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Comment by xwowsersx | Hacker News Reader

I don't remember why or how I ever picked up uTorrent, but that's the client I've always used. Thinking about torrenting just now, I realize I used to download torrents much more often than I do these days. I guess that's due to greater availability of video content on the streaming platforms and music on Spotify, etc.? What else do people use torrents for from a consumer perspective? Is there a wider everyday use case that I'm unaware of? Genuinely curious.

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I use torrents heavily despite subscribing to 4 different streaming services because I live in Canada and we don't yet have Hulu or HBO Max. Plus I also like watching some older movies via 2160p bluray rips and torrents are just the easiest option to do so. That plus it has everything.

I use Transmission for torrents and then https://airflow.app/ to cast movies from my Macbook to my Firestick/Chromecast, which I find just as easy as using a streaming service.

When I a) can't find it on streaming and b) don't feel like waiting for torrent d/ls (even on fiber connection) I just use https://soap2day.id/ and mirror via Chromecast casting, which seems to have every movie/TV show ever. Quality is pretty good, usually 1080p or 720p.

Yeah, streaming has become such a mess. In the beginning, it felt liberating to cut the cord and the promise was, at least in theory, that you could get just what you wanted with a couple streaming services. But now you have to have 5 or 6 and when combined they are more than cable used to be! Even if those services are available where you live, you might not want to subscribe to yet another streaming service just to catch one episode or one show, especially since a many of the streaming services aren't exactly filled with tons of great content that justifies the permanent subscription.

I hadn't heard of Airflow, thanks for the link. Out of curiosity, if my TV is already AirPlay-enabled, what does Airflow do for me that I can't get by just clicking on my Mac to watch on that screen (although I often just end up connecting my Mac via HDMI because that seems more reliable, at least on my TV)?

I'm not sure re: airplay. I personally use a Firestick 4k Max, which I replaced my more custom Android TV box (w/ Plex) because it has a fast CPU and Wifi 6 and was <$50 (vs $75+ for a decent custom android box and >$100 for Apple TV).

Honestly I'm not even sure which protocol Airflow uses to connect with my Firestick + TV, I use an app (AirReceiver) which says "AirPlay, Chromecast, and DLNA" and it works every time so I don't really care :)

If you want quicker speeds, look into usenet. Have to pay for a decent news hosting and indexer, but after some tweaking you can download new releases so much quicker without worrying about vpns and ratios.

At this point I have Plex and Overseer hooked up to Prowlarr, Sonarr, Lidarr and Radarr, with Prowlarr connected to my nzb client and server (it was easy to cut over from transmission, using the secure ports to talk the news hosting and client accounts). Everything is spun up in docker using the linuxserverio images.

I might be mixing up some terms there, but that setup has made downloading content so much easier and quicker.

My current setup:

Plex (Media Content Manager, desktop, mobile, tv apps. Local and external) - https://www.plex.tv/

Overserr (Allows users to request content) - https://overseerr.dev

Prowlarr (Configure your torrent/usenet indexers, Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr point to Prowlarr) - https://prowlarr.com/

Radarr (Movies) - https://radarr.video/

Sonarr (TV) - https://sonarr.tv/

Lidarr (Music) - https://lidarr.audio/

NZBGet (nzb download client, configure nzb newhosting site, Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr point NZBGet to download content. I pay for one newshosting site and two separate indexers) - https://nzbget.net/

I don't think I've ever found torrent download speed a limiting problem. I've much more often had problems finding peers to enable downloading 100% of the file at all, because most of what I download is stuff that's old enough (in time since the torrent was created) that mostly the torrent isn't being actively seeded any more. How long do files generally "stick around" on Usenet?

Theoretically, for ever.

In practice most servers offer over 2000 or 3000 days of retention (and growing). It used to be a problem many years ago because shortage wasn’t as cheap as now, but it feels like Usenet will also keep things forever now.

Last week I downloaded a torrent of a rather obscure series that I ripped from DVD and uploaded 16 years ago (I no longer have the DVD).

I was rather surprised to find my old torrent still hanging around. I thought it was pretty neat.

is there something for books and audiobooks in particular?

i am hoping for a audible-like experience which can easily be created using booksonic and other servers but the retrieval part is the most troublesome imo.

movies and tv shows have the best experience

There is: https://lazylibrarian.gitlab.io/

Libgen has almost everything I need and when it doesn’t I can usually find it in #bookz on undernet. If all else fails, bookfinder.com usually knows about used copies. I don’t have the luxury of an English speaking public library where I live.

niether do i. i did manage to get a libby account so that has helped me by a lot but still....

does LL support audiobooks search from torrents? nice. i might have to give this a look afterall

There is also Readarr, which has a similar interface to the other *arr software.

It was in it's pretty early stages last time i checked it out, but that was a couple years back now.

If you want audiobooks, nothing beats myanonamouse.net.

They're a semi-private tracker, registration is open, but you have to actually read the rules, go on IRC and answer a few rules-related questions. It takes a few hours, but it's definitely worth the effort IMO. The amount of content they have is pretty staggering, and I don't think I found a single unseeded torrent so far.

They also offer ebooks, but Anna's Archive and Libgen have a bigger selection of those.

ah.... that brings back old memories.

i've beem a MaM user since 2017. you can't automate it i think. i used a seedbox back when to get a bunch of points so yeah i get your point

Which indexers do you use?

Quite a few people I know use https://nzbs.in/login/ and swear by it. The admins of that site try to masquerade it as another WordPress site. Ingenious. But it is by far the biggest, and the best I am told.

It's so well masqueraded that there doesn't even seem to be a way to sign up!

https://nzbs.in/register

Disabled.

Seems their start was less than savory. Dog and Slug are the usual starter pair and cover 99% of folks' use cases.

https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/20v5es/so_apparentl...

"configure nzb newhosting site"

What's good these days? I used GigaNews back in the day. From memory, there was a content decrease as newsgroups were getting hit hard for take downs. I think I'm remembering this correctly.

eweka

I never torrent for ethical reasons, but I just jumped onto soap2day to check if they had something that I've been on the lookout for (Abacus: Small Enough to Jail) and they don't have it.

Yeah, not everything, but between torrents + paid streaming + soap I dont have a problem.

I google'd "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail", the full thing is (legally) on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKPa4OIVN4U

But geo-locked to US only. You can still download it using any YT downloader @ 1080p (851mb), for ex:

https://offeo.com/download/youtube-downloader/#url=https://w...

you could also watch it through an Invidious instance located in the US.

s/torrent/pirate?

context for unaware: torrents are more general. for example, official releases of open source operating systems, such as debian [1], are available via torrents.

[1]: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-dvd/

I'm pretty sure HN users know what torrents mean. Context does the rest.

All the more reason not to conflate copyright infringement with the BitTorrent protocol.

Boy, airflow looks the GOAT. Never knew such things existed. Thought Airplay was bandwidth limited and just thing for easy watching 1080p.

I simply prefer watching stuff via a video player of my choice (mpv). That way I can do stuff like frame-by-frame playback, and take screenshots / video clips with conveniently named files. Niche, I know, but I watch a lot of animation, and like to study and discuss how different artists approach and implement their scenes. So these are all essential features for me.

Also, some stuff I want to watch is not available legally anywhere in my territory.

Linux distros. ;)

https://ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads

For more FOSS torrents, see FossTorrents.com [1] :)

[1] https://fosstorrents.com/

Well, it can be used to transfer any large files amongst a bunch of people.

I like the protocol in theory. If n people want the same resource, it seems better if they get that in a sort of distributed way rather than all of them connecting to a central server to get that resource. Can be useful if you're on a slow network. I wonder if existing routers along the way make this efficient regardless.

Some Linux distros nudge you towards torrents to download its .iso file even if direct download methods are available. Xubuntu is one such distro [1].

Also, can anybody from Germany confirm if there's a ban on torrenting over there? I hear some governments/ISPs etc are starting to blanket-ban the entire protocol to prevent proliferation of pirated movies, which seems to be what the protocol is used for in practice.

[1] https://xubuntu.org/download/

These days it’s much more practical to just upload it to cloud storage and share a link.

Sure in theory it’s not the absolute fastest way but it’s massively more convenient and regular users aren’t sharing 1TB files.

The bandwidth isn't much fun to pay for though.

No consumer cloud storage charges you for transfers.

If I'm reading the AWS S3 pricing charts right[0], you get charged 0.09 USD per GB for the first 10 Tb of transfer out of US East.

If 1000 people download my 1 GB file that I host on S3, that'll run me 90 USD.

You can host on Wasabi which is the only object storage I know where out is free, but my understanding is that the storage is more expensive.

[0] Which I might not be because I'm pretty sure you need an astrologer.

By "consumer cloud storage" the GP commenter likely meant to refer to services like Dropbox, Mega, etc.; not to IaaS object storage (which would more appropriately be called "commercial cloud storage.")

Ah that makes sense! I occasionally use Wasabi to sling files around so that's where my mind was when I made the original comment.

I do feel like you do end up paying for storage if you're sharing anything significant in size, which is where torrents become more convenient imho if both parties know how to use a torrent client.

Torrenting is not banned in Germany. You are just easily sued if you distribute copyrighted material. Not just isp warnings and the like

> What else do people use torrents for from a consumer perspective?

We have three streaming services: Netflix, Prime and Disney+.[1] Not everything I want to see is on those services.

[1] And "youtube with ads", i.e. standard free youtube. Dunno if that counts though.

Oh for sure. I wasn't suggesting there's no need for torrents anymore. Like I said, I still torrent, just a lot less than I used to. And I was speculating that this is due, at least in part, to the increased availability of video content on streaming platforms. It used to be that the only way I could see a certain show or movie was by torrenting it.

There are multiple torrent/download services like Put.io that make it much easier and more useful.

Regardless of streaming service subscriptions, nothing beats raw files for high-fidelity playback without buffering and instant replay/seeking.

Same situation as you. Used to be involved in the whole private tracker thing too. Was a mix of online services getting better, and me having more money.

Hardly ever torrent stuff now.

I use torrents for full videos of porn, UFC, ebooks, professional tutorials, expensive software and for anything that isn’t available on Netflix since that’s the only subscription service I have.

Also subscription services don’t let you select the bitrate for streaming- this way I can make sure I watch the entire program in 4K.

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