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.
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.
A laptop with an hdmi, stremio and a real Debrid account.
Simple
Radarr, Sonarr, Jellyfin, qBittorrent.
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.
Hold on buddy, i would say that the first three are for veterans
And only for those interested in streaming rather than downloading.
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.
VPN, depending on how your country handles copyright laws.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
qBittorrent is probably the best torrent client for Windows
~~Mullvad is a relatively cheap and trustworthy VPN provider~~ (they unfortunately removed port forwarding, which is important for torrenting)
AirVPN and Proton VPN are trustworthy VPN providers that support port forwarding
Servarr is the way to go if you want to set up a server that automates everything for you
Jellyfin is the best media server, far ahead of Plex and fully FOSS
FMHY and the Champagne Piracy Wiki have lots of valuable information
A bit of topic but why the hell does the champagne wiki reccomend Edge as a browser citing it's AI capabilities? Is this copied directly from MS marketing material?
Edit: I am starting to read through it and there Is so much bad, outdated and just wrong information there:
I don't really want to continue beyond before-you-begin
Edit2: Uh why is there an extensive article on how to deal with addiction and how to do meditation in the piracy section?
I don't think I should continue any further
Edit3: you can contribute to the wiki by sending markdown files in a discord channel. Wikipedia should switch to this model as well imo
But Mullvad dropped port-forwarding which is relevant in the context of torrenting.
God dammit
I keep forgetting that. I didn't really notice it, since I use a seedbox anyway, but that might be a little to much for a new user.
Refer here for the most pirated stuff. Ask further if you need anything more detailed
VPN isn't needed if your country doesnt persecute individual piracy.
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)
The simple answer:
Get Qbittorrent and use it's built-in search engine.
The fully automated gay space answer:
These are the apps you'll need:
(There is also Lidarr for music and Readarr for books)
If all set up correctly, you simply just request something with Overseerr and it shows up in Plex minutes later with artwork and metadata all pulled in and presented nicely. You can configure the apps to look for specific resolutions/file sizes/formats/etc. TV shows are downloaded as soon as a new episode is released. It's better than any streaming service by leaps and bounds.
Does overseer do anything besides let you request from the others? And where does Prowlarr come in?
I more or less have this setup, but I start in Trakt (which I was using before I started with the arrs) and add something to my watchlist. Sonarr and Radarr regularly sync with that and check the indexers I have set up and download via sabnzbd. It unpacks and gets to where it needs to go, and I watch it in Jellyfin.
It all works fine for me. So what I'm really asking, is am I missing out on anything by not using Overseer and Prowlarr or is it just another way of doing the same thing?
Overseerr is basically a polished front end for Radarr/Sonarr. It's useful if non-techies are requesting things, and/or you just want a single, dead-simple place to request (video) media. If you want to just try it out it doesn't affect your radarr/sonarr setup at all.
@ShepherdPie@midwest.social gave a good explanation of Prowlarr. Just another simplification/automation tool.
Prowlarr allows you to manage all the indexers/trackers in one location. This is helpful if you want to add or remove one or limit things from being automatically downloaded from site A but not B, C, and D like when you join a new private tracker and need to build ratio first.
Overseer makes recommendations according your plex/jellyfin views, but don’t know if it is better than trakt (don’t know trakt well..) Prowlarr is to manage indexer centralised for all the arr services. It is as well a good tool to search releases manually, if the arr services fail to grab a release you want.
Pinned thread on this very community.
Recognize that there may be some costs involved: hard drives, a raspberry pi, VPN/VPS/seedbox, even just electricity.
Get a good VPN and use it for any torrenting you do from home. Nord is not a good VPN. (unless your government doesn’t care or you use a seed box, then do whatever)
Use public torrent trackers if you have to but: If you have some private torrent tracker accounts from yore, try to get them re-activated. Surprisingly they may have your old info. This will probably require IRC. If not, look into interviewing with RED, OPS, or MAM to learn the ropes, then use them to get invited into movie/TV/general PTs.
If you don’t like the sound of torrenting look into newsgroups. This will cost money in two ways: a newsgroup account and a news indexer.
Check out the arr suite, especially radarr and sonarr, to automatically get what you are interested in.
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