I do use BitTorrent, but it’s never going to beat the convenience of just searching for a file and getting it when p2p networks first came out.
For niche stuff like 1930s movies sometimes I need to start a few torrents to make sure at least one of them has seeds.
I have had success with soulseek for music, but what do you guys use for other types of files?
I’ve given up on p2p. Too much risk and threatening letters from my ISP.
I made the switch to Usenet and private NZB trackers years ago and it has been great. Sometimes it may take a while to locate more obscure stuff, but eventually things show up. Even obscure made for tv movies from the early 1980s.
Usenet isn’t bad but for the same price I just ended up paying for a seedbox which is in a country that doesn’t care about a DMCA notice, is on a 50Gb connection and a beefy Linux server so it handles bittorrent easily and also serves the media via Jellyfin.
I do everything self-hosted with an unraid box and a decently sized array for my needs. Runs Plex, Radarr, Sonarr, and SABnzb along with a bunch of other stuff. Works perfect for my needs. It just hums along and costs me like $10/month USD
How much storage/bandwidth do you get for $10/mo? I’m getting 8TB storage, 20TB bandwidth and unmetered Jellyfin for ~$35. It’s a managed host but I can handle an unmanaged host if it’s cheaper.
I only have a 9tb array which is currently enough for my needs. I have uncapped municipal internet and fully saturate my 500mpbs down connection , consistently pulling 43.5mpbs download. I use atomic file linking so there is no unpacking of the file. It lives on a SSD cache drive until a “mover” copies the file to the array overnight. Unraid and docker containers work pretty damn well
Yeah I also have a home array that syncs from my seedbox’s array, longer term-cheap storage (16TB and growing)
The seedbox mediaplayer setup is for remote family. I have the 4k library hidden for them because most are not using 4k HDR capable TVs or media players that can handle tone mapping so rather than bother trying to get them to fix their player->display stack or transcoding the content for them (the seedbox provider does not have hardware for transcoding and you’ll max your account’s CPU time if you try to transcode using the CPU) I simply ensure that my 1080p quality profile is SDR and x264 for compatibility.
Honestly a vpn negates the risk of letters from your ISP, I’ve gotta bother to find another decent one now though since mullvad removed port forwarding.