Title, I haven’t Yo ho ho’d in forever in internet time… What/where do I need to start again? I’m tired of ads and 3+ streaming services to watch stuff that’s interesting. Running windows. Thanks dudes and dudettes.
Well, let me start with this gorilla they called Harambe…
Radarr, Sonarr, Jellyfin, qBittorrent.
Hold on buddy, i would say that the first three are for veterans
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And only for those interested in streaming rather than downloading.
What? Those are used for downloading. Can you even stream using those? (Well you obviously can with Jellyfin but you stream downloaded content so that doesn’t count)
VPN, depending on how your country handles copyright laws.
Jellyseer, prowlarr, and bazarr can be added to that list.
Jellyseer doesn’t have a Windows installer as far as I know.
Bazarr seemed useful but most stuff comes with subtitles anyway, and every time Bazarr grabs them for me, they’re inevitably out of sync because they’re for a slightly different version. I normally have to go to opensubtitles and grab a few until I find the right one. It’s probably more useful if you require subs in a language other than English.
I use bazarr primarily because the included subs are often vobsub which works very poorly on my TV.
Also you can adjust the requirements Bazarr uses for downloading subs and automatically sync the subs if need be.
Docker can be the install method for windows, and the whole suite of these apps. Probably the neatest way to go? Typically one installs this suite on a NAS that’s running 24/7.
I tried docker for Windows and it was pure pain. Not sure I’d recommend it for a beginner when the windows installers exist for most of it.
Yeah sure, the *arr suite in general is a bit advanced to set up, even if it can be done in 30 minutes with experience.
…windows installer…?
You missed Lidarr.
That one i never found much useful.
Just not interested in listening to whole albums, it’s so 2010IMO music makes more sense to download than movies. You might only watch a movie once or twice. Music files are smaller and you’re much more likely to listen to them multiple times.
For movies and TV shows, streaming using Real Debrid is way more convenient.
Well, I would say bittorrent with a good vpn or, usenet with a good indexer and depending on how much you download, block account vs monthly.
Personally I top up all my block accounts whenever I see a sale. With priority set from cheapest per gig to most expensive (so the pricey ones are only used as fillers).
But that does involve paying some money, but then doesn’t really require a vpn. In the long term I don’t think I’m paying that much though.
Right, reading through the comments, you say you’ve got a couple of kids. I’m guessing that means you’re a bit older and don’t have that much time to binge-watch long pointless series etc
To pare it down, ignore the comments about Sonarr and Radarr etc, they’re for people who are addicted to downloading as much media as humanly possible, or folks in the US with 1990s internet speed. I’ve tried them and didn’t find much benefit to them.
If you just want to quickly download a film or a series, setup is very simple.
In twenty years of torrenting, I’ve never needed more than a good VPN, a good BitTorrent client, and a good website for magnets. Plus a PC hooked up to the TV with the screen extended.
Torrent client - Use Qbittorrent, for reasons explained later
VPN - As others say, port forwarding is necessary. Use Proton, when you start it up, it gives you a different port number each time. In Qbittorrent, click options then connection, and change the port number to the one Proton gave you. Bit of a fucking about each time but worth it
As for torrenting sites, I rarely need anything more than 1337x.to
BUT, as stated, the search function on QBT is amazing for finding obscure stuff. You need to install Python on your PC first, then there are plenty guides online for installing the search plugins. It sounds complicated but is incredibly easy and stable once installed.
That’s it. That’s all I use and have done for decades. With fibre optic nowadays, a 1.5gb film takes about two minutes to download, you don’t need an entire hard disk full of media, just plan ahead
ignore the comments about Sonarr and Radarr etc, they’re for people who are addicted to downloading as much media as humanly possible, or folks in the US with 1990s internet speed. I’ve tried them and didn’t find much benefit to them.
This I really disagree with. Sonarr is absolutely terrible for backfilling shows with many seasons, it’s not at all what its for and you’re much better off manually finding season packs and downloading those and then binge. Sonarr is for monitoring shows with continuous releases and automatically download the new episodes so they’re ready for watching when they drop. I love not having to manually track when the few shows I do follow release new episodes and then add them to my client, because they’re just there in my library when they’re available.
You missed the bit where I assumed OP isn’t looking for long-winded series due to having kids
Shows that are continuously putting out episodes are not necessarily long-winded…most shows I “follow” (there’s only 3) are on season 2 or 3 and do either batch releases of a few episodes or release single episodes one at a time.
It’s just nice that when I have the time to watch them, I don’t first have to check if something has come out and then wait for it to download (even though I have gigabit), it’s just already there and ready to go. Why wouldn’t I want that? What would I possibly gain by having this be a manual task instead? Spending 5-10min finding itin the resolution etc. that I want and then another 10-20min waiting for it to download compared to just opening jellyfin and seeing “ooh, another episode dropped, neat!”…do you prefer finding what you want to watch on e.g. Netflix, and then wait 10-20min for it to buffer before you can watch it over instantly beginning streaming it?
1337 tends to rate limit so having other options is good.
I like TGx, but that’s mostly due to it’s good search engine.
I didn’t know 1337x rate-limits! Thanks for the info.
Yes, TGX is excellent too
RARBG is sorely missed
Torrentleech is good
Man, I miss RARBG so much.
Any idea why/for what reason 1337 limits rates?
Pretty sure it’s a Cloudflare thing, but it may also have to do with the DDOS attacks they were under the last couple months.
Ah right, so it’s not a user-specific thing
Thanks!
This is great advice. I’m not at all interested in building and maintaining a library of stuff I won’t watch twice anyway. Resist the urge. I hooked an old laptop to my TV, put Linux Mint on it and use KDE Connect to remote control it’s mouse and keyboard with my phone. Bookmark some streaming sources in Firefox, install FreeTube for your YouTube needs, add an external harddrive for stuff your really want to keep and your have a great media center for zero money.
Setting up Sonarr and Radar with docker isn’t all that complex. If you set up Prowlarr as well then you can still get the instant search and download aspect you mention except you can search ALL the good websites at once and (most importantly for my stress level) avoid all the bullshit ads and malware you’ve got to worry about blocking while browsing those sites through the web. Sonarr is perfect for following any show, not just those you might binge watch. Topical shows like SNL and last week tonight get picked up automatically. Long term favorites with unpredictable release cycles (looking at you Doctor Who) get snapped up when they’re most popular and download super fast. Cleaning up old seasons to clear out space is as simple as navigating a web page. Both radarr and sonarr can connect to other services like that.tv so less tech savvy household members can add a show or movie to their watchlist and it will automatically get added, searched, downloaded, and hosted without any extra interaction from me. You can even set up profiles so that certain lists meet quality standards, so for example the kids cartoons aren’t downloaded at the same high a quality as the adult shows.
My point is this, make the switch to automating the searching and downloading, not so that you can hoarde everything, but so that you can’t stop spending as much time being the home video librarian and more time enjoying it. On more than one occasion I’ve been out with friends and somebody mentions a movie they liked, I’ve taken a minute to add it to my list, and the movie is ready and waiting on my Plex (and/or Jellyfin) before I get home.
Nah. If you’re catch and release then stremio is much better than all of this. Install the app on your Android TV, get debrid for a few dollars, and you’re off to the races. Great wife approval factor.
Grab Stremio, it’s a program you can download.
Once you’ve downloaded that and opened it up, in any browser go to torrentio.strem.fun and click to install that to your client.In the program go into your settings and remove the official sources from showing up (like apple TV, Netflix, etc.) and et viola.
You can use popular lists or search for series, and it’ll find the episode/movie from pirates sources.
The fun thing about this is it’s all educational. Not the program nor the torrentio link are illegal, it’s only what you do with it. So all in all, I hope you enjoy searching for legal documentaries supported by creative commons licensing!
If you want it done simply for relatively low cost ~$40usd/year Stremio + torrentio + realdebrid is what I use and it’s fast simple and works on basically anything although with the debrid you can only have one simultaneous stream if you were to use it on multiple devices You can skip the debrid if you choose to use a vpn instead unless you are in a country that doesn’t care
Also consider Weyd or Syncler instead of Stremio + Torrentio, and Premiumize in addition to Real Debrid. Premiumize can download from Usenet too.
This, I used to use Kodi+Serena+realdebrid but it was not as user friendly. Stremio is by far the best option if you just want to watch shows without making a server/ having to actually manage downloads or making it into a project.
You just set it up and use it like any other streaming app
No reason to self host unless you find joy in maintaining a server/ library
Go to a host like feralhost and rent a seed box. This gives you a webhosted transmission to paste magnet links in from any torrent site. Then you connect with filezilla over sftp, no vpn or nonsense needed and its all super fast because the torrenting is done from a data center and you download only from there over encrypted ssh at max speed when its finished.
That’s just VPN with extra steps. Why not just set up a SOCKS5/Shadowsocks/wireguard/whatever on any hosting and get a lot better experience?
In my country I don’t get good upstream internet so I can still have good ratios on torrent sites and the private trackers I use. The prices on the dedicated seed box services can’t be beat for bandwidth and for someone with kids it’s already all set up.
FWIW if you have a seed box which you can ssh into, you can setup a SOCKS5 proxy to route all traffic through the seed box. It’ll act like a VPN for you and is the best of both worlds in my opinion. This way your ISP and government can’t block your traffic or see that you’re accessing trackers at all (even to get the magnet links).
OP is new to this so they won’t have access to private trackers anyway.
Pretty sure most hosting platforms have egress costs on their cheaper VM instances.
I know Google cloud charges for bandwidth to AUS, and Oracle is 10TB of egress per month before charging (which I think is the most generous of free/cheap hosting platforms).
Cause they probably don’t know how to haha 😆
Hey, how about you go fuck yourself ? The only reason you’d leave a comment like this is because in real life no one cares about what you think so you need to be a petty loser
Damn. I wasn’t trying to be rude in anyway. My apologies.
I’m assuming you were stoned and simply poking fun.
You have to do this under the full moon of the longest day of summer too. Otherwise it doesn’t work.
Do you trust your seed box provider to not rat you out? Or at the very least not have identifying information on you that will be seized in a raid?
How do you do this with zero trust towards any provider? I mean unless you hijack a neighbors wifi, any provider can fuck up their OPSEC and get you burned.
I don’t live in a place that would raid an international hosting provider. In my county no one is ever going to come after me for using a seed box to download tv and movies. I simply do not need to worried about being ratted out.
I don’t know to what extent law enforcement would go to catch a pirate in Denmark. But a guy just got 30days for seeding about 800 movies, so I’m not taking any chances. If I was ever to use p2p, and this is purely theoretical, I would find a public (or open private) wifi, use an external wifi adapter and a virtual machine that doesn’t contain any personal information.
Seeding is different than downloading though and the seed box service is in another jurisdiction doing that where it is legal. I only connect to a proxy up with ssh and download data to my actual home, never upload. As far as my jurisdiction is concerned I haven’t seeded anything, just downloaded encrypted data from a datacenter ip.
I live in latam so my government isn’t enforcing pretty much anything though.
if you’re in Australia ignore all VPN advice. Companies can only come after you for the cost of a single copy of whatever you pirate making it functionally legal here.
Torrents are your best bet for now because they are super easy.
Usenet is a paid service, absolutely worth it but you’re paying for at least 2 different services to make it work and setting up a whole bunch of software. Just steer clear of the Arr suite until torrents fail you (and they will)
Torrents and newsgroups are still a thing, vpn up
“VPN up” depends on the country. Some countries don’t give a flying fuck, don’t waste money on a VPN if you live in such countries.
What countries?
Italy, Bulgaria, Spain for example. They usually couldn’t care less (unless it’s football/soccer piracy).
Germany, on the other hand, cares a lot. Use a VPN for sure there.
Anything LATAM
“Why do you need so many flash drives for your trip to South America?”
Flash drives are a waste unless you are snowden.
128 password Encrypted hardrives should do it
A laptop with an hdmi, stremio and a real Debrid account.
Simple
Been doing this for like 2 years. It’s great and the entire family can easily use it.
Edit: But have stremio on a Chromecast.
My main suggestion is to search whatever you want with Yandex.com - unlike Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Brave, etc etc, Yandex doesn’t delist piracy sites. So, “bookname pdf” will almost always return a good result. “some anime or movie name watch online” will also work.
Oh, and use uBlockOrigin. Ditch Chrome, use Firefox or anything that still makes uBlock works in full capacity.
Trash guides
Thanks! I couldn’t be assed enough to get the actual link.
I recently started paying for debrid services (I use real debrid, but there are others) and couldn’t be happier. Got an app called Stremio on my TV and after adding the credentials, everything just works - easy & fast like the streaming services.
It also allows you to download torrents much faster than torrenting them, especially if not many people seed them.
Oh, and if you ever need to download something from Rapidshare or whatever other websites like that it does that too.
Honestly, I should’ve started paying for it earlier.
Why pay someone else to run a service that you’d have been paying Netflix for.
That’s how I feel about Usenet tbh. If you’re going to pay, actually pay to support the shows you’re watching. IMO.
Otherwise you build a server PC and set it up for the *arr suite, Radarr, Sonarr and the rest. It’s the cost of your internet and your electricity after the upfront cost of your server.
Bonus: you have it when your internet is down, since they’re downloaded to the hard drive.
I’m of a similar opinion but really it depends on the user’s wants.
I personally don’t care for an easy app like interface. My set up is literally just wireless keyboard and mouse in the living room and a pc hooked up to my TV. I just stream stuff from ‘free’ sites online. It’s not much effort really. I’m not usually interested in checking out movies and shows the moment they release, I can wait a couple weeks or months for them to pop up in good quality on those sites.
The strong bias seems to be toward Torrents instead of USENET? Why? Cost of providers with decent retention?
I always assume that Usenet (with anonymous payment and a separate VPN) is a safer option than torrenting since I’m not the one publishing / sharing content. A copyright holder would have to go after that Usenet host (with a general court order), extract logs from them (if they exist), figure out who was actually infringing on copyright, then go after the VPN provider, to deanonymize me.
Usenet is great, but it’s a client-server model, and things can be deleted from the servers (e.g. due to DMCA requests). The copyright agencies for very popular content automatically send DMCA and NTD takedowns for them.
On the other hand, torrents are peer-to-peer. They’re practically impossible to shut down since there’s no central server in control of everything. You don’t even need a torrent file, just a magnet URI, which can be generated by anyone that already has the torrent.
Usenet is much better for rare/unpopular/uncommon content, since good providers have thousands of days of retention, whereas an unpopular torrent from 5 years ago would likely have 0 seeds left.
is TPB dead?
Works great for me. Definitely not as many seeders as they were during it’s heyday, but still a decent number. I’ve downloaded a couple semi-obscure films in the past couple of months and they downloaded just fine in an hour-or-two even with only one seed.