New lemmy user. New to the forum. Please excuse any errors in posting.

I (may) have for quite a long time (10+ years) ran a NAS system that automatically downloads TV shows, Movies, Music, and the like.

Usenet is the way to go. Hands down. I (may) have also torrented a lot in the past…

As many others have mentioned retention times (the time each USENET server “keeps” the file available) is huge these days. Around 5+ years. Was the file uploaded 5 years ago? Chances are you still get it from your server with no problems. Lots of “old” stuff is frequently re-uploaded to servers. General availability of stuff that is “new” or “popular” is very high.

As some others have mentioned USENET is usually ONE server that you pay for. A file is uploaded to server X, and is mirrored by (your) server Y (and all/most other servers). You are not actually downloading (in most cases, as is mine) from multiple servers simultaneously. Many servers do allow multiple connections to download the entire files parts at the same time, however. Bonus: Most/all reputable USENET servers also have SSL as an option (even with custom ports). Your ISP has no clue what your traffic is since it is encrypted with SSL (and perhaps even on a custom [non-standard] port). My USENET server peaks out at the ISP provided bandwidth on all downloads.

Someone else also mentioned indexers and equated them to the “google of USENET.” I agree. Indexers are absolutely required for a full USENET ease-of-use experience (and for all automation apps). Automation apps use this indexer to search for the applicable files (.nzb: .nzbs are kind of like a .zip file full of the references of the files on USENET to download an entire (big) file.)

I have had the same USENET provider for over a decade. I think it costs me <$100/year (and comes with a VPN and proxy). I purchased a lifetime membership with an indexer that has never left me wanting for like $100 years ago. Still works like a charm.

I saw someone mention some automation apps such as: sabNZBd, sonarr, raddar, and lidarr. These apps will cover 90% of what you are looking for unless it is somewhat niche. There are also automation apps for books, comics, anime, manga, and other stuff out there. Pretty easy to find. My automation programs automatically look for new TV shows, movies, and etc. that aired/released, downloads them, categorize them, rename the files, transfer them to my storage, download subtitles, have criteria (as someone mentioned before) as to which file type/region/size/bitrate that I want. It just works, now that I have it all setup, in the background. I spend 5 minutes a week on ensuring things have been downloaded and are in there place.

Typically if a new show was released (aired) on Tuesday, my rig would have it downloaded by the next day (by automation apps) when I was ready to watch TV. I have had several folks ask for specific things, and was able to find them with my automation apps (more below) in very short course.

Regarding torrent automation: It seems a bit harder. Torrents are slower to download and a “bit” harder to process/automate. Some torrent downloaders don’t natively support VPN or a proxy (I am speaking from the “I do it on Truenas perspective” as opposed to “I do it on Windows.”) I assume that most, if not all, Window’s torrent programs support both aforementioned methods of IP obfuscation.

I am not posting links or naming either my USENET provider or my indexer due to the fact that I don’t understand the subs rules, nor do I want to look like an advertising shill.

Please message me if you want anymore information or if there is anything I can do to help out.

– Have a fun time sailing the seas.

Edit: Small edit. Some misspellings and reorganizing paragraphs to better flow. Added another paragraph about torrent automation.

I’m a torrenter with the sonarr radar lidarr prowlarr *arr setups.

I’ve dabbled with Usenet and here’s my understanding.

With torrents you’re all sharing something live, if you want ubuntu.iso and I have ubuntu.iso you can get it from me and many others who seed this file. A torrent tracker (or the dht) helps put us in touch so you know where the file is.

With Usenet it’s more like I dead drop this file, zipped and encrypted(?) onto a Usenet news server. All the Usenet providers mirror each other or something like that, so if you’re on a diff provider than me that same file should still be available. Then I tell an indexer, like dognzb or nzbgeek that this file is in fact ubuntu.iso and not garbage data. When you want ubuntu.iso you ask the indexer, indexer gives you a link and you get the file.

Beyond this, I don’t know about how much safer it is, but my immediate guess is that since you’re not seeding there’s less risk.

Now if you’re really snobby like me, you’ll quickly realize that the release groups you’re used to aren’t as well represented. I’ve often landed in situations where episode 7 of 20 is missing on Usenet…

As a snob, I’ve decided private trackers are probably the best place to be to keep my quality expectations satisfied.

Hope this helps.

Technology wise, Usenet abuses decade old Mailbox protocols and software for file downloads it was never designed for. Torrents are modern, decentralized and redundant. Usenet was always a huge PITA. Especially if some parts were missing.

It works a lot smoother for me, though I do see signs of things changing with torrent stuff.

Usenet is much more consistent and works better with automation software like radarr and sonarr. It’s all scene naming so you are less likely to pickup something joe blow made poorly. It is also much easier to find older things since you aren’t relying on active seeders.

It’s safer because it’s not illegal to download said files, just distribute them. Also no one cares about Usenet.

Never had a problem with quality, I have minimum and maximum quality settings configured for different profiles.

That said, it might be worth looking into Stremio and Debride. I’ve been seeing that pop up lately and it’s mostly torrent based.

One piece of advice if you go usenet, for good performance you want two accounts. Your main account and a secondary account on a different backbone provider. There are a lot of resellers, so make sure the parents are different. This is because they get a ton of takedown notices, so you might get holes here and there in the rars. But you can usually pick those up from your secondary. The software handles this automatically but you need the accounts.

Usually your main is some kind of unlimited subscription and the backup is a block account where you pay for a chunk of data at a time, but you do you.

With a Usenet account, I was able to make things relatively autonomous.

I told it what I wanted and it found it immediately, downloaded it, renamed it, even replaced it with higher quality whenever it became available.

It would find new episodes of shows I asked it to look for as they aired, new movies I was interested in as soon as they became available, Scott’s, genres, it was crazy.

If I was at work and someone recommended me a movie, I could add it to an IMDb watch list and my PC at home would have it downloaded automatically before I even got home.

It was way too efficient for me, I don’t watch much ‘content’ in real life, but it was so easy and efficient I ended up with dozens of TB’s of stuff that I never had the time to watch to begin with.

I was a collector of ‘content’ and not a consumer of it. So I stopped torrenting and using Usenet.

But Usenet is really pretty awesome with the right setup. I felt like I didn’t need to do shit once I set everything up.

For all German speakers I have a beginners guide: https://github.com/PCJones/usenet-guide

If you are on top tier trackers, there is no benefit to go usenet.

In my country, leeching is allowed, but not seeding. So I pay for leeching. Paying a usenet provider and a bunch of indexer (most lifetime) appeared more easy than leeching from torrents.

I use both and let the “arr suite” decide which one to chose. I mainly use torrents for international stuff like movies, usenet for local (Dutch) stuff like TV series.

It’s simpler to get onto good indexers for german media on usenet than it is to find a private tracker and get into it.

Also, my upload is slow so I’d have to use a seedbox to torrent on private trackers instead of using my homeserver.

I like P2P filesharing more than usenet since it’s decentralized. Most usenet providers with long retention are owned by only a few parent companies which is never good in the long term. As long as private VPN’s are allowed torrenting can’t be stopped.

On usenet with my indexer I find dual language 1080p remuxes for most movies, so I’d say the quality is as good as it can be. But this is probably also the case with a good private tracker.

If your already on private trackers that have all the media you want I really don’t see any advantage to usenet.

As for tools, it’s mostly the same as with torrenting. The arr* stack supports usenet, it just downloads with sabnzbd instead of qbittorrent (or your preferred client).

you pay for an account on some server. that helps the server with bandwidth and storage costs. the server you use knows where some popular forums are (sort of like fediverse) and will cache certain boards.

when you want one of the items, you ask your server for it and they shove it down the pipe.

don’t forget to pay your bill.

edit: i only read the title. it seems like i literally taught you nothing. sorry to waste ur time.

In the 1990s it was the go to place to download pr0n and gore photos.

Don’t know how you compare torrent to usenet. They were built for completely different purposes. If you abuse usenet for file sharing, don’t complain about any shortcomings, as you are trying to drive a screw into a wall with a hammer.