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.

  • histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    52 minutes ago

    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

  • oddsignal@eviltoast.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    5 hours ago

    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.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    7 hours ago

    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.

    • Underwaterbob@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 hours ago

      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.

      • pyrflie@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        1 day ago

        And only for those interested in streaming rather than downloading.

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          24 hours ago

          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)

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.

        • overload@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          19 hours ago

          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.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 hours ago

            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.

            • overload@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              8 hours ago

              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.

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          24 hours ago

          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.

    • r00ty@kbin.life
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.

  • فریدون حسینی@vegantheoryclub.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    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.

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 hours ago

      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.

    • khorovodoved@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      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?

      • فریدون حسینی@vegantheoryclub.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        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.

        • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          21 hours ago

          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).

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

          OP is new to this so they won’t have access to private trackers anyway.

      • CoopaLoopa@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        23 hours ago

        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).

    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      You have to do this under the full moon of the longest day of summer too. Otherwise it doesn’t work.

  • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    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!

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    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

    • Wolf314159@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      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.

    • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      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.

      • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        You missed the bit where I assumed OP isn’t looking for long-winded series due to having kids

        • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          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?

    • pyrflie@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.

      • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        I didn’t know 1337x rate-limits! Thanks for the info.

        Yes, TGX is excellent too

        RARBG is sorely missed

        Torrentleech is good

    • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      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.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      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.

    • PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      18 hours ago

      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.

  • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    70
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    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

    • Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      16 hours ago

      I know sharing is caring but it should be said that if you dont plan on seeding anyway, mullvad is perfectly fine for torrenting.

      I also think its worth mentioning that proton only supports ephemeral remote port forwarding which is objectively worse then airvpns implementation, if port forwarding is super important to you.

    • rooster_butt@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      You can’t say jellyfin is far ahead of plex when it doesn’t have nearly as many clients as plex does. I’ll agree that in the free tier jellyfin is better, but as of now it’s not as fully featured as plex pro. Even non pro plex just makes it easier to share outside your home too.

    • emhl@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      47
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      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:

      • they recommend to set a DNS level adblocker using an app that isn’t supported on the android version the guide is for and completely forget that you can just set the DNS server without any additional app on any modern android version (what is what the provider of the Dns server they recommend reccomends)
      • they tell you protonVPN doesn’t support Torrenting (maybe just bad wording) and recommended mullvad because of that

      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

        • jittery_shibe@lemmings.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          22 hours ago

          Why is port forwarding important? I have my torrent server running, downloading and uploading perfectly fine. Is port forwarding needed for like something else besides general down/uploading?

          • 84skynet@discuss.online
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            9 hours ago

            To my understanding, it works like this: your client talks to the torrent tracker, then it sends you the data about seeders and leechers. Then your client tries to connect to them, but if neither you nor the other peer have port forwarding, you cannot connect to each other. This is not a problem for popular torrents with lots of peers, but when there are not so many it can be a problem because the other peers might as well not have port forwarding, so peers cannot connect to each other and the torrent will eventually die.

            That’s why it is recommended to use a VPN with port forwarding. When not using a VPN, if your router supports uPnP you are already port forwarded (with the default settings in qbittorrent).

  • metaStatic@kbin.earth
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    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)

  • Bigfoot@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    The simple answer:

    Get Qbittorrent and use it’s built-in search engine.

    The fully automated gay space answer:

    • Look into selfhosting - (optional but makes it easier/coler)
    • Look into Plex (or Emby or Jellyfin) - optional but makes it pretty

    These are the apps you’ll need:

    • Radarr - Gets movies
    • Sonarr - Gets tv shows automatically as they come out
    • Prowlarr - the thing that does the searching for radarr/sonarr.
    • Overseerr - Makes it simple to request stuff
    • Qbittorrent - downloads things

    (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.

    • themadcodger@kbin.earth
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      2 days ago

      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?

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.

      • Bigfoot@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.

        @[email protected] gave a good explanation of Prowlarr. Just another simplification/automation tool.

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        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.