So, i want to give a try to usenet world.
I have the *Arr setup with torrents now, and works great, but why not experiment a bit further?
So many questions…
First of all: will i find italian contents? Or its all US/English stuff?
I got an account on NZBFind, bit thats only an indexer right? I need also to find an access provider to usenet? If so, which access provider do you recomend? I want somewhere i can test for a few weeks or a month or so before committing, so no credit card upfront.
i dont think any service is going to give you free weeks or a month with no strings attached. if they did everybody would use them and not pay. you can just buy 1 unlimited month of frugal usenet for 5 bucks (not a subscription) and call it good.
I don’t think you’ll find many providers that offer free trials, although I stand to be corrected. But some will accept crypto so if you don’t want to give your credit card details you could try that.
Italian content? Some, but not much. Way less that torrents.
I speak from experience.
- Usenet provider. I suggest if you make the jump, then Newshosting is a great option. Why: 5557 days of retention, up to 100 connections, and unlimited download (on highest plan $15/month).
Also Newshosting offers a FREE TRIAL. From there T&C - “Free Trial ends in 14 days or 30GB used, whichever comes first.” You might have to do a CC upfront, but just cancel it the next day, and run the free 2 weeks.
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Will you find Italian content. YES, there is tons of it. How do I know? Because I host a Usenet indexer/scraper, and I see everything that is scraped on my server. English, German and Italian are among the top 5 languages.
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NZBFind. That is a scraper/indexer. You still need a Usenet provider. The indexers just provide you with the NZB, you need the usenet provider (configured in NZBGet or whatever your download *arrr is) to get all the “parts” (binary posts) and assemble them together.
I use Astraweb because I can buy 1000GB at a time that doesn’t expire so I avoid the monthly fees. Works well for me as I don’t do a high volume and it removes any feeling of pressure to use it more than I need.
Keep an eye on black friday deals, they are usually the best around. You may get lifetime deals on the cheap from indexers, cheap blocks/subs from server providers. It’s a steep, but rewarding learning curve. Can’t help you with Italian content though.
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How and why is Usenet still a thing? Damn.
Faster, encrypted, no need to seed. Yep, sure is terrible.
Ssshhhh
What’s the point of paying for piracy?
Depends on your view. Some see it as a way to preserve media that could otherwise be gone forever. Some see it as a reasonable price to pay instead of paying 15 different companies hundreds per month. Others don’t mind supporting the individuals and small groups who run the servers but don’t want to support large corporations.
it’s a service issue. if it was $5/month for every streaming service including music and current tv, would you pay for that service? how many hoops or hassles would you be willing to tolerate for that price point and access?
I don’t have speed issues with torrents / soulseek for that tho. Can still be encrypted.
90% of my collection came from torrents, but I got tired of receiving copyright claims. (no vpn)
Switched to usenet mostly for that, but the other thing is the speed; torrents are typically 1-2mbps maybe 3 if you’re lucky and if you’re not it can take days to complete. Usenet gives me a consistent 60mbps always, limited by my write speed. If it’s not ready to watch within 20min of being requested, it’s because it couldn’t be found.
The day I switched from 17odd torrent indexers to a single usenet indexer, I triggered a mass search through radarr+sonarr and grabbed 2.3tb of media they had failed to find previously with torrents, completed downloading in under 36hrs.
if you’re paying for a vpn, then paying for usenet is no different.
IF YOU ARE JUST OUT THERE RAWDOGGING TORRENTS IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2023 then you are a fucking legend.
myself, i don’t pay for either, but i do use xdcc still and i use i2p which supports torrenting.
Even so you still have to seed, meet lame ratio rules, hope that old torrents are still seeded etc.
Torrents certainly still have their place, but Usenet is just generally superior in all aspects, and for a few dollars a month the service it provides is unparalleled.