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Comment by wil421 | Hacker News Reader

Why are people still using file sharing and torrents?

Get a Usenet subscription, pay a yearly fee to a decent indexer, setup NZBGet, setup TV automation with Sonarr, and Radarr for movie automation if needed. Lots of Usenet providers include VPN, AT&T doesn’t seem to care FYI.

Setup Plex for a media sever, get plex pass, buy a USB TV tuner or HD Homerun, and a digital antenna. Connect the HD homerun to plex for TV broadcast automation.

Now you need to buy more hardrives because you ran out of space.

Edit: Great my comment is almost as bad as the Dropbox vs Rsync one.

View on HN

>Why are people still using file sharing and torrents?

>Get...pay...setup...setup...and...setup...get...buy...and...connect...buy...

That's why. Torrents are easier for people to figure out.

Unrelated aside: This might be the most creatively concise form of critical communication to a comment I’ve ever seen on HN. Nice job.

This is HN. I expect a technical audience who want technical solutions.

Surely you're not positing that torrents aren't a technical solution. They are an extremely technical solution to many problems people originally faced with Usenet.

My point is the HN audience is more adept than normal people. The Usenet automation and setup requires more technical knowledge than say drag and dropping a torrent file into a torrent program.

The article seems to be talking about consumers in general, not consumers who read HN.

I’m on HN taking to HN users. I’m sure the same article is on r/torrents with less useful comments.

You are replying to the main article, not an individual user. Therefore, in context, your question "Why are people still using file sharing and torrents?" is asking that of the people referenced in the article. Context is important.

So because I'm technical, I'm supposed to do all of that?

Maybe I don't want to.

I'm a full time DevOps engineer and would consider myself highly technical. I'd never do what you described because looking at the list of steps gave me a headache.

My solution: Download torrents, SCP them to my Plex box, done.

Looking over your list do you not see how that list of activities might prove to be a little niche, and probably not suited to the broader public?

Also: > pay a yearly fee to a decent indexer

"Why would you get something free? Pay instead!". I already do that, it's called Netflix and Amazon Prime. Plus, the only step those have is "get smart TV, connect TV to internet".

I don’t think HN is the broader public.

I'm a bit confused - what does your solution solve that Torrenting doesn't?

Complete automation, no seeding, less risky download sources, less risk of your ISP complaining about BitTorrent traffic, and an almost nil chance of getting a nasty legal letter for seeding.

Plus the Usenet servers are usually much faster than torrents. With Gigabit I am seeing much faster speeds.

What's the yearly fee look like?

You should look into private trackers... I have the same setup for german content (there are no german trackers that have good seeds/content/moderation and api) but for english stuff torrents are still the king if you have the right trackers (ptp/btn/hdb and even 2nd and 3rd tier trackers are all fine). Any listed disadvantage doesn't exist with private trackers, and it doesn't even cost a cent - unlike usenet subscription and indexer.

You could probably produce an interesting indie film in the time it takes a normal person to figure that out.

(Not to speak ill of your normal person, just that those skills are esoteric and provide little benefit to most people to say the least).

Your process seems very complicated, compared to just launching popcorntime and clicking on the movie you want to watch.

Which popcorntime is the legit one nowadays?

Honestly? Laziness. The only time I will actually totrrent something is if I bought the DVD/Blu-Ray and I want to rip it for use with Plex. I find what I need by torrents, and I already have a VPN I use.

Why are people still using file sharing and torrents?

Why in the hell would anyone do what you suggest, technical or not? A torrent client and about four lines of bash will do the job without Mr. Goldberg's mouse pushing the ball down the ramp to turn on the toaster, to heat the gas in the balloon...

IMO, you're making complexity for the sake of doing so. Regardless, if that's what it takes to watch video media? I'm going to go learn to play the banjo.

Because none of that is necessary for the vast majority of people. And torrents are free.

I’ve run a personal instance of this for 10+ years. Plainly, it’s too complicated for 90% of people; which is fine. Let BitTorrent own the show and attention from everyone. Both of which would destroy my automated luxury.

In the time it takes to read your comment I probably could download 2 HD movies.

Why not both? It's easy to configure those programs to use multiple sources.

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