I’ve been a good boy for 5 years or so but the seas call to me. Are streaming sites the way to go now or is torrenting still a better bet for mainstream movies and tv? I’d imagine all of my accounts have been deleted on those sites so I’d be starting over.
Commenting to bring awareness to the ‘arrs. Radarr sonarr and lidarr will get you all the media you need organized perfectly. It runs on any device but take a few days to figure out. Once setup it’s a set it and forget it thing. Uses torrents and or usent so use a vpn. Mine runs on a 10 year old raspberry pi 2 and a few usb hdds. Been going strong with very little maintenance for 6 years at this point.
Agreed. Combined with a jellyfin instance and you will never want to come back. As said before, it takes a while to setup at first (especially if you download animes which aren’t exactly handled the same way), but when it’s done you’ll see you weekly episodes magically appear with nothing to do on your side, and that’s just great
Jellfyfin is the reason why I do this. I went from spending 30 minutes dumpster diving through terrible movies in one of the streaming platforms to now spending 30 minutes trying to choose from a selection of movies that I actually want to watch.
I now dumpster dive through 7TB of good movies I don’t find time to watch :|
Living the dream ~
Which is 5TB of movies I think I should watch, 1.5TB of stuff I already watched and think I would watch again and the rest of stuff I actually want to watch.
Have you seen a good method/guide to prioritise release groups for anime? I looked into it but it was super confusing to me and didn’t beat just grabbing a nyaa rss feed.
Actually yeah I do. I followed this guide which is really nice. I did need to add a few more sources manually depending on how popular a given anime is, but it’s really useful anyway
Thanks for sharing!
I’m super old school and just started finding my way back to torrenting. Would you have a recommendation on how to read up on these arrs? So far I still manually pull my torrents from a search engine and run it through my vpn hardened Pi in the cellar. It works, but I do wonder if there’s a more streamlined approach.
Their docs are decent and will guide you through setup. For advanced stuff search for Trash’s arr guides
Check this wiki, specially the torrebt and Usenet pages… Then you can wither follow the practical installation pages or ignore and find some docker only guides.
Disclaimer: This page is aimed at the setup stage and less about the installation!
You could probably install a home server management software like TrueNAS Homearr or CasaOS on your Pi and just download the “apps” that way.
Something like this is a good start! I use transmission as the torrent client instead of deluge. Also added a service for my vpn and use that as the network for the tranmission service so all traffic is routed through the vpn. https://ochoaprojects.github.io/posts/PlexAutomation/
Torrents and usenet will get you high quality videos if that’s what you want. Streaming sites are usually only have low bitrate videos.
I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.
For mainstream stuff, it just works. For obscure stuff, it’s about 50-50 if it’s on there.
Manually downloading torrents is just for stuff I’ll be transferring to a mobile device, like audiobooks. And cracked software, I suppose. I needed Adobe Acrobat for something and torrented it.
I use Real Debrid with Stremio + Torrentio. I just need to figure out how to add the manual torrent search & download plugin for Real Debrid since I watch a lot of obscure British TV, not everything is hosted already.
If you mean caching content to RD I think you can do this with the Unchained app, if you use Android, or you can do it pretty much anywhere you like using the RD website.
Then you can use the DMM addon to watch it on Stremio, or probably it will show up with any addon that supports RD, or if not then you can simply use the Debrid manager that is available at Torrentio, or as a standalone addon.
Depends on your hardware.
Streaming is more accessible, but you’re stuck at 720p usually.
If you can afford a vpn and the storage then torrenting gets you better quality.
Don’t forget to seed
I find it easier to get 4k streaming than to download such large files.
The newer AV1 codec has me very interested in HQ streaming. You need a monster machine to make the file, but then it’s 2GB for a high quality 1080p movie.
I find 4k streaming to be absolutely good enough for general tv streaming. It’s a bit better on some services than others. Amazon and Netflix do it the best, but it’s generally pretty good on all of the,.
The large files are such better quality, though (if you care about such things and have a TV that allows you to appreciate the extra detail).
For movies I will go the extra mile and break out Kodi and go with the big file as I will usually watch it right away and then delete it. For TV, 4k streaming is plenty good enough.
Agreed I do pretty much the same.
@Coasting0942 @itsgroundhogdayagain what vpn provider would you recommend?
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
They have three recommended as of now. Only proton is listed as supporting port forwarding, which you need to be a seeder for the torrent swarm. Without port forwarding you’re stuck as a leecher
Pay for real-debrid and set up a kodi addon like Seren on a streaming box. You’ll get an equivalent experience to paid/official streaming platforms without having to pay for them all, including browsing popular shows without having to download them ahead of time or manage a home server. It’s still torrenting under the hood, just a lot more convenient
Kodi + add-ons is great if you like tinkering, otherwise I would recommend Stremio with the Torrentio add-on. Stremio + Torrentio + Real-Debrid is the easiest way to consume pirated media IMO.
I’ve heard good things about Stremio + Torrentio. Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent? I think the discovery in addons that have this makes a big difference. I have many different categories to browse that might sound similar, e.g. Trending, Trending New, Most Watched, Most Popular. But each one has a specific and plainly disclosed ranking methodology and that’s very useful to avoid constantly being recommended to watch The Office, Breaking Bad, cowboy soaps etc
Does it have trakt integration or similar equivalent?
It has a subpar integration, if you care too much about this kind of stuff (getting a whole working multimedia center, and thinkering in general) and have a proper device that can handle Kodi in a lagless manner, I’d say you stick with it.
If you want a set it and forget it kind of solution and have less sophisticated hardware Stremio + a Debrid provider is golden.
(My Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2019 struggles with Kodi and a Debrid/streaming setup, also is significantly slower than Stremio).
I’m mostly only using CCWGTV, both the original 4k model and the budget 1080p one. Neither have performance issues for me (except before filtering out 4k releases on the 1080p model)
I’m just aiming for the simplest/smoothest experience as possible, not so much for myself but so that I can mail it out to my mum who lives out in the bush and just tell her to enter her wifi password and open kodi. She’s able to manage from there without having to worry about hdr/dv content compatibility with her display, or default audio language/subtitle display etc.
In kodi you can edit settings.xml for IPTV Simple Client addon to point playlist items to a given category in Seren, make a playlist linking to those categories a favourite, and configure Kodi to open to the favourites menu on launch. That way she has a fully on-rails and custom experience based on her preferences from the point that she runs it.
How does a shield struggles with kodi? It’s my main setup (kodi+fen+trakt+real debrid) and I have no problem with it.
It doesn’t right away (after a fresh reboot) but it fails eventually, as Kodi is my heaviest app, it could be due to my skin, but man, some ppl say Stremio is ugly, but Kodi with stock addon is way uglier that is not even pleasen to use, my skins aren’t the heaviest, Arctic Horizon 2 and Fuse.
It also could be because the Shield TV is my secondary Plex Server and that would bring some background load (even when it is not serving media), but I have done tests with and without this, same for the PlexKodiConnect addon.
There is also a Trakt add-on, like the other commenter said the integration isn’t as seamless as a well-maintained Kodi setup, but it’s definitely good enough that I’ve switched from Kodi to Stremio with Trakt being the way I organise my TV/movie watchlists.
And you can use it for any torrents, like games & software. It’s way cheaper than any streaming site and so much more worth it.
GILA! GILA!
We do both honestly. Stream for TV and crappy movies, I don’t need to see every nose hair and skin pore. Movie night is torrent. 17 years with no traditional tv or paid services in our house.
Does anyone have a one click piracy stack setup with all the *arrs that takes mullvad yet? Someone should make that happen.
Maybe a nix config? Docker?
Mullvad removed port forwarding so it’s not the way to go for torrenting anymore.
Works fine enoughfor me.
What am I missing? Got a better suggestion?
Without port forwarding you’re limited on connections and can only connect to those who do have it enabled.
When they dropped support, I switched to AirVPN and have been satisfied. Prices are about the same I believe. Mullvad was great and even refunded me my remaining time after the switch. I’d totally use them again if I didn’t need port forwarding or if they brought the feature back.
I used a compose file from reddit and made a couple of adjustments, it was pretty quick and works great. I dont have a VPN though.
Mines all in a docker conpose:
*arrs
sabnzbd and/or a seedbox + resilio/syncthing/ftp(s)
Jellyfin
a reverse proxy of your choice (mines traefik)for DNS I utilize pihole and it’s CNAME feature.
If I’m just trying to watch something right then and there, I’ll usually use my IPTV subscription or a streaming site, but if I plan on watching later, I’ll download a nice high quality torrent
Torrenting will have everything you want within 48hrs (at the longest) as long as your tastes are relatively current and mainstream. If you are into older or more niche content you’ll still likely need Criterion or Canopy etc.
I’m into older content but I’ve never done any torenting. If I were to start would it by harder for me because of the time of content i search, or would it be like any torrenting?
I’m not sure what you’re asking exactly, but the reason older and niche content is harder/slower to find sometimes is because there are fewer people out there sharing (“seeding”) the files.
ok. Thank you for the explanation. Honestly, I’m don’t know what I’m saying myself. Like I said, I’ve never done torrenting but I’m curious to try.
It’s not that hard. The easiest way to start is probably get qBittorrent, which has built-in search of several major torrent sites at once.
thanks I may try it.
I used to use a kodi box. Every month or so I’d have to find a new source. I might have to dig it out and give it another try.
everything comes too torrents eventually its just finding it and if its on public torrent sites if its still seeding when you find it. start here https://proxygalaxy.me/
I used to use the arr applications and use Usenet but as time went on I needed more and more space. I pay a guy once every six months to get access to a Plex library that has everything you can think of. I even have the ability to request things if they aren’t there.
I still buy DVD and BluRay’s for some reason… Pirate only when I get lazy.
Stremio + ThePirateBay plug-in works great (allegedly)
There’s no need for torrenting with services like Stremio (with Real-Debrid).
There is if you intend to keep torrents alive.
I haven’t heard that before, so I had to search a bit. This poster says Stremio uploads, but theres no docs. https://www.reddit.com/r/Stremio/comments/182cb7f/does_stremio_upload/
Stremio uploads/seeds just when you’re watching the movie, and usually with a very small cache. On a 20gb movie maybe you seed 200-300mb, which isn’t anything substantial
Real Debrid doesn’t seed anything. Stremio just has other addons that can seed torrents, but they’re not Real Debrid or one of the other debrid services
Theres no need for stremio if you torrent (remotely) and host jellyfin at home. Only a power outage can take me out.
