Be very careful with NewsDemon, check out this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/2nj2ey/psa_be_very_very_careful_with_thecubenet_and/

Download your linux distros from another usenet service!

Still best option I find, tried Kodi and just get frustrated with it to be honest.

​Kodi wasn't designed for watching pirated content? Since Kodi was originally XBMC, which was originally designed to run on hacked Xboxes (and it was illegal to distribute the application by the way) before digital distribution was a real thing, I'm pretty sure it was.

Great deal.
However the first rule about usenet is we don't talk about usenet.

Ditched astraweb everything was corrupt.use newsdemon and very rare anything is corrupt.

​Not really. Sabnzbd, plus couchpotato and sickbeard automates everything

I have no idea on usenetlink but usenetserver is miles better than astraweb!

Some high rated stuff still suffer from take downs, but overall it's better..

Had enough of Astraweb. - whats better, Usenetlink or usenetserver?

​That is correct

You must spend a lot of time being perplexed.

Mostly because Plex is superior for what it is and I don't actually need a cheap TV box, androids plex app is fantastic so a streaming capable TV or chromecast does the job perfectly and most major TV brands have a native plex app now as well for when I don't want to use chromecast. Also plex is way more flexible, I can't access 8Tb of my local media from a cheap TV box half the world away with kodi, I can do that with plex and share all my media with friends and family in different places. It's just massively better, if you use kodi with those **** streaming plugins then that's ok, but it's minor league stuff compared to having a plex server which is basically like running your own high end streaming service capable of serving to multiple platforms in multiple locations all at the same time.

Usenetlink, multiple backbones mean DMCAs don't hit them, also many of the EU or international based servers don't actually respond to takedowns.

news.eu seems to be something to do with casinos.

I can.. :wink:..

Can't see it being much better.... here's a link to their DMCA policy

https://www.usenetserver.com/dmca.php

The main drawback with Usenet is retention. Unlike torrents Usenet consists of actual web space and there is no seeding involved.

The upside is you get 100% bandwidth 100% of the time. That means if you have a 100mbit virgin media line, you will download files at 13mb/s

An average TV show is 400mb per episode so that would take you 30 seconds to download.

Indexing sites is the best way to go, but that involves a subscription as well..

I've been with usenetserver for a few years now and it's by far the best one I've used. Not the cheapest at $9 a month, but it beats astraweb, frugal and giganews..

Question - issue I have with torrents is I'm not always after mainstream movies/TV. Sometimes maybe I'm looking for a more obscure movie or album. I can find the odd torrent but no seeders, if I run a Google search I might come up with a few dead links but that's it.

So basically what I'm asking is how diverse is the content on Usenet? I'm assuming this will vary on what provider you go with, but can you generally find anything on there or is the main appeal just down to the speed at which you can download stuff vs torrents?

Giganews, astraweb and tweaknews all pretty bad. DMCAs all over the place, it's quite frustrating missing blocks specially when you've downloaded 90+ %. Don't get me wrong I've had good experiences of USENET on and off since the days of JANET (before the internet really took off). It was good once upon a time but I think it's had it's day. Usually a matter of time before you're finding yourself wanting to switch providers because they keep nuking files.

Which provider are you using and do they explicitly say they don't act on DMCAs ?

Just curious, what is the other motivation besides not paying? Not being facetious as I know that torrents can be downloaded within minutes of them being released/shown on tv (I assume usenet stuff comes out at the same time as torrents?) so there must be some reason people pay for this service.

Interesting post, why are you using plex rather than just a cheap tv box running kodi? ie. a fast one with just libreelec on it

I've used Easynews for over 15 years now. Everything downloadable at line speed from their web interface (it's their USP - they decode and thumbnail everything, as well as offering NNTP).

I've often wondered if I need an unlimited service as I've only gone over my monthly allowance a couple of times.

Haven't noticed many takedowns as pretty much everything I'm after is there...

Check out the reddit usenet page, loads of sites that have been up for a while. Personally I would recommend OZNZB, good middle ground and it's not private. But the tick is to get API access and let sab, sickbeard and couchpotato do the work and that means you start plex and get a regular supply of TV. Most of the stuff I watch I get on sky or amazon, usenet is basically just a way to populate plex.

I've been trying usenetlink after years of using astra, it's miles better way better completion rate as it's not based on a single backbone, but pulls from all of them. Worth the price so far, no longer need blocks.

Usenet may be used for piracy, but basically you pay for unlimited access to an effectively unlimited file store. Some people do upload things like encrypted file back ups as it's a lot cheaper than cloud services and if it's encrypted it doesn't matter that it's an open network. You also still have the old discussion groups if that's what you are into, and it's still a trove of the internets weirdest crap. Also it has the advantage you don't ever need a VPN because everything comes down encrypted and no uploading.

If your getting takedown issues you either have a crap usenet provider or your not looking in the right places :wink:
Same with kodi, if it's buffering etc. Just vpn to somewhere else or set it up properly in the first place, here isn't the place to talk about it anyway.

For what it's worth, Usenet used to have great discussion groups on many many subjects. Technical groups, culture, politics, arts, sports, whatever your fancy.

Of course for discussions, you don't need 50 simultaneous connections and 2800 days retention.

Anyone in the UK ever been done for downloading a hollywood film (not sharing)?

I use mine to download tv shows that are on in America days or months ahead of the UK, thats hardly piracy im just watching the shows early, usenet doent have to be used for piracy its the choice of the user.

OP
thanks have paid the £36 for a year and didnt need to be a previous member ive now cancelled my beloved Astraweb. How good is it do you get loads of incompletes or is it reliable? dont need the hassle of failed downloads in Sickbeard.

From what I can gather this is basically paying to illegally download stuff?

Sorry but I am genuinely curious: you are connected to the Internet while reading this HUKD, you open a post about something you don't know and make a post on this thread asking what it's all about... Did you ever consider searching the term on your favourite Internet search engine or looking it up on an Internet reference site?

Kodi + some tv tuners makes a damn good DVR too which can stream live TV / recordings to any room in the house...


Its designed to be an open source media player, like VLC except with a 10 foot user interface.

XBMC was never illegal to distribute, however as it was compiled with a leaked SDK complied copies were never publicly hosted on the XBMC / Kodi website due to this, it's roots are a bit of a grey area, however as someone who's used it since the Xbox Media Player days its nice to see Kodi expend to so many different platforms.

I'm sure lots of people do use it for pirated content, however if you read the Kodi forums you will see a lot of people also load it with their personal content and have some pretty insane home theater setups. The content / user is down to the end user: https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-announces-legal-action-to-smash-piracy-links-160215/

I haven't had a newsgroups account for a couple of years now. I used to dl a lot of full bluray rips but the nzb sites got shut down.

Where do you get your nzb's from now?

Brilliant, i have been using astraweb for 10 years or more and have had enough of the take downs so a couple of weeks back after checking loads of reviews came across eweka and signed up, its limited to 100mb which would be fine for most but because im on virgins fasted broadband it only uses half the bandwidth but i use astraweb also so eweka is just a fill server but since using it ive have no incompletes at all. eweka have a special offer on its 7.50 euros for their fastest 100mb instead of the usual 9.50 and you get a free VPN with ip vanish which is more than enough to use all the 100mb while connected its a very decent VPN and to pay for that alone is double the price of Eweka so a good deal alone for a VPN. Im also sure that eweka dont respond to DCMA take down notices as they are in some European country that dont care about copyright. Its a very good service and would recommend it to anyone before i was using tweak news block account as a fill server but they are very expensive. If you choose eweka's 50mb service you can share it with 6 people so works out cheap.

Dont understand how this is for members only? I have a newsdemon account but no need to log in for this deal.

You know what days are still here? Paying people a fair sum for the goods that you consume.

Only problem being its sucks now bigtime, every single film is taken down before you can download it, the days of nzbmatrix heaven are gone my friends.

xbmc was originally xbmp. I loved my chipped xbox for xbmp. It freed me from having multi cd films and my pc back in the day before -cd1 and -cd2 were even stackable filenames!

NewsDemon is part of the Highwinds backbone, for those that are interested. If you have another account with another Highwinds reseller, I would either cancel the current one and go with this (as long as it is better value) or look for something else using another provider.

But everybody did......

I've heard it works well with SABNZB and couch potato, you need a server though. Which you need for plex too apparently, but many NAS boxes will suffice if you make sure your media is in a format your clients can play. The nowTV box is supposed be a great media streamer for the money assuming your plex server doesn't have to transcode for it.

Yep one of those is https://sonarr.tv

Only if you think the sole motivation of a pirate is to avoid paying.

I recently cancelled my eweka account as I was receiving too many content not found messages. Regarding NewDemon, I had an account for 2 years and Unlimited really was unlimited but availability is not great. My current recommendation is [!expensive]news.eu for E5.75p/m, it's worth the additional price imo.

Just remembered I'm still paying for this but haven't used it in months. I remember everyone trying to convince me it was way better than torrents but finding free NZBs became a chore after several sites I was using got shut down:(

Still a good price.

Usenet takes more messing about usually. It's existed since 1979 as a bulletin board system and is essentially the same. Usenet also contains all manner of material including child pornography of which I've seen headers for in various groups. It should be obvious what to avoid. I would therefore never never trawl a group and bulk download. It's best to research and find out which are the decent groups and stay away from what you don't know.

Most people on Usenet know what they're doing and they use .NZB files which you can create from usenet search engines such as >https://www.binsearch.info/

Paying to pirate movies. Nobody else finds this ironic?

​Kodi wasn't designed for watching pirated content? Since Kodi was originally XBMC, which was originally designed to run on hacked Xboxes (and it was illegal to distribute the application by the way) before digital distribution was a real thing, I'm pretty sure it was.

There are a few automated systems to run for your TV/movie fix, they just download while you sleep and turn up on plex the next day.

Since I started using Kodi I have stopped downloading. I would say Usenet is a lot more frustrating with the downloading of headers or searching for nzb, and with up loaders hiding the binaries in coded names because files are being taken down off Usenet as much as p2p these days.

Use a country that doesn't have DMCA like the Netherlands, e.g. http://www.eweka.nl they have a 7 day free trial too.

For what would you use KODI otherwise? Your private video collection or photos? Comon wake up...

I'm not sure how you can associate Kodi and Usenet like unless your using dodgy Kodi plugins to stream pirated content, which is not what Kodi was designed for.

Sadly those plugins give Kodi a bad reputation.

Its a mystery to me too. Once tried to find it then use it and pfft. Use Extratorrent and Kickass myself with PIA and old utorrent.

​Mehh, some high profile shows and movies perhaps. But generally it seems unaffected.

What's the view of usenet nowadays ? There seems to be too many automated DMCAs so stuff is not up for long enough. Seems like torrents with a VPN are a better option now?

Cheers, paying about £4.20/m at present.

Great deal.
However the first rule about usenet is we don't talk about usenet.

Big thank you

So it's for pirate movies etc? Don't know about 2003, I use to use Newsgroups back in the early 90s almost before the World Wide Web existed. Haven't seen much reason to go back there since.

"Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers." (WiKi).

Articles are shared amongst users around the world, these articles can contain attachments :wink:

People say its better than using torrents, you get to download/upload at your max bandwidth and your IP is usually encrypted/hidden.
Since it is a pay for service, you would expect it to have benefits over using free torrents.

An early internet message board system that allows the posing of binary files. Mostly used to share films etc. Made unusable in recent times by rapid takedowns unless you move in the right circles.

Not that I would ever do that sort of thing you understand. :man:

Still best option I find, tried Kodi and just get frustrated with it to be honest.

Sorry, but What exactly is this?

Could someone please kindly give quick insight

Thanks

Usenet? How very 2003.

Tweak prob the best I've tried for reduced takedowns.

Alternatively, tweak is cheap and reliable although retention is a bit limited https://www.tweaknews.eu/en

I paid with paypal can i now go into paypal and cancel the recurring payment so they won't be able to take it next year.

Ive had my account " lost in a billing drive failure" then forced to re-sign at a higher cost, however that was over a year ago and ive been on the £7.77 a month deal without issue - i did the £36 a year deal earlier today but didnt use Paypal as it was a recurring agreement - and i dont trust either party that much!
We'll see if this deal stays the full year or if my account gets "lost" again, although i appreciate a good priced deal they still got to make cash or the service will suffer so i dont mind too much

Be very careful with NewsDemon, check out this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/2nj2ey/psa_be_very_very_careful_with_thecubenet_and/

Download your linux distros from another usenet service!

Damn waited weeks for a newsdemon deal then signed up last week.to 200gb a month for£4-66 will be cancelling that now.

This is for members only, i've just had it for the £36 a year and it creates a new account for you, all you need to do is cancel the old one, once you get your new P No. and password you can just update your reader with the new details, mine was up and running in less that 10 minutes, £36 a year is a cracking price for this service, i would 110% recommend it.

No idea, you could probably cancel your old account and sign up as new or ask support.

Can this be used on an existing account?

Usually $95/year.