I’ve long been a fan of usenet for all my downloading needs. I’ve always found torrents a bit fiddly, and a bit hit or miss depending on the age and popularity of what I was looking for.
With more and more torrenting sites coming under fire, I more regularly find myself talking people through the basics of setting up and using usenet. So here’s a basic primer for all
First things first, usenet is gonna cost you some money. yes real money. Though the costs aren’t prohibitive, and even less so if you’re only a casual downloader.
You’ll need to subscribe to a premium usenet provider. The two which I typically direct people towards are either newshosting.com or astraweb.com.
I’m a newshosting.com subscriber, have been for many years, without any problems and so recommend them from personal experience. Depending on whether or not you prepay an unlimited account will set you back between $12 – $15 per month.
If you don’t require an unlimited account then astraweb.com is currently the best bet. Their 180 gigs for $25 is great value. The credits never expire, and so will last as long as it takes.
To help decide which type of account is best suited to you, you need to think about how much you expect to download per month on average. If you expect to download less than 100 gigs per month, then astraweb’s pay-by-download plan is almost certainly your best bet. Any more than that and an unlimited plan is best.
Now that you have a provider the next step is an nzb client. There’s only one choice worth considering here and its sabnzbd. It’s a top class free/open source nzb client. Its easily configured, and once up and running hides most of the complexity involved.
Now that you have sabnzbd installed, its just a simple matter of feeding it some nzb‘s.
While there are many options here I typically recommend one above all others : newzbin.com. The cleanliness of its site, together with the uniformity of their report names make it a dream for searching. There’s also specific support for newzbin.com within sabnzbd (check Config > newzbin), and a greasemonkey script which makes for even greater integration between newzbin.com and sabnzbd. Newzbin is not free (the typical charge is 30 pence per week, though make sure to avail of the half price christmas special each year). The other catch is that newzbin is currently invite only, so you’ll need to ask around your friends/acquaintances so see who can sort you out with an invite.
Other NZB options include
- nzbmatrix (free for last 20 days of nzbs – max 1o per day, or a one off charge of $10 for lifetime VIP)
- tvnzb (akin to eztv.it, a tv only nzb site. free).
- nzbmovieseeker (akin to tvnzb .. but for movies)
- nzbsrus (free 5 nzb’s per day, no max age)
- nzbs(dot)org (free, clean, 500 day retention.)
- nzbindex.nl & binsearch.info (fully automated nzb search engines).
And thats pretty much your lot.
If you’re considering dabbling, but aren’t sure where to start .. then start small. Install sabnzbd, buy some credits from astraweb, and play around with some of the nzb sites I listed. It’s likely you’ll fall in love with one or two of em, and never look at the others again .. though YMMV.
Happy usenet’ing.
-Mo.
EDIT : http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2010/608.html << The fat lady singeth for newzbin.
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