this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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While the paid tier for NZBGeek is a good deal, I also use DrunkenSlug, Miatrix, and NZB Finder since they sometimes have releases that are missing on NZBGeek. Tabula Rasa isn't bad either, although didn't seem to have anything missing from the other ones I use when I tried it.
Are these all paid services you’re mentioning?
All of them have non-expiry free tiers (5 downloads a day each except Miatrix, which is two a day) except NZBGeek, which has a 3 day, 15 download trial. Of the recommended indexers with free tiers, DrunkenSlug and Tabula Rasa (as well as DogNZB and NinjaCentral) require invites to join. Each one has a premium tier that gives you more downloads for paying per month or per year, of which NZBGeek is among the cheaper options. Using usenet as a complement to what can be more easily found on public and private torrent trackers, I've found the free usenet indexer tiers to usually be enough. Another benefit of having accounts on multiple indexers is that as some releases may be indexed by one and not another, it can be helpful to search for releases on alternate indexers if your preferred one doesn't return any results.
Note that you'll also need also need to buy a usenet provider subscription or block plan to be able to download the indexed releases, as well as download a usenet binary newsreader such as SABnzbd or NZBGet. As having providers on at least two nodes mitigates the risk that a release is missing from either, I've found having a Frugal Usenet subscription plus a Newsdemon block plan to be a relatively low cost combination. Something to note when picking a usenet provider is retention, i.e. how many days worth of releases they have available. To download releases that are more than a few years old, you'll need a provider with that many days worth of retention.
Nzbgeek and miatrix both currently have a lifetime option also if you are not into the monthly thing doesn't look like any of the other public ones do. Nzb grabber did up until 9/2023. Nzbplanet also has the lifetime membership option.
I love the speeds of Usenet, but I feel like it's best to use it to tide you over while you work on getting into good private torrent trackers. Once you've got access to good private trackers, you don't have to pay anymore. (Except with storage, so I guess it depends on what you want and what capabilities you have.)
The problem with private trackers that don't have open registration periods from time to time is that unless you have enough upload bandwidth it's nearly impossible to build ratio on torrent trackers unless you pay for a seedbox subscription. While TorrentLeech is great, it's still missing a lot, with only 25Mbps download bandwidth and 5Mbps upload bandwidth I can't reach the requirements one would need to apply to higher-tier trackers.
It's true that you have to be careful with your downloads. Whenever I join a new private trackers, I set up downloads to start getting bonus points, but I only set up automatic downloads for freeleech content. Once I have enough buffer, I'll open it up for all downloads.
This is after I fully fucked up my ratio on my first tracker. All my others ones look good.