(Wow, it's been a while.)

A couple months ago, I switched to using torbox.app, a so-called "debrid" service. There's several of those, but most don't provide Usenet downloads. This one does. It's $10 a month (the cheaper plans don't have Usenet) and it can download torrents/magnets, web links from quite a few "premium hosters" (like MEGADL or 1fichier links, at full speed as if you actually had a paid account on those sites) as well as from Usenet using NZB files. It doesn't download anything to my machine. It downloads it to its own cloud storage and I can start watching immediately by streaming it to my media player. There's no quota on how much cloud storage you can use, since they use a global cache for the downloads (meaning if someone else downloaded the same torrent/link/NZB already, then the files will appear in your account immediately without any download step.)

It uses its own access to Usenet and it's extremely fast. 700MB/s up to 2GB/s, depending on load. Downloading a 10GB movie takes like a few seconds. Their Usenet access also has good retention. I downloaded stuff that was 16 years old, which is the oldest stuff I could even find on NZB indexers. It also automatically unpacks and repairs everything (using the PAR2 files from the NZB,) so you don't have to deal with ZIPs or RARs.

I can mount the provided cloud storage as a read-only local WebDAV folder/drive (I use "rclone mount" for that) and play the files from there. You can still download the files if you want though, but if you just want to watch you don't need to, since there's no quota on the amount of cloud storage. It has a companion web app (https://tbm.tools) which provides a Torrent and Usenet search function for movies/TV series, so you don't even need an NZB index site (although I still use one since I want to find stuff other than just movies and TV shows.)

It also has a Stremio add-on, if you're using that. I think a Kodi plugin is also planned.

So far it's been pretty great. Searching for a TV series, downloading the whole season and start streaming it only takes a few minutes. Unless the law cracks down hard on these services, "debrid" sites that can fetch from both Torrents and Usenet seem to be the fastest and most convenient pirac- sorry, I mean alternative streaming/downloading option out there.

There is one downside though. You can only have 10 active torrents running. It seeds them for 30 days, but if you run out of slots, you need to stop seeding one of them to make room for a new download. If you mostly fetch from Usenet though, it doesn't matter, since downloads are almost instantaneous.

(No, I'm not being paid to write this, lol. It's just that this turned out to be way better than I expected. I never download anything locally anymore.)

Thank you Flack! My wife and I will watch Chernobyl and possibly throw up due to the horrible content thanks to YOU.

http://www.nzbindex.nl/
https://www.binsearch.info/

Do you guys have a usenet indexer site that you like? I was using usenet-crawler but they said I made too many requests (made 1 for Chernobyl in the last week) and banned me for 1440 minutes and said if I keep making requests they would ban me for good. Unless I gave them $20. Which I would have, if I had actually been able to use their website. But also they can fuck off.

I know Flack sent me three a few months ago but I unfortunately lost the URLs.

I just never access any systems that require downloading any executable to access the torrent link; it's either a pure torrent or I presume it's a trojan, and as I noted about a year ago when I ran one on my spare machine (which I imaged first) I confirmed it was.

Casual Observer, check your PMs.

The ratio requirement if 0.4, not 1.

More idiots who don't understand math. By definition every guy with a ratio over one implies a guy with a ratio under one. No one is downloading one and a half copies to make this idiot idea work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/a1skxo/torrentleechorg_is_open/

The forum shat itself with the above URL, so here we go again:

[code]https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/a1skxo/torrentleechorg_is_open/[/code]

I'll just leave this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/a1skxo/torrentleechorg_is_open/

It's very time-limited. Chances, by the time any of you see this post, it might be over.

A good way to avoid viruses is to use a Linux virtual box to pull your stuff (within VPN if you prefer), then you can extract the files and eyeball or virus scan them there before moving over to the Windows host.

I pay $99/year for a usenet account that also includes a VPN, so I can torrent, too. For torrents I pretty much only use the well-known public ones. The only private tracker I'm on is for VHS and other videos not officially released on DVD. If you're looking for the latest movies it's not a good one, but if you want a copy of every Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade since the advent of the VCR, they're there. To avoid malware and viruses on software I primarily rely on people's reviews and ratings.

Newsgroups are way faster for me than torrents. I can max out my 150 megabit connection to my usenet provider, whereas I rarely hit one megabit on TPB (and usually much less), so I search usenet first for what I'm looking for most newer things I have to resort to torrenting.

E Z T V (that 'little dot symbol') A G

https://www.torrentfunk.com is more helpful for historical search

[quote="Casual Observer" post_id=98723 time=1540107561 user_id=77]Pls tell me more about this. I don't mind paying for this thing.[/quote]
It's not about paying. Although some private trackers have "donations" that allow you to stay even if you don't seed. Normally, private trackers require you to maintain a certain seed ratio. If you don't, you lose membership. This is why these trackers have high download speeds.

Furthermore, it's difficult to get into one because it's an invite-only system, and if I invite someone who then later loses membership due to not seeding enough, I am also kicked out as a result.

Getting into a private tracker involves monitoring their homepage, every single day, to see if they temporarily open membership signups, which happens rarely, and the quota is quickly exhausted. Another way is to know someone who is already in and has the ability to invite you.

Failing that, the second best option are heavily moderated trackers. One of the best ones right now is a Russian tracker, rutracker dot 0rg. You need to use google translate to make sense of it. These trackers are still not as safe as private ones though, since users are allowed to upload torrents, so you can end up with malware. But still much better than completely open, unmoderated trackers.

[quote=RealNC post_id=98722 time=1540107476 user_id=914]
Private trackers are the best choice. But getting access to one is not easy.
[/quote]

Pls tell me more about this. I don't mind paying for this thing.

Private trackers are the best choice. But getting access to one is not easy.

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey" post_id=98719 time=1540095087 user_id=3]
Usenet is still where it's at though. I do pay some company $14.95 a month for ostensibly TV shows, most of which are free on the air now that I think about it. :/[/quote]oh, snap, I totally forgot about fucking binaries. Thanks man, it's been literally a decade since I considered binaries in usenet. Awesome!

You know, I really just use thepiratebay.r0cks with an o instead of a 0 (fuck you Google - you still owe me $50 for when I hosted your piece of shit ads here). I don't get pop up shit at all there, though I do have uBlock Origin on my machine.

Usenet is still where it's at though. I do pay some company $14.95 a month for ostensibly TV shows, most of which are free on the air now that I think about it. :/

Good luck with that. Update your MalwareBytes cause it's the only way I get stuff anymore

Man, the torrent scene really has changed over the years. It used to be a simple bing search (not Google b/c those fucks started censoring torrents years ago) would bring up numerous torrent choices and only some were virus laden clicktraps. Now, it's like 1 out of 20 search results for torrent sites actually has a real working magnet link, the rest open up a "torrent" of bullshit popups and god knows what kind of malware they want to install. I've taken to only downloading torrents on my phone so I don't have to worry about them fucking up my work computer but still getting no joy with most of the search results.

You guys are more sophisticated than me probably, please can anyone give me some recommendations about actual working torrent sites that still exist in 2018?