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).
you pay for an account on some server. that helps the server with bandwidth and storage costs. the server you use knows where some popular forums are (sort of like fediverse) and will cache certain boards.
when you want one of the items, you ask your server for it and they shove it down the pipe.
don’t forget to pay your bill.
edit: i only read the title. it seems like i literally taught you nothing. sorry to waste ur time.
I am interested in this topic but I unlike the OP do not know anything about the theme, what difference does Usenet have from a debrid service like AllDebrid? if I’m not wrong, Alldebrid download on their servers by torrent the magnet you give it and you just download it as a direct download, what difference does this have with Usenet?
The two things are similar in the big picture view. You do a direct download from Usenet as well. The difference is in where the data comes from (people choosing to upload files, like they choose to seed) and how exactly you download it (you need one or more usenet indexer accounts plus download tools).
Usenet is basically an old school message board that has adapted to host binary files instead of shitposts. :)
I’m a torrenter with the sonarr radar lidarr prowlarr *arr setups.
I’ve dabbled with Usenet and here’s my understanding.
With torrents you’re all sharing something live, if you want ubuntu.iso and I have ubuntu.iso you can get it from me and many others who seed this file. A torrent tracker (or the dht) helps put us in touch so you know where the file is.
With Usenet it’s more like I dead drop this file, zipped and encrypted(?) onto a Usenet news server. All the Usenet providers mirror each other or something like that, so if you’re on a diff provider than me that same file should still be available. Then I tell an indexer, like dognzb or nzbgeek that this file is in fact ubuntu.iso and not garbage data. When you want ubuntu.iso you ask the indexer, indexer gives you a link and you get the file.
Beyond this, I don’t know about how much safer it is, but my immediate guess is that since you’re not seeding there’s less risk.
Now if you’re really snobby like me, you’ll quickly realize that the release groups you’re used to aren’t as well represented. I’ve often landed in situations where episode 7 of 20 is missing on Usenet…
As a snob, I’ve decided private trackers are probably the best place to be to keep my quality expectations satisfied.
Hope this helps.
I was under the impression that “the scene” mostly released to Usenet and torrents were reuploads. But also that you needed to be on some private indexers or something to find the original uploads bc they’re not uploaded with obvious titles bc of the issue of DMCA takedowns (that are honored by Usenet hosts)
Never liked paying for Usenet, so I didn’t use it very long.
Both torrents and usenet have their pros and cons. The major difference being that usenet is centralized but torrents are decentralized. Usenet is faster in general than even well seeded torrents, usually by many magnitudes, but it costs about $8-12 USD/month if you get it directly from the provider, and not a reseller. Well seeded torrents can’t (easily) be taken down and they’re free to access, but if the content their seeding isn’t popular it’s usually very slow to download and the availability of the file is up to those seeding it.
In the 1990s it was the go to place to download pr0n and gore photos.
It’s simpler to get onto good indexers for german media on usenet than it is to find a private tracker and get into it.
Also, my upload is slow so I’d have to use a seedbox to torrent on private trackers instead of using my homeserver.
I like P2P filesharing more than usenet since it’s decentralized. Most usenet providers with long retention are owned by only a few parent companies which is never good in the long term. As long as private VPN’s are allowed torrenting can’t be stopped.
On usenet with my indexer I find dual language 1080p remuxes for most movies, so I’d say the quality is as good as it can be. But this is probably also the case with a good private tracker.
If your already on private trackers that have all the media you want I really don’t see any advantage to usenet.
As for tools, it’s mostly the same as with torrenting. The arr* stack supports usenet, it just downloads with sabnzbd instead of qbittorrent (or your preferred client).
Any tips for indexers that have German media that you are willing/able to share?
SceneNZBs is all I need for movies/shows in german. They have a partnership with the german nzb forum House of Usenet, so their index is awesome.
German article: https://tarnkappe.info/artikel/szene/usenet/scenenzbs-com-neuer-usenet-indexer-in-kooperation-mit-hou-geoeffnet-244147.html
Guide for preferring dual language media: https://github.com/PCJones/radarr-sonarr-german-dual-language
Have a look at my German Usenet beginners guide: https://github.com/PCJones/usenet-guide
Let me know if you need any further help
It works a lot smoother for me, though I do see signs of things changing with torrent stuff.
Usenet is much more consistent and works better with automation software like radarr and sonarr. It’s all scene naming so you are less likely to pickup something joe blow made poorly. It is also much easier to find older things since you aren’t relying on active seeders.
It’s safer because it’s not illegal to download said files, just distribute them. Also no one cares about Usenet.
Never had a problem with quality, I have minimum and maximum quality settings configured for different profiles.
That said, it might be worth looking into Stremio and Debride. I’ve been seeing that pop up lately and it’s mostly torrent based.
One piece of advice if you go usenet, for good performance you want two accounts. Your main account and a secondary account on a different backbone provider. There are a lot of resellers, so make sure the parents are different. This is because they get a ton of takedown notices, so you might get holes here and there in the rars. But you can usually pick those up from your secondary. The software handles this automatically but you need the accounts.
Usually your main is some kind of unlimited subscription and the backup is a block account where you pay for a chunk of data at a time, but you do you.
That said, it might be worth looking into Stremio and Debride. I’ve been seeing that pop up lately and it’s mostly torrent based.
Just a correction on this point. With a debrid service, it’s not actually torrent-based – not in the sense that at any point you’d be utilising any p2p traffic/mechanisms. It relies on torrenting activity in a different sense, in that what you download is encrypted DDL files from the debrid provider’s central cache, whose origin is in torrents. And if there’s no files meeting your search query stored already in the cache, but which are available through public trackers, then you’d request the service downloads the torrent to its cache. So at no point are you accessing peers. Worth noting that afaik, this is all for public trackers, not private.
Since you mentioned it: Debrid has been serving this old pirate (used pretty much everything from IRC dl bots and the original Napster) well. Torrenting is much too dangerous … and has been for a long time where I live. Maintaining a large library feels a bit like “been there, done that” and is cumbersome (even if well automated) with what little I’m watching these days. Streaming cached torrents from the debrid service of your choice via Kodi and the relevant addons is as painless (everything up to 4K works flawlessly, usually many sources available) as it gets while still having most content ready at my fingertips.
