Torrents

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
38,270
15,092
I'm intrigued by seedboxes. Can ISPs intercept the data you are taking from them in the same fashion they do for public trackers or is it more secure?
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,738
7,764
I think having both is the best way to go. With all the TV shows out there, automating that part of it was the easiest thing. I'm not a huge movie guy, so pulling one of those every once in a while from a torrent, if newsgroups don't have it, is just fine for me.

I just knew that sometimes people object to having to pay for this stuff, like it defeats the purpose, but then saw many more than willing to pay for a seedbox, so I wanted to bring it up and see peoples thoughts.

Good chat!
And you can't do that with torrents?
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,714
3,211
Apparently not as easily with torrents as with usenets, if you are speaking of the automation?
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,738
7,764
I use an RSS feed with BTN to pull down torrents I want. I don't auto start, but I could. What more automation do you want?
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,714
3,211
I use an RSS feed with BTN to pull down torrents I want. I don't auto start, but I could. What more automation do you want?
The RSS feeds from IPT were for entire categories, I guess I have to set up filters in my torrent client to only pull certain shows I want? And then there's the issue of FTP'ing directly from the seedbox? if you don't use a seedbox, do you use another program to organize the shows into folders for show and season? or renaming the files?

I think it's pretty easy for both to automatically download shows. I still think it's easier on Sickbeard, but let's just say they are the same. I think where Sickbeard shines is the automation that happens after you have the show.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,738
7,764
Oh, yeah, IPT's RSS blows.

Don't care that much about automating after I download it. Half the shows I watch get deleted, the other half will get archived manually after the season is done.
 

gogusrl

Molten Core Raider
1,362
105
Flexget can filter any RSS feed for exactly what you want, unrar them, rename them, sort them by series/season/episode. I integrate it with subliminal for subtitles as well.

This is an example of flexget sorting, I keep the episode name / directory for seeding purposes and only the last episode of a season if I'm running out of space.

 

spronk

FPS noob
23,352
27,209
imo one thing thats a big difference between people like us (old) and young people is that we tend to imagine some sort of bizarre fallout scenario where the world ends but we still have our PCs and power in a shelter and will be able to watch the terabytes of videos we have accumulated over the years, because we know what life without the internet is like.

but frankly I no longer download every single new thing that comes around, I only download things that I will watch this week. That also lets me skip past the first gen of rips (720p, web-DL) and get the bluray versions usually. And once I watch, I delete it unless I am 100% sure its something I will rewatch a lot, pretty much limited to real classics. At one point I free'd up something like 3 terabytes by deleting shit I knew I was never gonna watch, and I still have 3+ tb of 1080p videos in my directories.

For now BTN/IPT/etc are my cloud, I have downloaded some shows like Breaking Bad or Arrested Dev 3+ times because I watch and delete, and every time there is a new re-release that is better anyways

it will suck when cable companies start enforcing caps in my area though, right now I have a 70 Mbps pipe so an entire bluray movie is down in under 20 mins, less than a minute for any 720p show.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,763
I actually watch every episode of TV I download during it's respective season
biggrin.png
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
imo one thing thats a big difference between people like us (old) and young people is that we tend to imagine some sort of bizarre fallout scenario where the world ends but we still have our PCs and power in a shelter and will be able to watch the terabytes of videos we have accumulated over the years, because we know what life without the internet is like.

but frankly I no longer download every single new thing that comes around, I only download things that I will watch this week. That also lets me skip past the first gen of rips (720p, web-DL) and get the bluray versions usually. And once I watch, I delete it unless I am 100% sure its something I will rewatch a lot, pretty much limited to real classics. At one point I free'd up something like 3 terabytes by deleting shit I knew I was never gonna watch, and I still have 3+ tb of 1080p videos in my directories.

For now BTN/IPT/etc are my cloud, I have downloaded some shows like Breaking Bad or Arrested Dev 3+ times because I watch and delete, and every time there is a new re-release that is better anyways

it will suck when cable companies start enforcing caps in my area though, right now I have a 70 Mbps pipe so an entire bluray movie is down in under 20 mins, less than a minute for any 720p show.
A lot of it is because of internet speeds. I used to be a media horder, I'd download every single movie, TV show, and music album that I thought I might ever remotely have any interest in. Mainly because 10 years ago I was limited to 5Mbps, then eventually 10Mbps downloads, and if I decided I wanted to watch a movie, I didn't want to wait an hour or two for it to download, I wanted to watch it now, so I already had it.

At this point I'm up to 50Mbps service, and I'm just about over that whole plan. I can snag a typical 2 gig 720p movie in ~10 minutes if I want to watch it right now, That isn't an unreasonable wait time. I start the download, go use the bathroom, fix a drink and a snack, and it's ready to go when I get back, not a lot of planning ahead is needed.

Once Google Fiber is available to me next year, I'll be completely dumping all of my media drives (3 3TB hard drives), as I'll be able to snag full 40gig 1080p movies in 5 minutes. AT that point, there is absolutely no reason to waste local storage space on any media whatsoever.
 

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
imo one thing thats a big difference between people like us (old) and young people is that we tend to imagine some sort of bizarre fallout scenario where the world ends but we still have our PCs and power in a shelter and will be able to watch the terabytes of videos we have accumulated over the years, because we know what life without the internet is like.

but frankly I no longer download every single new thing that comes around, I only download things that I will watch this week. That also lets me skip past the first gen of rips (720p, web-DL) and get the bluray versions usually. And once I watch, I delete it unless I am 100% sure its something I will rewatch a lot, pretty much limited to real classics. At one point I free'd up something like 3 terabytes by deleting shit I knew I was never gonna watch, and I still have 3+ tb of 1080p videos in my directories.

For now BTN/IPT/etc are my cloud, I have downloaded some shows like Breaking Bad or Arrested Dev 3+ times because I watch and delete, and every time there is a new re-release that is better anyways

it will suck when cable companies start enforcing caps in my area though, right now I have a 70 Mbps pipe so an entire bluray movie is down in under 20 mins, less than a minute for any 720p show.
A lot of it is because of internet speeds. I used to be a media horder, I'd download every single movie, TV show, and music album that I thought I might ever remotely have any interest in. Mainly because 10 years ago I was limited to 5Mbps, then eventually 10Mbps downloads, and if I decided I wanted to watch a movie, I didn't want to wait an hour or two for it to download, I wanted to watch it now, so I already had it.

At this point I'm up to 50Mbps service, and I'm just about over that whole plan. I can snag a typical 2 gig 720p movie in ~10 minutes if I want to watch it right now, That isn't an unreasonable wait time. I start the download, go use the bathroom, fix a drink and a snack, and it's ready to go when I get back, not a lot of planning ahead is needed.

Once Google Fiber is available to me next year, I'll be completely dumping all of my media drives (3 3TB hard drives), as I'll be able to snag full 40gig 1080p movies in 5 minutes. AT that point, there is absolutely no reason to waste local storage space on any media whatsoever. Can't wait for Fiber to get here. Will be able to snag a full music album in .flac format in about 2 seconds, 1 gig 720p TV shows will take ~10 seconds, 15GB games will download in under 2 minutes, etc.
 

The Master

Bronze Squire
2,084
2
^That. Though I still factor in availability... there are some things I had a hard time finding and know they won't be easy to find again if I delete them. Or things that are super small (every pre-CD game in existence takes up so little space that it is more than worth it to me).
 

Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
39,364
129,377
I can't say precisely why I prefer torrents, but I'd imagine a lot of it has to do with having a BTN account. I love the way their layout works, allowing me to look at a particular show, decide if I want to add it to my "favorites", and look back any time I want at which shows have been downloaded, probably all the way back to the beginning if I cared. I can see if anyone has even uploaded the format I want, and if not, if I want to download an alternate format. With Sickbeard I'd never know if someone released the 720p MKV Webrip instead of the Scene I prefer, unless I set both to download, because they might be DMCA'd before I even think to search for it.
I've never used BTN, so maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but it sounds like you like it because you can search for certain formats/qualities of media? I can do that with usenet, and in fact I do for movies (I don't download enough movies to make Couch Potato worthwhile). I've found that pretty much the exact same rips that get posted on IPT and Piratebay are available at the same time on my indexer.

Honestly, myonlycomplaint with switching over to usenet is it sucks for older shows. An example of this is I never watched Six Feet Under and wanted to grab it. Unfortunately the show is so damn old that even with 1000 days retention it's not enough. But ironically, the whole reason I'm on usenet is because I couldn't trust torrents with this, and I still can't. It's an HBO show, and I'm one DMCA notice away from my ISP shutting me off. I can't risk downloading a decades old show over torrents and having my internet shut off. So for me it still wins, just because torrents have way too much visibility. The fact that I went years without a DMCA notice doesn't matter anymore, because it only takes one time to fuck me.
 

Kedwyn

Silver Squire
3,915
80
VPN. Seedbox. Private trackers.

DCMA?

Usenet is fine but my viewing habits tend to be for older stuff as I still subscribe to pay TV. I grab the stuff I missed I might be interested in or nostalgic about but most of our viewing is DVR. Torrents fit that really well.
 

Void

BAU BAU
<Gold Donor>
9,800
11,715
I've never used BTN, so maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but it sounds like you like it because you can search for certain formats/qualities of media? I can do that with usenet, and in fact I do for movies (I don't download enough movies to make Couch Potato worthwhile). I've found that pretty much the exact same rips that get posted on IPT and Piratebay are available at the same time on my indexer.
We're probably both talking at cross purposes here because I haven't used Sickbeard either, so there's no commonality to compare the two, but going off of what I understand of Sickbeard (which could be wrong), I'll try to explain what I mean.

On BTN, when I set up my RSS feed, I select which quality (720p), which container (mkv), which codec (x264), and of course which shows. I am assuming that all of those things can be done with Sickbeard as well. However, I can also say that I only want a specific source (HDTV), and a specific origin (Scene release). Those last two eliminate a ton of downloads I don't want. At first I didn't realize what I was doing, so I said sure, let's include Bluray sources, P2P origins, etc. Actually let me include a pic so you see all the choices.
rrr_img_71301.jpg


Before I trimmed it down to that, as soon as the bluray came out, I'd get episode 1 of every show on my list as a bluray rip too, months after I had already watched it. I don't want or need that. Similarly, I don't need the webdl or rip a day or two later as well. Same with the P2P download vs. the scene download. Usually P2P is larger and slower (not always), and I just have found scene releases to consistently be the highest quality. Of course, a "scene" group vs a "p2p" group is subjective, but BTN requires you to clarify when uploading, and if the name isn't on their scene list, it is considered P2P. Close enough for me.

Anyway, my point being, that I only get ONE copy of the show, and it is the copy I want. Maybe Sickbeard can do a lot of that. But can it decide which release to give you, or does it just give you the first one that meets your settings? Or all of them? Even if it only gives you one, because it understands that a particular episode is now downloaded, is it really the one you would prefer? Not to mention, if the original one gets nuked for being out of sync or something, does it immediately re-download the "proper" fixed file? Mine will.

The only thing it doesn't do is organize it into the proper storage folders. But a) that allows me to notice things like there being a proper download to replace the original, and b) it takes me less than 10 seconds per episode to do with tinyMediaManager. Sure I'd love some way to automate that process, which Sickbeard has. But I prefer the flexibility of download vs. not having to organize it myself.

Not very big differences really, I admit, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to use one over the other. I say use whatever makes you happy. But since the question was asked "Why torrents?" I felt I would give an honest answer. As stated before, I still use newsgroups at times...just almost never for TV shows.
 

darkmiasma

Trakanon Raider
859
653
All right, here is my attempt.

*snip*
So I finally got around to trying this, and I guess my issue is that since I'm not a power user, I'm apparently not allowed to use RSS Feeds specifically for shows - I can use them for all torrents, but not just for say Falling Skies or Persons of Interest.

I guess I'll worry about it later and just do it manually for now.
 

Void

BAU BAU
<Gold Donor>
9,800
11,715
So I finally got around to trying this, and I guess my issue is that since I'm not a power user, I'm apparently not allowed to use RSS Feeds specifically for shows - I can use them for all torrents, but not just for say Falling Skies or Persons of Interest.

I guess I'll worry about it later and just do it manually for now.
I mentioned it earlier in this thread but it was probably easy to miss. You have to either reach a certain level or just donate 5 or 10 euros. If you donate you get it forever after. It was worth it to me.
 

darkmiasma

Trakanon Raider
859
653
I mentioned it earlier in this thread but it was probably easy to miss. You have to either reach a certain level or just donate 5 or 10 euros. If you donate you get it forever after. It was worth it to me.
I must have missed that - time to go check into it.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,763
Yeah sickbeard does that and organizes it locally plus is open source python so you can do a ton more with it if you have the slightest amount of skill. It will grab prospers as well.