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.
Refer here for the most pirated stuff. Ask further if you need anything more detailed
VPN isn’t needed if your country doesnt persecute individual piracy.
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Edit: I am starting to read through it and there Is so much bad, outdated and just wrong information there: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?
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
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.
Radarr, Sonarr, Jellyfin, qBittorrent.
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.
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.
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.
That one i never found much useful.
Just not interested in listening to whole albums, it’s so 2010
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?
I didn’t know 1337x rate-limits! Thanks for the info.
Yes, TGX is excellent too
RARBG is sorely missed
Torrentleech is good
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.
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!
