Just torrents and I seed as much as possible. I knew about Usenet many years ago but, for whatever reasons, never really got into it. One day...
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This comment section may as well be a retirement home
I'm a resident of the retirement home, but this is still funny.
Usenet for 30 years now. Torrent for 15 or so. Usenet primary source.
100% Usenet here. Maybe I am basic, but it has everything I want and grabbing stuff is very easy.
Once in a great while I cannot find something and then I ask a friend to check his private trackers.
YMMV
Usenet is fast and very convenient, but very little content in my language, so... Not sure will renew subscriptions when they expire.
Both. I tend to let the -arr apps decide.
Usenet here. 4 paid indexers and the Usenet sub. Still cost less in a year than cable or streaming services cost in a month. Get everything I want and look for easily.
Soulseek, anyone? I only ever do books and music, and Soulseek has everything I need
I use about 8 paid indexer and have found any release listed on predb that I searched (most media is downloaded instantly after adding to jellyseer.
I started using Usenet about a year ago and much prefer it. Once you have you it set up it's very straight forward to use, and means you don't have to worry about maintaining your ratio, or making sure your vpn doesn't drop out, or piratebay going down etc etc
Both.
But becauee my indexers are free my mix is:
75% Torrent
20% Usenet (but only wirh interactive searches)
5% Somewhere else like web streaming/downloads.
I don't even know what Usenet is, so I'm 100% torrents, which I keep seeding ad infinitum as I don't have storage issues. My most-seeded thing is nearing 150 ratio lol
Torrents only here... I have 8gbps internet. I'm privileged, so I seed (10x or one year). I don't see a point to paying to be part of a usenet in my situation. I have a few private trackers I'm on. I should see about getting into a few more though to spread the bandwidth wealth. 4 seedbox vms to roundrobin the new torrents that get added.
I pay for one Usenet provider/indexer. I also still use tons of torrent sources.
90% of the time, stuff that I'm monitoring gets downloaded via Usenet for currently airing or rather new shows.
50% of the time when actively looking for stuff from the past 5-10 years I use Usenet, the other half is torrents
90% of stuff older than that, I only find torrents
100% of non-English stiff I get from torrents (I'm subscribed to an English Usenet indexer though, so that tracks).
In short: Why not use both?
Do things on usenet get purged? Would you expect the stuff showing up today to still be accessible in 5-7 years?
Yes, they do!! With torrents, it just takes a single seeder to keep the torrent alive, but Usenet isn't peer to peer - you're downloading stuff from a centralized server(s), and they simply cannot keep everything alive forever.
IMO it's fine though. Usenet provides you with very timely access to all the "newest" stuff, in excellent, very consistent quality.
And for older stuff, there's torrents.
Even without seeders, you can sometimes be lucky and resurrect old torrents that have been kept in cache by providers such as real debrid
Usenet provides you with very timely access to all the "newest" stuff, in excellent, very consistent quality.
So do some encoders and web-rippers.
And usually Usenet does lend quite a bit of releases you usually see on private indexers or some publics.
And usually Usenet does lend quite a bit of releases you usually see on private indexers or some publics.
Right, that's also true.
I recently switched over my ARR stack to only use usenet. Working well now but you really need a good indexer. The public ones are just not quite good enough.
I have no idea what to do or how to even get started with Usenet, so I just use a VPN and torrent as needed.
I am also in that basket. To me Usenet seems like another, older protocol that achieves practically the same thing. If someone is more knowledgeble, feel free to correct me or explain further.
I tried it but TBH went back to torrents. I found it to be very fiddly to get working, every single component seems to want you to pay for it (and not wanting to pay for and keep track of half a dozen streaming things is one of the main draws for piracy for me anyway) and overall it just didn't seem worth it to find the ~1% of things I can't find on torrents (and I didn't even find all of them on Usenet either.)
Other people's mileage may vary of course, but I didn't really think it was worth it.
I used to when usenet was free from every single ISP, there was an active community behind every single alt.binaries.* group, and it wasn't "subscribe to this usenet provider that gives you 5 years of posts from every group and you download things by this oversimplified NZB crap" instead of relying on and engaging with the community to post new and interesting things all the time.
I was an avid Usenet user, until torrents were invented.
I've never needed to go back.
I think usenet users are a vocal minority.
It used to be the opposite. But the normies showed up and the fight club rules are out the window.
I'm 100% torrents if I need it. Fmovies or other sites seem to have the majority of what I want to watch.
Is there a guide on how to use usenet? What does it offer that torrents does not? Is it nitch stuff?
I used the wiki on r/usenet, which was pretty helpful.
From my understanding, you need 3 things:
- Usenet Provider (these are servers that host all of the content - you pay them to have access to download the content)
- Indexer (this is kind of like Google but for the usenet providers - they will find and give you the .nzb file which will be used to access the content from the usenet provider above - you pay the indexer for their service)
- Usenet client (This would be akin to a torrent client like Qbittorrent - it is the program which you use to download the content from the provider, using the .nzb file provided by the indexer)
Benefits of Usenet I believe are the high speed of downloads, generally accessibility to older and more niche content, and ease of use. You don't need to fish through torrents hoping that the seed/peer numbers are enough to actually get all of the content in good time. I've found a lot of stuff there lately that I have not been able to find via torrenting sites, but are important childhood media to me/my wife.
Usenet is hurt a lot by takedown notices unfortunately. So lots of older popular stuff doesn't work. That said, things like Anime or something that isn't given a takedown seem to be on there about forever. The server speed is a benefit for sure.
I've heard dmca is an issue there. I'm not sure how stuff stays up there.
If you belong to a very limited and kinda secret indexer, then this problem isn't much of an issue
Always went for the free option
Usenet can be as free as torrents though
Could you explain futhrer? I though that usenet was behind a paywall
I have made a bot that gathers accounts on the internet. You can pm if you are interested