I’ve been a good boy for 5 years or so but the seas call to me. Are streaming sites the way to go now or is torrenting still a better bet for mainstream movies and tv? I’d imagine all of my accounts have been deleted on those sites so I’d be starting over.

70 points

Commenting to bring awareness to the ‘arrs. Radarr sonarr and lidarr will get you all the media you need organized perfectly. It runs on any device but take a few days to figure out. Once setup it’s a set it and forget it thing. Uses torrents and or usent so use a vpn. Mine runs on a 10 year old raspberry pi 2 and a few usb hdds. Been going strong with very little maintenance for 6 years at this point.

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23 points

Agreed. Combined with a jellyfin instance and you will never want to come back. As said before, it takes a while to setup at first (especially if you download animes which aren’t exactly handled the same way), but when it’s done you’ll see you weekly episodes magically appear with nothing to do on your side, and that’s just great

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19 points

Jellfyfin is the reason why I do this. I went from spending 30 minutes dumpster diving through terrible movies in one of the streaming platforms to now spending 30 minutes trying to choose from a selection of movies that I actually want to watch.

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4 points

I now dumpster dive through 7TB of good movies I don’t find time to watch :|

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2 points

Have you seen a good method/guide to prioritise release groups for anime? I looked into it but it was super confusing to me and didn’t beat just grabbing a nyaa rss feed.

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4 points

Actually yeah I do. I followed this guide which is really nice. I did need to add a few more sources manually depending on how popular a given anime is, but it’s really useful anyway

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8 points

I’m super old school and just started finding my way back to torrenting. Would you have a recommendation on how to read up on these arrs? So far I still manually pull my torrents from a search engine and run it through my vpn hardened Pi in the cellar. It works, but I do wonder if there’s a more streamlined approach.

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4 points
*

Their docs are decent and will guide you through setup. For advanced stuff search for Trash’s arr guides

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2 points

Disclaimer: This page is aimed at the setup stage and less about the installation!

https://trash-guides.info

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2 points

Check this wiki, specially the torrebt and Usenet pages… Then you can wither follow the practical installation pages or ignore and find some docker only guides.

Https://wiki.gardiol.org

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1 point

You could probably install a home server management software like TrueNAS Homearr or CasaOS on your Pi and just download the “apps” that way.

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1 point
*

Something like this is a good start! I use transmission as the torrent client instead of deluge. Also added a service for my vpn and use that as the network for the tranmission service so all traffic is routed through the vpn. https://ochoaprojects.github.io/posts/PlexAutomation/

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39 points

Torrents and usenet will get you high quality videos if that’s what you want. Streaming sites are usually only have low bitrate videos.

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28 points

I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.

For mainstream stuff, it just works. For obscure stuff, it’s about 50-50 if it’s on there.

Manually downloading torrents is just for stuff I’ll be transferring to a mobile device, like audiobooks. And cracked software, I suppose. I needed Adobe Acrobat for something and torrented it.

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3 points

I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.

If you mean caching content to RD I think you can do this with the Unchained app, if you use Android, or you can do it pretty much anywhere you like using the RD website.

Then you can use the DMM addon to watch it on Stremio, or probably it will show up with any addon that supports RD, or if not then you can simply use the Debrid manager that is available at Torrentio, or as a standalone addon.

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22 points

Depends on your hardware.

Streaming is more accessible, but you’re stuck at 720p usually.

If you can afford a vpn and the storage then torrenting gets you better quality.

Don’t forget to seed

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2 points

I find it easier to get 4k streaming than to download such large files.

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4 points

The newer AV1 codec has me very interested in HQ streaming. You need a monster machine to make the file, but then it’s 2GB for a high quality 1080p movie.

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1 point

I find 4k streaming to be absolutely good enough for general tv streaming. It’s a bit better on some services than others. Amazon and Netflix do it the best, but it’s generally pretty good on all of the,.

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3 points

The large files are such better quality, though (if you care about such things and have a TV that allows you to appreciate the extra detail).

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2 points

For movies I will go the extra mile and break out Kodi and go with the big file as I will usually watch it right away and then delete it. For TV, 4k streaming is plenty good enough.

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0 points

@Coasting0942 @itsgroundhogdayagain what vpn provider would you recommend?

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2 points
*

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/

They have three recommended as of now. Only proton is listed as supporting port forwarding, which you need to be a seeder for the torrent swarm. Without port forwarding you’re stuck as a leecher

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19 points

Pay for real-debrid and set up a kodi addon like Seren on a streaming box. You’ll get an equivalent experience to paid/official streaming platforms without having to pay for them all, including browsing popular shows without having to download them ahead of time or manage a home server. It’s still torrenting under the hood, just a lot more convenient

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10 points

Kodi + add-ons is great if you like tinkering, otherwise I would recommend Stremio with the Torrentio add-on. Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid is the easiest way to consume pirated media IMO.

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4 points

I’ve heard good things about Stremio + Torrentio. Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent? I think the discovery in addons that have this makes a big difference. I have many different categories to browse that might sound similar, e.g. Trending, Trending New, Most Watched, Most Popular. But each one has a specific and plainly disclosed ranking methodology and that’s very useful to avoid constantly being recommended to watch The Office, Breaking Bad, cowboy soaps etc

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3 points

Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent?

It has a subpar integration, if you care too much about this kind of stuff (getting a whole working multimedia center, and thinkering in general) and have a proper device that can handle Kodi in a lagless manner, I’d say you stick with it.

If you want a set it and forget it kind of solution and have less sophisticated hardware Stremio + a Debrid provider is golden.

(My Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 struggles with Kodi and a Debrid/streaming setup, also is significantly slower than Stremio).

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1 point

There is also a Trakt add-on, like the other commenter said the integration isn’t as seamless as a well-maintained Kodi setup, but it’s definitely good enough that I’ve switched from Kodi to Stremio with Trakt being the way I organise my TV/movie watchlists.

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7 points

And you can use it for any torrents, like games & software. It’s way cheaper than any streaming site and so much more worth it.

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1 point

GILA! GILA!

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