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.

    • Yodan@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      18 hours ago

      My guy, I am 2 kids deep since I last hit the high seas, I am absolutely lost on what plugins or sites or programs I need to even begin. Maybe be a bit helpful instead of insulting lost people? I’ll use the megathread link the other people posted.

      • Bronzie@sh.itjust.works
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        18 hours ago

        You’ll be fine mate.

        I re-hoisted the flag after a decade and two minions myself this year. The old ways still work fine, but there’s also a ton of new things to make life easier.

        Check out the .arr suite, burn uTorrent and get Qbittorrent and try out Jellyfin.

        Feel free to ask me directly if you need some pointers.

    • growsomethinggood ()@reddthat.com
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      18 hours ago

      Is this a community, or is this a circlejerk? I don’t think categorizing beginners who don’t know where to start as leeches creates the kind of environment people of all knowledge levels want to spend time in. You don’t personally have to educate them, but telling them off for asking is pretty rude.

  • فریدون حسینی@vegantheoryclub.org
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    3 hours ago

    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.

  • sodamnfrolic@lemmy.sdf.org
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    8 hours ago

    I recently started paying for debrid services (I use real debrid, but there are others) and couldn’t be happier. Got an app called Stremio on my TV and after adding the credentials, everything just works - easy & fast like the streaming services.

    It also allows you to download torrents much faster than torrenting them, especially if not many people seed them.

    Oh, and if you ever need to download something from Rapidshare or whatever other websites like that it does that too.

    Honestly, I should’ve started paying for it earlier.

  • metaStatic@kbin.earth
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    15 hours ago

    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)

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      2 hours ago

      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.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        1 hour ago

        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.

  • Yodan@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    16 hours ago

    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!

  • SteveNSFW@yall.theatl.social
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    17 hours ago

    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.

      • Policeshootout@lemmy.ca
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        16 hours ago

        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.

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          13 hours ago

          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.

          • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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            3 hours ago

            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.

          • Klopstock@feddit.org
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            10 hours ago

            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.

  • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    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!

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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    9 hours ago

    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

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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      4 hours ago

      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.

    • pyrflie@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      1337 tends to rate limit so having other options is good.

      I like TGx, but that’s mostly due to it’s good search engine.

    • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
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      7 hours ago

      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.

    • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      37 minutes ago

      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.