Is Usenet still reliable, am I missing the right way to use it? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by zoostation@lemmy.fmhy.ml to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I have a paid Usenet account with good retention and I download through sabnzbd. I've only ever used nzbindex.com as an indexer.

For a long time it was easy to find TV/movies but in recent years it's become almost impossible. Has Usenet become a bad option because of takedowns or am I missing a modern way of using it?

I see there are lots of binaries posted with cryptic or random string names. Are these supposed to be regular TV/movies etc. with obfuscated names so they can't be found and taken down?

Do better/private indexers give access to these files or otherwise solve not being to find anything? Is it still supposed to be possible to find reliable new release shows and movies?

Are Sonarr/Radarr are what I need, do they solve the problem of not being able to find files, or do they just provide more convenience for the same files I can already find?

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[-] pcjones@feddit.de 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Looks like first and foremost you need a good(that means paid) indexer. NZBgeek and Drunkenslug come to mind as a good start - they both cost 15-20€/year. Drunkenslug registrations are closed right now but there are a lot of invites floating around. NZBgeeks registration is open.

[-] MortalWombat@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

This is the answer. There are free indexes out there like https://binsearch.info but thanks to automated DMCA takedown bots, there's very little on "open" usenet that stays up for long. You need to get on a private index and, unfortunately, pay for a subscription to get any kind of reliability.

[-] zoostation@lemmy.fmhy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

How do private indexers help files remain available if they've been taken down? I subscribe to one paid usenet provider, don't the files get taken down from there no matter who indexes them?

[-] pcjones@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

They are obfuscated and encoded so it's not easy to find the files. Since they are encoded they basically look like random noise instead of actual video files (very simplified)