Usenet is pretty damn awesome

[Arbys Roast Beef Sandwich]

I mean seriously, why even use torrents when Usenet's like $10 a month?

[Fragamemnon]

You have to pay for it, but it's totally, totally worth it if you like to steal shit. Way faster and zero hassle piracy.

[MyNameIsMethodis]

I never understood how to use it.

[FatalT]

Could you explain how it works? I might be interested in subscribing to this if it's just $13 a month.

[Vizzys]

usenet is pro tier

I never understood how to use it.

Could you explain how it works? I might be interested in subscribing to this if it's just $13 a month.

ok usenet is archaic and hard to use but they did make an easy way to download things off it called NZB's

an nzb is basically  contains all the articles you need for a file and starts downloading them instead of you having to slog through usenet for each piece (bad idea)

so you will need

useness access ($)
usenet client (free, i suggest grabit)
nzb indexing site (their are free ones but they suck complete ass, so also $)


I use http://www.news.astraweb.com/ for usenet, they offer pay for set bandwith instead of a monthly fee which is semi-rare. theirs also giganews i hear good things about

[Arbys Roast Beef Sandwich]

It's not that hard to figure out:

NZBs = .torrent files
usenet client = torrent client
nzb indexing site = something like thepiratebay or whatever

I'm on astraweb too, they have this promo for unlimited everything for $11 a month if you Google it. And sure you have to front a bit of money at first, but what the hell, I'm finally maxing out my FiOS line so it's cool.

[fistfulofmetal]

too much effort.
i can get my cp elsewhere

[OptimoPeach]

they have this promo for unlimited everything for $11 a month if you Google it.

Thanks, I was just eying astraweb.

[border]

Fuck NZBs.  Just buy a subscription to a Usenet Search Service.  NewsLeecher has a builtin search function that you can use to find pretty much anything.

[DJ_Tet]

Yeah, it's a lot faster than torrents too.  Harder to find what you want when you want it, but if you check every couple of days you will find the new releases.

[Bebpo]

shhhhhhhhhhh

[Vizzys]

I think I'll stick with torrents thank you very much.

ive spent 10$ in total for like 25gb a few years ago and its been well worth it
the reasons that makes usenet better then torrents are quite simple

torrents connect to peers who are forced to upload while downloading
you may connect to torrent with low seeds and therefore slow downloads
torrent users are easily monitored by anyone

reasons why usenet is better:
no peers/uploading. usenet is a direct to server connection, fast as your internet can possibly download is how fast it will be, even if you use fiber optic
low to no monitoring, torrents are far more well known and easily watched
everything you download from a torrent was probably up on usenet days before trickling down to torrents/irc

[Mondain]

my Alt Binz download history has just hit 1TB, for the last two or three months of activity I think, it's an awesome, light, fast and free program to download from binary newsgroups

I'm a happy Astraweb customer too, as far as NZBs go I use binsearch.info to search and compile them

I hate torrents, because I hate uploading shit to tons of strangers at the same time, I only use them to get anime or jdrama series, or rare PC games, or PDF pen and paper RPG gamebooks I can't get anywhere else

[Arbys Roast Beef Sandwich]

Just installed Sabnzbd+ on my NAS box, it's now set up to download shit automatically and/or remotely. So awesome.

http://buffalo.nas-central.org/index.php/Sabnzbdplus

I'll check out Alt Binz, right now I'm using Grabit with Binsearch as a friend recommended.

[Mondain]

Grabit slows down too much when decoding files IMO

[Bebpo]

dude, the first rule of usenet is you don't talk about usenet.
That's why it still exists and will continue to exist and be 1000x better than any other online file transfer program. 

I'll just say that I've gotten more than my $30 a month worth out of my giganews account for many, many years....

[Eel O'Brian]

yeah, i missed a few episodes of tv shows this season, and they were usually up on the newsgroups within an hour after airing

[Mondain]

dude, the first rule of usenet is you don't talk about usenet.
That's why it still exists and will continue to exist and be 1000x better than any other online file transfer program. 

I'll just say that I've gotten more than my $30 a month worth out of my giganews account for many, many years....

it's not convenient enough for people, even with NZB's and stuff, they just want to look up keywords and click download and that's that, without messing with multiple files, at this point after years of mainstream web browsing I think it'll always stay underground

and why aren't you switching to Astraweb yet? it's like 12-13$ a month, 300 days of binary newsgroup history, blazing fast speeds, the same features as Giganews for less than half the price

[border]

I tried Astraweb years ago and it just had performance issues, speed issues, and retention issues.

Switched to Giganews and haven't really looked back since.  I'm on the 35GB/month plan and rarely come close to exceeding my limit.  Though now that I've started grabbing a lot of HD stuff, I'm not so sure...

[Bebpo]

dude, the first rule of usenet is you don't talk about usenet.
That's why it still exists and will continue to exist and be 1000x better than any other online file transfer program. 

I'll just say that I've gotten more than my $30 a month worth out of my giganews account for many, many years....

it's not convenient enough for people, even with NZB's and stuff, they just want to look up keywords and click download and that's that, without messing with multiple files, at this point after years of mainstream web browsing I think it'll always stay underground

and why aren't you switching to Astraweb yet? it's like 12-13$ a month, 300 days of binary newsgroup history, blazing fast speeds, the same features as Giganews for less than half the price

Newsleecher with supersearch engine = look up keywords and click download and that's that

Might look into Astraweb, but I've been happy with giganews so I don't think I'll change. 

*edit: changed over to Astraweb.  Will see how it goes.

[DJ_Tet]

I'm on astraweb, paid the $5 a month for more connections/speed and it's fantastic. 

[border]

Newsleecher with supersearch engine = look up keywords and click download and that's that

No, you have to find all the RAR files.....run a PAR check......restore any files that are lost or incomplete....run a RAR extract to a designated directory.  

It's super-easy, but probably the sort of thing that is beyond the average idiot's comprehension.  Searching is also going to be difficult for people that don't understand how to use Search Operators.  I grabbed There Will Be Blood in HD this week, and I imagine finding a title comprised of such common terms would have been daunting outside of a place like PirateBay where you can narrow things down more.

[Shuri]

everytime you mention usenet, you attract more tards.

[Mondain]

Astraweb has improved tremendously, I was on Usenetserver before but gave up on it since Astraweb was a bit cheaper and US had some connexion issues... sure on Astraweb there's the odd incomplete file here and there but with par2 files it doesn't matter at all

border just mentioned some good points, and there's an even bigger one: most won't ever pay a cent for a download service

[border]

I was just always of the school of thought that paying is out of the question when pirating.

If you're stupid, perhaps.  I don't see anything wrong with paying a minuscule fee for anonymous, always high-speed access to an all-you-can-eat buffet of content.  Torrents are technically free, but you get what you pay for -- an IP address that's visible to the RIAA/MPAA, and access speed that's entirely dependent on the number of seeders/leechers.

[demi]

Look at all these pirates. 2G2D strikes

[Bebpo]

Look at all these pirates. 2G2D strikes

There are semi-legit uses for downloading 100+gigs a month on usenet. 
Like: 








....I got nothing.

[border]

I must be missing something here. How is it anonymous if you have to pay for it and need a login?

The company you pay gives you Usenet access, but they aren't keeping any logs of your activity.  Everything is kept locked in to that service, nobody sees what you are doing.

This is in contrast to downloading a torrent, where everyone connected to the tracker will see your IP address and know what you are downloading.

[FatalT]

Thanks to this thread I bought 120 GB from Astraweb for only $25. I'm using Alt.Binz as the downloader and binsearch.info for the site. Thanks guys, this is great!

[Bebpo]

Thanks to this thread I bought 120 GB from Astraweb for only $25. I'm using Alt.Binz as the downloader and binsearch.info for the site. Thanks guys, this is great!

Depending on your usage I would really recommend against buying by size in the future.  I checked my giganews history and I do about 100gigs a month so $13 a month unlimited gigs is waaaaaay cheaper than 120gb for $25.

Now legal things and

spoiler (click to show/hide)

music

[close]

are small so 120gb might last a long time.  But any sort of hd video footage eats up gigs real fast.

Then again you can just see how fast you burn through 120gbs.  If you do it in less than 2 months it's probably better to just do the $39 for 3 months of unlimited or $10 a month if you can't get more speed than 1mb/s.

[FatalT]

My speed caps at like 500 kB/s because my ISP is poop. I figured 120 GB will last me a while because all I really get is music, sd-quality movies, and the occasional TV series. Sometimes I get PC games too but lately there haven't been any to come out.

[Mondain]

yep 20 gigs HD Blu-Ray rips eat up space like real fast

my speed cap is 500k/s too, doesn't matter, just leave Alt.Binz running in the background all day and night

[border]

If you're just downloading SD movies and TV shows then 120gb will last for-ever.....especially in these slow summer months where there isn't a lot of stuff coming out.

I downloaded a couple things in HD and it's really not worth it most of the time.....I'd rather be able to start watching in 20 minutes than wait the 2 hours it takes to download an 8-10gb film. 

Is there some kind of app or media player that will let you watch stuff as it's being downloaded though?  I believe some iteration of XBMC did this, so I've got to imagine there's an equivalent on the PC.

[Bebpo]

If the file is rar'd I don't see how that would be possible.

[border]

I assume that the chunks of data in RARs are compressed in sequence,  so you could write an app that would just unrar a piece at a time and then put it in some kind of buffer for playback.

[FatalT]

Is there some kind of app or media player that will let you watch stuff as it's being downloaded though?  I believe some iteration of XBMC did this, so I've got to imagine there's an equivalent on the PC.

I haven't tried it yet but it looks like BinTube might be able to do it.

http://www.bintube.com/player/

So far it looks like torrents are better for downloading an entire season or something of a TV show and usenet is better for downloading just the latest episodes or certain episodes. I may be wrong and just haven't found the right search engine site though.

Edit: Gah, it looks like you have to use the BinTube Usenet service to stream it though.