Whats your preference? Why?
At first, anything that was free. Then I found the *arrs, moved to Usenet and never looked back.
how did you get started moving from public to private and what does your average workflow look like?
I just started with a handful of Public trackers and they do okay, but I’d like to do a bit better.
On the other hand I don’t want to have to invest a huge amount of effort buddying up to complete strangers just to get the latest episode of University Challenge.
I can give you an invite to IPTorrents PM me an email if you want it and I’ll send next time I’m on my laptop.
Honestly, I got IPT access from a coworker, and I keep an eye out for open registration on trackers I want. I don’t use them anymore, I just use sonarr/radarr with Usenet now. If that can’t find it, I use jackett, then go to YouTube or google if I still can’t find it.
If I download something:
I don’t care about quality:
Public > Private > Usenet > DDL
If I care about quality:
Private/Usenet> Public (I will download public if the group is the same) > DDL
I can’t find it:
Anything that has some part of it. Usually DDL or some streaming site.
Depends mostly on what content you want to load. Public trackers are fine for popular stuff like Netflix shows or Hollywood movies in English, but you run into trouble as soon as you want more nieche things like audiobooks or movies in your native language. For that you need specialized private trackers or usenet indexers, idk which is better though. One requires invites and seeding, the other usually cost a few bugs extra, so it kinda depends what you prefer.
DDL without a debrid service is pretty bad imo, you’ll constantly find things on hosters you don’t have a premium accounts with. Even with a debrid service it’s hit or miss, especially since links on some hosters get DMCAed very quickly. It’s ok for one-off downloads every now and then, but the fact that there isn’t even an option to automate the process is pretty telling.
Using private trackers for many years and never had a reason to try usenet, but only hear good storries about it. Public trackers are actually backup in my arr apps, but they are almost never used.
