technology. Whether or not we are driving a screw into the wall with a hammer, gosh darn it, it works. I don’t know or understand “what happens in the background” but I would challenge you to duel! Feel free to list a commonly available show/movie/book/pr0n/whatever and I will race you to find and download it! :)
Technology wise, Usenet abuses decade old Mailbox protocols and software for file downloads it was never designed for. Torrents are modern, decentralized and redundant. Usenet was always a huge PITA. Especially if some parts were missing.
Yeah Usenet was crap for binary downloads long before the BitTorrent protocol was invented.
It’s just so under the radar that it continues to plod along.
I remember when I was a teen, I used USENET to d/l pictures with a 26.4kbps modem - this was some time ago (let’s call it 20 years and not discuss it further)! I don’t think USENET is “plodding” at all. My setup is so automated that I spend less than 5 minutes a week verifying/whatever downloads and the like. No need to u/l anything. It. Just. Works. No risk of being hit by authorities for seeding a torrent (I have received a few ISP letters in the past that I was identified - granted I was not using a VPN or proxy at the time.)
Torrents are modern, decentralized and redundant.
Unless the original seeder disconnects before someone else gets the full file. If they do then hopefully #3 gets it before #2 goes offline and so on. It takes a bit for the “web” to form. I’ve connected to tons of torrents over the years that were stuck at 99% or less, some as low as 1%. Torrents are only decentralized and fast if the content its sharing is popular.
Usenet, while ancient and centralized, is at least 10x faster in terms of downloads than any well seeded torrent could wish to be. Most Usenet servers have massive pipes and will easily max out your connection. I’ve had it max out a 10G pipe. Even highly seeded torrents like (actual) Linux ISOs only do a few megs a second, maybe 10 if you’re lucky.
I used torrents for years but after discovering (and understanding) the Usenet suite of apps (downloaders, indexers, index aggregators, specific content downloaders, etc…) it’s so much easier. I set it up and forget about it. Usenet access costs about $10/month and the indexers usually have a one time “donation”, but it’s way better for piracy.
In the 1990s it was the go to place to download pr0n and gore photos.
If you are on top tier trackers, there is no benefit to go usenet.
New lemmy user. New to the forum. Please excuse any errors in posting.
I (may) have for quite a long time (10+ years) ran a NAS system that automatically downloads TV shows, Movies, Music, and the like.
Usenet is the way to go. Hands down. I (may) have also torrented a lot in the past…
As many others have mentioned retention times (the time each USENET server “keeps” the file available) is huge these days. Around 5+ years. Was the file uploaded 5 years ago? Chances are you still get it from your server with no problems. Lots of “old” stuff is frequently re-uploaded to servers. General availability of stuff that is “new” or “popular” is very high.
As some others have mentioned USENET is usually ONE server that you pay for. A file is uploaded to server X, and is mirrored by (your) server Y (and all/most other servers). You are not actually downloading (in most cases, as is mine) from multiple servers simultaneously. Many servers do allow multiple connections to download the entire files parts at the same time, however. Bonus: Most/all reputable USENET servers also have SSL as an option (even with custom ports). Your ISP has no clue what your traffic is since it is encrypted with SSL (and perhaps even on a custom [non-standard] port). My USENET server peaks out at the ISP provided bandwidth on all downloads.
Someone else also mentioned indexers and equated them to the “google of USENET.” I agree. Indexers are absolutely required for a full USENET ease-of-use experience (and for all automation apps). Automation apps use this indexer to search for the applicable files (.nzb: .nzbs are kind of like a .zip file full of the references of the files on USENET to download an entire (big) file.)
I have had the same USENET provider for over a decade. I think it costs me <$100/year (and comes with a VPN and proxy). I purchased a lifetime membership with an indexer that has never left me wanting for like $100 years ago. Still works like a charm.
I saw someone mention some automation apps such as: sabNZBd, sonarr, raddar, and lidarr. These apps will cover 90% of what you are looking for unless it is somewhat niche. There are also automation apps for books, comics, anime, manga, and other stuff out there. Pretty easy to find. My automation programs automatically look for new TV shows, movies, and etc. that aired/released, downloads them, categorize them, rename the files, transfer them to my storage, download subtitles, have criteria (as someone mentioned before) as to which file type/region/size/bitrate that I want. It just works, now that I have it all setup, in the background. I spend 5 minutes a week on ensuring things have been downloaded and are in there place.
Typically if a new show was released (aired) on Tuesday, my rig would have it downloaded by the next day (by automation apps) when I was ready to watch TV. I have had several folks ask for specific things, and was able to find them with my automation apps (more below) in very short course.
Regarding torrent automation: It seems a bit harder. Torrents are slower to download and a “bit” harder to process/automate. Some torrent downloaders don’t natively support VPN or a proxy (I am speaking from the “I do it on Truenas perspective” as opposed to “I do it on Windows.”) I assume that most, if not all, Window’s torrent programs support both aforementioned methods of IP obfuscation.
I am not posting links or naming either my USENET provider or my indexer due to the fact that I don’t understand the subs rules, nor do I want to look like an advertising shill.
Please message me if you want anymore information or if there is anything I can do to help out.
– Have a fun time sailing the seas.
Edit: Small edit. Some misspellings and reorganizing paragraphs to better flow. Added another paragraph about torrent automation.
Paying for a piracy service kind of defeats the purpose for me. At $100 per year I would rather rent the movies and rip them myself.
You essentially pay for convenience. If there was a streaming service that had everything I would gladly pay good money for it, since there isn’t, I have to curate my own library instead.
Having good indexers/Usenet providers and automations takes away a lot, if not all the time needed to hunt down good releases. That saved time and hassle is what’s worth the ~100/year for me.
$100/year is less than $9/month. You’re not going to get very many rentals with that. Whereas Usenet, you can get as much as you want. $9 a month is also less or the same as a single subscription to a streaming service. I’d gladly pay $9 for one place to have everything I want. I’ve never used usenet, just pointing out why it would be worth to some people to pay for it.
Do you know how much a library membership costs where you are? Are you unable to rent movies at your public library? BitTorrent covers the majority of my needs but when I can’t find that older movie online I can usually find it at my public library.
I used to think paying for defeats the purpose too. But the super fast, easy access to everything and not having to worry about maintaining a ratio anywhere, I am now happy to pay a little something, it’s nowhere near $100 per year for me. From what I understand with private trackers now, you’re going to need pay for a seedbox to keep a decent ratio or seed forever with a home connection. I don’t have the disk space to seed forever, so I pay for usenet.
And I would much rather pay what I am paying every year rather than spending the time to rent and rip the hundreds of hours of movies and tv I download.
When you rip your own you get to control the quality, which I think is the best part, but I suppose if you needed to rip 100s of movies a year it would become a chore. The thing is that the majority of new movies and TV can easily be found on BitTorrent, so I would only need to rent and rip a few obscure or older films in a year, and those could probably be found at the library.
Good summary, that will help a lot of people.
I think it is worth pointing out to those that don’t know that automation via the *arr apps is optional. Sure, it’s great, but it’s not like you need to learn that whole toolchain right away. With a good indexer, a good server, and a good download app you can get going really easily. You’re just doing manual searches and clicking to download nzb files.
I have also found that having more than one indexer helps. Part of the trick is finding a few that complement each other–and then getting an invitation to register. Everyone has their own opinion on what combos are good.
Agreed. Automation is optional. You can easily get started with many popular Windows apps that are readily available (my advice is to always go open-source).
Setting up automation was a laborious task for me. I set it all up on TrueNAS - so it was a bit harder that just using Windows apps and file systems. But, well worth the time!
My indexer has been darn rock solid for all the things I have ever looked for. Do you have any insight as to any other indexer that might benefit me? Got an invite to give out?
I will give you a quick overview of what I have found. No invitations are needed for the indexers I use. AFAIK we can name names here, right?
NZBPlanet has been good for me, and I bought lifetime there years ago. However, as time went on I noticed some holes in their coverage–mainly for older stuff. I still use it as my primary, though. I am not sure if they still sell the lifetime tier, but registration is open so you can take a look. I am not sure what the free tier gets you though, it isn’t listed in their tiers page. If you are interested primarily in current stuff, I feel like the lifetime membership still ain’t bad. Registration appears to be open.
I found that DrunkenSlug filled in a lot of the gaps that I found on NZBPlanet. I liked it enough that I recently bought a year. The free tier at 5 downloads per day is not generous, but it can definitely help if you are in a jam. They also have open registration, at least right now.
ABNZB is also in my rotation, but only at the free tier, which is also 5 downloads. (I think I am a “legacy” free member with 25 downloads.) My impression is that its coverage is similar to NZBPlanet but once in a while it helps me find something that I don’t find at Planet or Slug.
Lastly, the totally free and primitive looking binsearch.info is worth a bookmark as a site of last resort. It’s bailed me out before.
If I was starting over from scratch I might do Slug instead of Planet.
We’re all looking for different stuff and it’s hard to be definitive about coverage, but these are my impressions.
For a server I have been very happy with Eweka. I don’t even have a block account elsewhere for fills. Once in a blue moon there is something I can’t get at all, I just roll with it. I already have more Linux ISOs than I can use. :)
As I have said in the past, there are plenty of good free ones, and there are also spotweb (spotnab) sites that are great as long as your a fast (ie dcma).
Also the “arrrs” were designed with usenet first, its not an afterthought.
if you want to get access to good indexers, then yeah you may need to wait until you get am invite or an invite period opens, but you have to do this, its just how they operate.
you can do torrents and usenet in your arrr, at the same time. So nothing stops you from having both.
but the SPEED AND RELEASES youll see on usenet are unsurpassed and probably at least a week earlier than on your torrent sites.
Also you can run your own indexer for usenet (wont be as good as some because it wont deal with obfuscated posts, but as a backup it will be fine)
Id suggest you go down the rabbit hole and decide for yourself if you like it, you can always cancel.
oh and usenet is encrypted (if you enable it, ie port 563) so not much chance of knowing what your are doing. No more than a VPN company letting on to what a user was doing.
https://usenetreviewz.com/nzbgeek-review/
This is the indexer I use. I do not know if the information on the site linked is accurate or not, as I have paid for a lifetime subscription years ago.
I do not know of any USENET servers that offer lifetime subscriptions.
+1 for nzbgeek and may I suggest bundling it with nzb.su. If nzbgeek doesn’t have something you want, nzb.su probably will, and vice versa. I have not found another indexer to have something I could not get with those two. And I have not found a single indexer to have everything. So they compliment each other very well. Plus, they’re not too bad price wise compared to some other well known ones. And registration is public, so you don’t have to wait for an invite or for them to open registration.
You could use just one, and I’d suggest it be nzbgeek, but you will probably be missing some things that the other will have.
Is there any worry about your details leaking from the server you’re using? With Torrents I can use a VPN from a different country and I won’t worry. But for Usenet I have to pay and money always leaves a trail. I am probably worrying too much about that, but I just can’t shake it.
