I was a happy Netflix user until 2018, before that I haven’t really pirated any movies (with very rare exceptions) for almost a decade but I recently started again. I’m was doing my monthly budgeting and realized I was paying for too many subscription services. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Disney+, Hulu and Crunchyroll. My family likes to watch different types of content that is distributed on many different platforms.
I was never subscribed to these many services until a couple years ago. I was thinking which service I should cancel when I realized I had the option to cancel all of them this entire time. I’m torrenting again and I started saving a considerate amount.
The only service I’m paying for is Spotify which I think it’s fairly priced and offers all the music my family listens too (and it’s convenient). All the competitors pretty much offer the same content and that’s how streaming services should be.
I remember back in the day using eMule and BitChe (to look for torrents). Now I’m using Deluge as my torrent client and I I get my torrents from 1337x. What sites are you guys using?
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I see a lot of mixed people between piracy and paying for streaming services.
I use a starr stack with custom scripts and shell out more money then if I just payed for services.
For those that don’t want to dive super deep into piracy and want good access to content. Use the Streamio + Torrentio or Real Debrid they’re honestly great and make things easy.
Idk if I would use whatever this debrid is. You can easily accomplish torrenting trackers and what not via either biglybt or any other torrent client that allows I2P, or you can use a vpn, etc.
I don’t understand all this hype lately for downloaders, they look and few exactly like crap ware and malware used to come bundled in - what’s the benefit to using a “downloader” over using a setup with torrenting, plex, private trackers and maybe an *arr product like sonarr?
You don’t need to know about bittorrent or set things up as much no VPN either needed and it’s easy to understand. I used it only for a week though personally and thought it was good.
I’m picky though and wanted ZR releases and everything very specific so I opted into a complete starr stack and plex on a dedi server.
Noooice, I was hopeful for an automated setup on my Pi4 but had issues with sonarr or somethin I can’t remember and then I thought about it more and decided to keep things manual and prevent any unnecessary additional risk. The downloads from i2p usually take longer but I just start whatever I might want when I’m making dinner and it’s usually ready for watching that night or next day so its been working pretty well and I don’t have to worry about any malware or anything suddenly creeping in on me or laying low for a long time because something was done automatically without my knowing
When you use a debrid service with Stremio, you do not need to use a VPN, and you are less hindered by a devices ability to understand torrent content. It makes it easy to stream in your browser, for instance. Even on your phone.
Yeah see I wouldn’t expect that sort of services from something that’s supposed to manage downloads though.
I’m not going to trust software that’s in charge of downloading my content, doing xyz to it and returning it to me.
Now for the steaming portion, I can do this same thing, with plex. So I still don’t understand what value is being added besides one layer of obfuscation to your identity. Where are these servers hosted, do they have to comply with international regulations and global legal compliance? I bet they do and it’s just a matter of time that they go down and every other IP they have info on with it too.
Just my 2c
It very much depends on the provider, same as VPNs.
Something you cant do with PLEX though, is real time streaming with zero storage necessary.
Yeah, again - just not something that’s needed for me and the risk that’s posed by allowing a 3rd party to act as an intermediary for your files is a great way to get infected.
This streaming part also seems nice, but I personally don’t need to watch something as soon as I find it if I just need to wait a couple hours or create a backlog of shows to dl while I’m doing other stuff.
The only reason I’m especially hesitant of this is because it’s unnecessary risk, this seems like a product for young people and the inexperienced which is who threat actors target
I mean, if you’re concerned that malware is going to be injected into your video files… Who’s to say your torrents aren’t already infected?
And yeah, to an extent it requires less knowledge, but the WAF is much higher on a “watch it now” platform than a “I want to watch this let me add it to a queue to watch it later” platform.
I’m also a fan of the fact that I don’t need to dedicate storage to what is essentially a single use file.
But to each their own, of course.
Oooo that’s a really good point I hadn’t thought about although I’m sure you could setup an auto purge of old torrents pretty easily with whatever language you’d like.
Also an excellent point about the initial source possibly being malicious but I did want to bring up the counterpoint that the torrent portion is inherently risky but this service would be adding additional risk on top of that
I can see the use for a real-time torrent streamer but the download management portion just screams adware, Trojan, etc which are only getting worse and nastier as the days go by.
With some clients and addons + debrid, you can set up a Netflix/HBO clone, with no downloads necessary and instant streaming. You just browse the shows (it automatically downloads info and images form Trakt, TVDB, etc.), select play and it plays just like any streaming site.
Depending on the jurisdiction it’s also legal to stream video, while downloading or torrenting is not.
That sounds nice! Wonder if that will continue to work with netflixs new restrictions on account sharing, how are they accomplishing such a task?
It looks and smells like a free lunch but I’m just not convinced that it’s safer. This is a big claim for them to be making that it’s somehow legal for them to be streaming Netflix and hbo shows to people who do not have an account and haven’t paid for those services
https://torrentgalaxy.to/ is a public tracker that has some decent stuff.
https://torrentleech.org is a good private tracker that has frequent open invites. All their boxsets are freeleech so it’s pretty easy to build up a good ratio
Been torrenting all through with 1337x and yts.mx despite paying for Netflix. The occasional piratebay for more obscure movies. RARBG was my favorite tracker, but sadly, they are no more.
Luckily I live in China where nobody bothers about copyright laws, so I can max out my 1gbit connection that costs me 2 full dollars a month 🙃
a rarbg copycat group popped up here: https://therarbg.com/ not quite the same but I figure it’s worth following and using as a drop-in replacement for rarbg.
Ah nice, thanks a lot!
Did you grab the rarbg database of magnets that’s floating around?
I use FMHY. It’s a listing of a bunch of sources.
Even when I subbed to netflix, I still downloaded what I enjoyed.
I like having an offline copy of my media.
Online content always seems to provide sub-par quality, even on good connections. Don’t need to worry about that with downloaded media.
Plus, if the internet goes down for whatever reason? External HDD > Laptop > HDMI > TV. Boom. Offline Netflix.
It’s also nice for traveling and staying in hotels. Most hotel TVs have at least one accessible HDMI port, and that’s all you need.
You dont need Spotify, check out ViMusic
It doesn’t have an algorithm and isn’t cross platform.
Try InnerTube. I tried ViMusic, but the UI is terrible isn’t it?
InnerTube is the same, but the UI is more intuitive.
My pick with ViMusic is not that the ui looks bad, honestly I kinda like it, but it looks like it isn’t being maintained anymore.
Then that’s why I found the UI so messy and out of style. It may have been good years ago.
Whoa! Both of these are very cool. Is there way to migrate from Spotify to another service?
Sadly I don’t think so. InnurTune is just a YouTube Music with different UI and Features. You can’t even log in with you Google account.
I am afraid you will need to add your favorite artists / songs manually.
Did you mean InnerTune? That’s the result I got from searching
Yes, sorry, it is InnerTune. You can find it on F-Droid.
I still buy CDs for the highest possible bitrate and album art. That’s how willing I am to pay for content.
I started torrenting movies again about a month ago. This shit is ridiculous. They made the situation absurd. I paid until it turned stupid again.
Good sound quality but shame about the loudness and compression on a lot of CD releases of the last 15 years or so though.
CD’s are 16 bit, 44kHz, and can not go higher. There are higher mediums, tho I agree with your sentiment.
I use Musi and it has everything for free (I have no spotify) and acts like youtube red. No account needed. One ad if u don’t pay.
24/192 rips from a half inch tape are the way to go.
You don’t do anything with those though without a DAC that can play that without downsampling and an operating system with a sensible sound service.
And the right genre and good ears.
Going back to my Steely Dan collection ->
I never stopped 😂.
But in all seriousness I’m still languishing on janky old school public trackers too, commenting here to help me remember to read through these suggestions at a later date.
Got caught torrenting a decade ago by my ISP and haven’t since.
PIA for a vpn good enough to hop back in?
To be honest, I have been always using NordVPN, never had any issues with them. Torrenting like a beast 😂
Probably there are other, cheaper and better, VPNs.
How does that affect your speeds?
Seconding Nord, love it. If I happen to get slow speeds I just connect to a different location (only happens if im running double vpn, or obfuscated, sometimes they get slow- TOR vpn is super slow so i dont use that one. These are different categories of VPN inside of Nord if you are wondering).
IIRC, Nord is one of the few who keeps their data on RAM, meaning if an agency requests records, they unplug it to give to them, and the data is gone as soon as it’s unplugged. If im wrong, let me know!
Nord sucks for privacy, free ProtonVPN might even be better…
Is mullvad still good?
PIA was bought out by Kape Technologies which has a sketchy history of running malicious man-in-the-middle ad-injection software for profit. Up to you if you think that’s a dealbreaker or not, but I’d recommend using Mullvad instead.
They passed a third party audit of their No logs policy in June of 2022 so although Kape is a concern I’ve been keeping a close eye on it. Performance has still been great across my devices (iPad, iOS, windows, MacBook) and so until I see a change from my side or some more concerning news about it comes out I’ve been happy with it.
Lemme guess, Germany? Es ist verboten!
What happened when they caught you?
Very angry letter home threatening legal action that definitely pissed off my parents (I was in high school at the time)
Did not help that it was an adult movie that got me caught and this was apparent because the bastards included the movie title in the letter lmao
That’s rough!
Fucking hilarious now. Super not cool then lol
That’s rough! I only received an email from my provider Telus telling me to stop torrenting, I didn’t and I never received another email since. I don’t use any VPN
when i got caught like 15 years ago all they did was send a letter in the mail asking that delete the downloaded game as if they would have any way of knowing if i actually did or not lol. I had a vpn but didn’t know about binding it to the downloader
I’ve used PIA for over ten years with no issues.
Cool! Thanks you
I’ve been using PIA for torrenting for several years with no trouble.
Cool! Thanks you
Make sure there are no “leaks” once you get PIA set up. There are online torrent leak checkers.
I’ve been using PIA to get around various region locked streaming sites for awhile now
What do you mean “leaks” like apps on my Pc not using it?
You can bind your torrent client to only use the VPN connection. The default is that if there is a drop on the vpn, most torrent clients use any connection which means it would just use your normal connection and could leak your ip address.
DNS leaks. I got caught on my VPN like 3 times and didn’t understand why until I realized that my VPN has massive DNS leaks.
Plex shares solved my streaming need and negated my laziness and hatred of downloading files to a penstock for my ps4.
£5 for everything I could ever need with a netflix like interface, and if for whatever reason something isn’t on…it’s obtained and visible to watch. Bliss!
Been using PIA for over ten years with no issues.
I feel like I must be the only person in the world still still using Piratebay! I switch between that and Kickass Torrents and have done for years. They’ve been through a variety of guises but seem to have settled down now. I use Tixati to leech and seed, never used a VPN and never had any trouble from my ISPs. It’s been interesting reading the comments though, might look at some of the suggestions.
once in a while when i download a disney movie, it triggers an email from the isp. i payed the fee tho so they need to shut up, in canada there’s a tax, or was, on blank cd’s that went to the entertainment industry to compensate for pirating. they charged me so i feel entitled to sail on.
I’m currently using “Torrent Search Revolution” on my phone, and it is so easy! Is searches a bunch of sites at one (you can remove sites from the site-search list, not sure about adding to it though). The only downside, so far, is you don’t get any extras you’d get from going to the site- no comments, no still-frames for QC. You gotta know exactly what your looking for.
Edit- I forgot, you asked for sites! Primary - Torrentday Secondary - tpb, 1337x, YTS, eztv, ext, magnet.dl, nyaa, cloudtorrents (the aforementioned app searches all of these)
Expanding from just torrents - I highly recommend looking into usenet! Downside, you have to pay for a good indexer. You can get a one time purchase depending on what site you go to, mine is ~$80 per year. After that, set up your nzb/Usenet download client (I recommend sabnzb, these are all free), then you can troll through that for movies, tv, etc like a torrent site. Generally it’s more reliable, and if you find something on there you can download it and it’ll max out your download speed (if you let it) instead of getting single seeder torrents that get stalled.
Want to get (slightly) techier but much better? Get Radarr for movies, Sonarr for TV shows, lidarr for music, and readarr for books. (There’s also whisparr for porn, mylar3 for comics, Bazarr for subtitles and others, but I haven’t felt a need to run these yet) Basically you can find movies, tv, etc that you want and “monitor” them, and let the program do the rest. They scan multiple sources (Usenet and torrent sites) that you setup for the content you want, compare it to filters you put in place (quality, number of seeders, age, number of other downloads, etc) and download it for you. New movie that isn’t hd yet? It can grab a webrip or lower def version for you, and automatically replace it with a 1080p version when it’s available. You can also grab prowlarr to manage your indexers (nzb site torrent sites) across all of your apps so you have one source of truth.
My setup:
I may be a pirate, but I do it with class and comfort.
Comfort is so easy. I’v only started using Plex, which is not much effort at all, but it gives so much comfort. My subtitles are always in sync now!
Do you have a good guide for setting up your qbittorrent with the arrs? Ive had NZBget working flawlessly for about a year now but haven’t had the time/focus to figure out the right way to handle the torrent side of things.
I didn’t use a guide actually, but here are the steps!
Get qbittorrent configured for normal use (up/down limit, root folder, etc
Enable the webui in qbittorrent. Once done, you should be able to access it at localhost:{port} from your browser, or from {host_ip}.{port} from any other device on your network
Add qbittorrent as a download client for your arr apps just like your nzb downloader (but selecting torrent). I can’t remember if you have to do this individually or if prowlarr can handle it, I think prowlarr can handle it so you don’t have to do it multiple times though.
Pass in localhost or the IP of the host machine and the port when you’re setting it up so it knows where to connect it. You may also need the username and password you made (unless you use bypass on localhost or whitelisted ips)
And that’s about it! It will submit the torrent downloads to qbittorrent for you and manage them like sabnzb/nzbget do for nzb.
Hope this helps! It is a super easy process to setup thankfully, if you run into any roadblocks that a basic Google can’t solve I’d be happy to try to help
Add Nzb360 to this and your pirate life will truly be class
Or LunaSea on iOS
Forgot all about LunaSea, thanks for the reminder!
What did you use as your music manager before Tidal?
I used lidarr for getting and maintaining the music, and Plex for streaming it. I switched to tidal since the effort of individually selecting songs/albums to download before I could listen to them was far more than the $9/month cost of streaming the music. If you don’t like expanding your music library then downloading it is fine (like if you only listen to a few artists and it doesn’t change) but my taste in music changes with my mood so I was having to download classic rock, blues and jazz, pop, and classical. Steaming is just a hell of a lot easier than downloading, at least for discovering new music
thank you!
Same, got tired of shit service.
If a fucking piracy website is better than the cooperate that should make people question why they even pay a single cent to them.
Same here. I was actually pretty okay with just going with Netflix and then maybe HBO. But then every one of their mothers has their own streaming service.
Back to the salty seas for me
I think the phrase you were looking for was “everyone and their mothers” 😅