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Have 4K TV show torrents entirely disappeared from public trackers? (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago by Kribensis@lemm.ee to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I use a seedbox to run qBittorrent with Jackett, and have a bunch of sources on there. I know there are other methods, but that works for me and I'm comfortable with it.

Rarbg has been gone for about five months and it's harder and harder to find 4k TV rips. For current shows, sometimes you can get episodes as they air, but it's rare to see full seasons.

The tipping point was when I searched for a Netflix show from two weeks ago just now, with zero 4K results.

I've always hated private trackers since they're a pain in the ass, but is that the only option now? Do I need to look at a different method entirely? I've been torrenting since that existed, but if I need to do something else, let me know.

I don't expect to get torrent sites in any responses, but you can do that if you have any 😂

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[-] MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world 62 points 9 months ago

I think it's about audience. People who care about quality and bitrates and such usually have their couple of private trackers. People who just want to watch things regardless of quality just get whatever

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 39 points 9 months ago

That's what I'm asking. Until recently, one didn't need to bother with private trackers unless they wanted, say, a 4K rip of Suspiria from 1977, or some other incredibly specific thing. Private trackers, at least to me, were more trouble than they were worth. Why should I deal with them at all when I can get everything I need without begging for an invite and then annoying myself?

As a result, I have never joined a private tracker, not ever.

But now? I'm not sure. Something does seem to have changed systemically.

[-] iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee 20 points 9 months ago

4k just might not be worth the data for people.

[-] LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago

This is what it is for me. I’m blind in one eye and wear glasses because I’m near sighted with astigmatism in the other.

It’s really hard for me to tell the difference and most of my library is 1080 or 720 because it mostly looks the same to me. I don’t want to give up the extra storage Ford 4k files.

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

There are semi private trackers out there that you can get an invite fairly easy, as do open signups pretty often.

You don’t need to think about it too much, as most 4K content usually crosses the trigger for freeleech. That means you are fine as long as you don’t do a Hit ’n Run, which in itself is an asshole thing to do.

I have a fully automated system and don’t even bother checking where I am downloading from, or what my ratios are, all is taken care in the background.

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

Do you mind if I ask more details about your system?

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The whole Arr suite, plus others. I have a 24/7 low power machine running the following on unRAID with containers:

Radarr
Sonarr
Prowlarr
Overserr
qBittorrent
a VPN container
Recyclarr
cross-seed
qbit manage (this is key)
unpackerr
autobrr

I have more of course but this is what’s relevant to you.

I also have some custom scripts for patching some things up to my like.

[-] isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

how did you set it up (like, what's the process a file would do to get downloaded)? this seems a bit more complex then the normal *arr stack setup

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Just the normal monitor process in the Arrs and then the magic happens in qbit manage. There you can set up targets for your torrents (share ratio, seeding times, etc). Also autobrr puts me in the very first people to download a torrent, so it helps in keeping a good ratio. Cross-seed also pumps up the ratio a lot.

Recyclarr is very important for me because I am assured to request only the very best quality for the things I care.

My setup is complex but only because I invested way too much time in. You can get to 80% what I have in a few days and still get awesome results.

[-] isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago

wow! i have to admit i often leech from public trackers since my vpn doesn't support port forwarding anymore (mullvad) so i didn't really know of the setup to get a good ratio, only the downloading part. I'll have to look into it. by the way, do you use a vpn with port forwarding or just use trusted private trackers?

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yes I PF. The VPN container drops the dynamically assigned port to a file that a start up script for qbt reads and hard writes it in the config file. Fun stuff.

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[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Nice system. It looks like I could run most of that on my seedbox. Of course, I still need the content 😂

[-] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

How are you routing containers through the VPN container?

[-] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You set the network up as container:vpncontainername

Edit: correction

[-] risottinopazzesco@feddit.it 2 points 9 months ago

If this refers to docker compose, I think all that does is put them in the same network.

[-] sosayethme@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Here's the docker equivalent (gluetun is the VPN container in my setup):

network_mode: container:gluetun

So for any container I want to run through the VPN, I just stick that line in.

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[-] spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

Check out YAMS [dot] MEDIA. YAMS (Yet Another Media Server) is essentially what the other fella is running but super simple. Depending on what system you’re running you could be up and running your own home server in about an hour.

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[-] lukas@lemmy.haigner.me 8 points 9 months ago

Oddly specific example, but 4K rips of Suspiria from 1977 indeed exist.

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Haha! It's a real example. There was a Reddit thread in r/movies (which is a surprisingly good sub), and that came up. I ended up grabbing it. With more thought, it was a bad example, since I was able to get it on public trackers 😉

[-] meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

That movie really holds up well, and I heard those rips are glorious

[-] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

What show are you looking for? I'll check my trackers and see if I can get you an invite to somewhere that has it. Shoot me a DM.

[-] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 32 points 9 months ago

Private trackers (e.g. TorrentLeech) often have rules around large torrents (>15gb) or even around season packs for shows. This means it's trivial to download 4K season packs, and all you have to do is seed them for the requisite number of days (to avoid being tagged with a hit and run), rather than try to maintain a ratio.

[-] overzeetop@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I'm on private but don't have a seedbox, so I'm 100% pay to play. I pony up $100 every couple of years and my ratios don't matter. On a personal pride level I make sure my old favorites say seeding, esp now that they only have a couple of seeders, but for torrents with 30-100 seeds I'm not needed and my contribution with a 10Mb cable pip against Gb seedboxes is always nil.

[-] Takumidesh@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I paid for a seed box for one month, around $25 and built enough ratio from that month to last me years.

[-] ultratiem@lemmy.ca 17 points 9 months ago

The segment of pirates that try to hunt for the highest quality are a small niche. Most pirates will sacrifice just to have it.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Most of the stuff I want to watch, even without piracy, isn't even originally broadcast in 4K to begin with so there is obviously no 4K rips for those.

[-] Krauerking@lemy.lol 4 points 9 months ago

Man streaming services are even now making it hard to watch their content in 4k so yeah like, I've stopped expecting to see others ripping at that resolution, and will mostly only seek it out if it's something that deserves to be watched in 4k.

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[-] snekerpimp@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Usenet. Found so many things that I couldn’t find on public trackers once I got down the concept and was able to set up an arr server with sabnzbd. It does cost some money, but I feel it’s negligible for what you get.

[-] spaceaape@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 9 months ago

I looked into usenet but i could never get over having to subscribe pay for it. Why bother when torrenting is free. I'm on a couple private trackers and use a few public, but I never pay for access for the trackers or pirated content. Ive donated before to private trackers, and I pay for my seedbox monthly but that's for a service, it's not a paywall for access. I also read there are download limits and having to find newsgroups that have the content you want. It all seems more work than its worth and you have to pay for the privilege to do that work for the same exact outcome. 🤷‍♂️

I think OP needs a decent private tracker that's pretty easy to keep up with. My main private tracker has a rule, seed 3x or for 3 days to avoid hit an run on any torrent. You can also use earned coins from seeding to pay off hit and runs.

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

I'd be fine with this. I have the seedbox for seeding. The problem is more about getting invites to a private tracker through some random method that I don't know 😂

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[-] 21racecar12@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

Some Netflix shows that are in 4K have not been showing up in private trackers lately

[-] Wes_Dev@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

For years I've assumed there was some kind of invisible image manipulation that effectively encrypts the Netflix user ID in the video feed itself, so they can use leaked video to pinpoint users that share recordings.

Same type of thing paper printers do, and AI giants are trying to push now.

[-] Krauerking@lemy.lol 3 points 9 months ago

LoL I remember in the early 2010s a porn comic that actually did this and people were shocked because it seemed like a lot of work for a small niche thing.

And then we realized that converting to a png and then back to jpg killed the identifier. But the system was in place and I have seen so many versions of and workarounds for it. Someone even had a custom clipper software that just looked for the excess identifier data on the end of the file and would trim it.

I think it's wise to always think they might be doing this kind of stuff, especially big companies, but breaking it is pretty easy usually even by accident.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

How would that work? And if it was being done I’m sure it would have been discovered already. I mean it is just video.

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[-] wccrawford@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

I don't usually torrent, but I just looked at recent eps from Usenet and it looks like the majority is 1080p max. 4k exist, but tend to be from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, or AppleTV it seems.

I find NZBFinder to be a decent usenet indexer for free, so maybe take a look on there for the shows you're wanting and see if they're even out there. It could be they just aren't available at all.

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

Thanks! I used to use Usenet! It's been quite some time. I think I used to get porn, back when you had to download your porn to watch it 😉

It could be they just aren’t available at all.

Scary thought. If nobody's doing 4K rips of a brand new hit Netflix show, the scene is not working right now. I'm inclined to think it's just gone private, but I really don't know.

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Netflix "4K" is often hit and miss. It doesn't always stream at a high enough bitrate even if it's labeled 4K. Basically it's anybody's guess what encoding you're gonna get at any given moment. I imagine that makes ripping quality very random.

[-] wolfshadowheart@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago

Compared to Amazon, where they rip right from the server lol

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[-] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

For some shows I've noticed that it's not too difficult to get around half of their seasons in 4K, with the 4K releases for the remaining seasons being seemingly nowhere, whether it be on public trackers, private trackers, or usenet. Doesn't seem to be an issue of shows only being shot in 4K after their first few seasons, as in some cases the 1st and 3rd seasons may have 4K releases without the 2nd season having one, for instance.