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.
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Edit: I am starting to read through it and there Is so much bad, outdated and just wrong information there:
- 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
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.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?
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).
Thank you! I did some reading and that’s also how I understand it: at least one peer has to have port forwarding enabled / listen on a port for two peers to connect. Also I found out about “Hole punching” or “NAT punching” where a middleman server is used to open up ports on two peers that do not have ports forwarded yet to allow them to talk to each other directly. This is also used in BitTorrent. And also explains why it works without explicit port forwarding enabled.
Why is port forwarding important? Sorry if it’s a dumb question, lol.
Also Gluetun if you want to run qbittorrent in docker with a tun interface.
Please could you elaborate about how qbittorent is a good VPN and why is port forwarding important for torrenting ? I’m kind of confused about those statement…
I’m fairly positive they meant “qbittorrent is a good torrent client” instead of “VPN”
As far as port forwarding, I know it’s important for seeding but I don’t know why.
It’s a poor analogy, but imagine a public IP like a hotel, there can be lots of guests (clients) at this hotel. Hotel policy is they won’t let any outsiders in unless you know the room number (port) of the person you’re trying to reach.
Imagine you and a friend are staying in separate hotels and want to give each other copies of your favorite Linux .ISOs, but neither of you knows the other’s room number - you show up at the hotel and the front desk tells you to pound sand because you don’t have their room number.
As long as one of you knows the other’s room number though, you can meet.
Torrenting without port forwarding means you can only trade your favorite .ISOs with people who have port forwarding enabled (sharing their room number to the tracker), which makes you less effective of a seeder. Enabling port forwarding allows you to share with anyone (sharing your room number with the tracker).
I was incredibly stupid when writing this comment. I meant torrent client. Fixed it.
[qBittorrent] is probably the best VPN client for Windows
It does VPN?
Sorry I meant to say torrent client
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“far ahead of Plex”
I love and use jelly fin but let’s not lie here.
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.
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.
which platform that you use to consume media is missing a jellyfin client? there are a lot of jellyfin clients: https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/all
Hmm looks like they have a WebOS client now. Personally that covers my personal use case since the family that I share plex with just has rokus and apple tv
Radarr, Sonarr, Jellyfin, qBittorrent.
Hold on buddy, i would say that the first three are for veterans
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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)
VPN, depending on how your country handles copyright laws.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…windows installer…?
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.
You missed Lidarr.
That one i never found much useful.
Just not interested in listening to whole albums, it’s so 2010IMO music makes more sense to download than movies. You might only watch a movie once or twice. Music files are smaller and you’re much more likely to listen to them multiple times.
For movies and TV shows, streaming using Real Debrid is way more convenient.
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.
You missed the bit where I assumed OP isn’t looking for long-winded series due to having kids
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?
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I didn’t know 1337x rate-limits! Thanks for the info.
Yes, TGX is excellent too
RARBG is sorely missed
Torrentleech is good
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Any idea why/for what reason 1337 limits rates?
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Ah right, so it’s not a user-specific thing
Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Well, let me start with this gorilla they called Harambe…
Pinned thread on this very community.
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)
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.
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?
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.
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).
OP is new to this so they won’t have access to private trackers anyway.
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).
Cause they probably don’t know how to haha 😆
Hey, how about you go fuck yourself ? The only reason you’d leave a comment like this is because in real life no one cares about what you think so you need to be a petty loser
Damn. I wasn’t trying to be rude in anyway. My apologies.
I’m assuming you were stoned and simply poking fun.
You have to do this under the full moon of the longest day of summer too. Otherwise it doesn’t work.
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.
I don’t live in a place that would raid an international hosting provider. In my county no one is ever going to come after me for using a seed box to download tv and movies. I simply do not need to worried about being ratted out.
I don’t know to what extent law enforcement would go to catch a pirate in Denmark. But a guy just got 30days for seeding about 800 movies, so I’m not taking any chances. If I was ever to use p2p, and this is purely theoretical, I would find a public (or open private) wifi, use an external wifi adapter and a virtual machine that doesn’t contain any personal information.
Seeding is different than downloading though and the seed box service is in another jurisdiction doing that where it is legal. I only connect to a proxy up with ssh and download data to my actual home, never upload. As far as my jurisdiction is concerned I haven’t seeded anything, just downloaded encrypted data from a datacenter ip.
I live in latam so my government isn’t enforcing pretty much anything though.
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?
Italy, Bulgaria, Spain for example. They usually couldn’t care less (unless it’s football/soccer piracy).
Germany, on the other hand, cares a lot. Use a VPN for sure there.
Anything LATAM
“Why do you need so many flash drives for your trip to South America?”
Flash drives are a waste unless you are snowden.
128 password Encrypted hardrives should do it
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.
Remind me please. What is the problem with Nord?
I think it’s mostly to do with their advertising tactics and misleading people in what their service is actually doing.
They also had a data breach and did not handle it well.
Maybe there’s other stuff I don’t remember… I’ve never used them, I’ve been on Mullvad for some years now but considering proton next.
Alright, thanks for the info. Didn’t know that.
Primarily they don’t have port forwarding which is necessary for torrenting
I’ve been using it for a while and had no idea it didn’t support port forwarding! I know it’s important for torrenting, but my private tracker ratios are all 2:1 or more (my record is 6:1)
I should read up on why it’s important.
The Problem with not having Port forwarding is that you can only connect to people which have port forwarding. That means If the seeds are also using no port forwarding you cannot download/upload.
Because the people in your private trackers have port forwarding enabled so a connection is still made but someone else who hasn’t setup port forwarding won’t be able to connect to you.
A laptop with an hdmi, stremio and a real Debrid account.
Simple
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.
On a side note I’ve been using Google to find streaming sites by typing “free full stream” and then the title I want, and scrolling down the search to the DMCA Complaints. They have a lovely list of sites that have your movies and shows, thanks Google!
Trash guides
Thanks! I couldn’t be assed enough to get the actual link.
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
Also consider Weyd or Syncler instead of Stremio + Torrentio, and Premiumize in addition to Real Debrid. Premiumize can download from Usenet too.
This, I used to use Kodi+Serena+realdebrid but it was not as user friendly. Stremio is by far the best option if you just want to watch shows without making a server/ having to actually manage downloads or making it into a project.
You just set it up and use it like any other streaming app
No reason to self host unless you find joy in maintaining a server/ library
