Quote :

"So what service do you people recommend these days?"

Yeah, UNS is still the best, imo. They switched to all new backend servers a year or two ago and I haven't had so much as a hickup since then. Rock solid downloads, 20 concurrent connections, free SSL, 860 day retention, and if you sign up for a year, it ends up working out to $7.95 a month. I don't know of any other service that's even close. A couple of other services used to kick it's ass on retention, but now that they've grown out to 800+ days, that's not an issue anymore.

2/27/2011 2:13:36 PM

So what clients are people using for Windows these days? I'm reading up on it but it's been a good ten years since I've used usenet.

2/28/2011 2:52:25 PM

I used to use newsleecher with supersearch but now I've switched to SABnzb+. All my TV shows are fully automated and for movies i use http://www.nzbmatrix.com.

2/28/2011 3:00:25 PM

^Did you see my CouchPotato reference on the last page? It's Sickbeard for movies. I haven't personally set it up yet though and I just use nzbmatrix to search for whatever movie as well.

2/28/2011 3:09:02 PM

^yeah I checked it out. Typically I just search NZBmatrix for movies. There's so many variations I like to pick out which ones. On that note this just showed up:

http://ca.gizmodo.com/5772418/how-to-turn-your-computer-into-an-internet-personal-video-recorder

If anyone's interested.

2/28/2011 3:13:13 PM

Okay, so Sick Beard is the best thing ever, and it set up directories where I told it to, but what do you do to SABnzbd to automatically put the shows there? Everything's just going to the default download directory. HMM.

3/2/2011 1:58:39 PM

^it takes some tweaking to get it set up right:

http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10

You have to tell SABnzb to use the sickbeard script to rename/sort the files after it automatically downloads them.

3/2/2011 2:04:00 PM

Hmmm. ^^that's actually what i want it to do. The whole folder thing is why I stopped setting it up on my mom's computer. She doesn't want all her videos separated into folders. Guess I'll have to set it up to do that. It didn't look like it was an option.

3/2/2011 3:18:05 PM

Sickbeard automatically puts shows in show folders. That's half the point of the software. You just have to make sure SABnzb is running the sickbeard script for all downloads tagged as "TV" in sabnzb. Just follow that guide i posted.

3/2/2011 3:25:27 PM

Finally got Sickbeard and SABNzbd working together perfectly. Post-processing is working correctly, woo Now I just need to get Couchpotato set up.. that and buy a new hard drive, 70gigs isnt cutting it.

3/3/2011 7:05:11 AM

I'd really like to know what the deal is with so much content on Newsgroups being password protected these days is.

[Edited on March 3, 2011 at 10:23 AM. Reason : GO TO OUR WEBSITE THAT ISN'T GOING TO GIVE YOU THE PASSWORD ANYWAY LOL]

3/3/2011 10:23:27 AM

Hmm I don't think I've run into a password in over a year. Usually it's for some obscure piece of software that I'm 90% sure has a trojan anyway.

3/3/2011 10:51:47 AM

Seems to be mainly on TV shows -- it was one on Hulu that I would have just watched on there, but I was going to be sitting on a plane so that was a no go.

3/3/2011 10:56:52 AM

Quote :

"I'd really like to know what the deal is with so much content on Newsgroups being password protected these days is."

Yeah I have almost never run into a password protected file. If you're using nzbmatrix or a similar indexing site you won't run into password protected files as they aren't really allowed.

If you're just swimming through an actual indexing of all of usenet you will probably run into a lot.

3/3/2011 11:04:14 AM

Ive learned to look at the file sizes of the par2 files to determine which ones are real and which are password protected.

3/3/2011 11:08:58 AM

only get stuff from trusted IRC chans

3/3/2011 3:50:51 PM

Don't know why I never thought to see if it was possible before now, but just the other day I found out you can install SABnzbd+ on your iPad/iPhone. That plus XBMC means an entirely mobile video watching solution. Pretty cool stuff. The only snag i found is that SAB doesn't get along with the CPU on my phone enough to extract the rar sets, but you can manually extract them with iFile, or XBMC will read files inside rar sets, so if all you're going to do is watch and delete, you don't even need to extract them.

4/20/2011 2:42:07 PM

I am rarely in a position where I want to watch TV or a movie that I don't have a laptop or I'm not in front of a TV. Videos aside from like youtube on a mobile device are useless in my opinion. No one wants to watch a full length movie or tv show on a phone. If I'm on a bus, or in line, or waiting for something I'd much rather play a game or read.

4/20/2011 4:27:50 PM

*Shrug* I just thought it was kinda cool that you could do that on a mobile device more than anything else. It's not like I plan on watching all my TV Shows on a 3 inch screen from now on or anything.

4/20/2011 8:32:25 PM

^^I'm sure there's a few hundred thousand or so people that watch full length movies/shows on their iPad at least every week or two. Add in the people that use AirPlay or have one of the video out cables and I think it makes a lot of sense.

^ thanks for finding that. I searched a couple of weeks ago and gave up after countless threads of apps that let you control it. Now if they'll just get a jb out for the ipad2. The only time I use an actual computer at home now is for usenet.

[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 8:36 PM. Reason : .]

4/20/2011 8:35:09 PM

Quote :

"I searched a couple of weeks ago and gave up after countless threads of apps that let you control it."

For some reason I found it oddly satisfying to use one of those apps that controls SABnzbd and to have to use 'localhost' as the server name.

4/20/2011 8:41:22 PM

Good point with the iPad. It is cool that you can do that. I'd still rather watch media on a large HDTV.

On a side note. I don't have a port open for SABnzbd+ at the moment. I just use it on my network. If I need to access it I'll just remote in. TV shows auto download and movies download in around 15-20 minutes so I rarely need to pre-queue a movie. Does anyone actually open ports to use SAB outside a network? Didn't think that was a good idea.

[Edited on April 21, 2011 at 1:25 PM. Reason : s]

4/21/2011 1:24:06 PM

Quote :

"I'd still rather watch media on a large HDTV. "

God damn, man, are you just purposely trying to miss the point here or what? I don't think a single person is sitting around their house with a 50 inch HDTV and an iPad trying to figure out which screen would give them a better viewing experience.

I wouldn't, for one second, think that it would be a good idea to make my iPhone or iPad into my main downloading or viewing platform. But sometimes when I'm not around the house for whatever reason (like when I was in a hotel room earlier this week for example) it's nice to know that I have all of the functionality on the go. Sure, I had my laptop with me, but I like to keep mostly everything on that related to work, and the iPad is more for fun. Now I don't have to worry about keeping a copy of SABnzbd installed on there. Plus I was able to hook up the iPad with a video out cable to the TV while still using my laptop for other things.

Just because YOU don't think it would be a nice feature to use in every situation doesn't mean that somebody wouldn't find some use in it occasionally.

4/21/2011 1:57:39 PM

I was just playing with ya. It's a neat feature.

4/22/2011 7:56:12 PM

Yeah it's a neat find, but I'm with neo on the practicality of it all. I would think that using the iPad to remotely control SAB and XBMC with their respective apps would be a much better use of the programs. What we really need is for the XBMC app (just an extremely polished remote control now) to natively stream to our devices in a TVersity/PlayOn fashion. That would solve everything you're trying to do right there as long as you had a decent connection at home.

I haven't made the jump to a tablet yet, but I've been using newsgroups since I left the scene 49584 years ago and recently started playing with automation of it all. I already get frustrated with only having 15Mbit sometimes, so I doubt I would have the patience to download even a 300MB tv show over 3G, 4G, or hell a 5Mbit public hotspot.

My boredom would be cured much faster with hulu, netflix, or whatever random shit I threw on the device in anticipation of my train, car, or plane ride.

That said, if you're arguing the ability to jump between the 50Mbit connection at the office, your home 30Mbit connection, the girlfriend's 15Mbit cable, and the in-law's 10Mbit DSL and never have to change your download sources, I guess I could get on board with that.

tl;dr
IMO it's good in theory, but bad in practice.

4/22/2011 8:44:52 PM

My home is 50mbit!! Agreed though. Nice in theory. Don't think I'd actually download on a mobile device. If I had to I'd pull out the laptop or stream the exact same movie/tv show from my home connection.

4/22/2011 8:51:26 PM

Quote :

"I already get frustrated with only having 15Mbit sometimes, so I doubt I would have the patience to download even a 300MB tv show over 3G, 4G, or hell a 5Mbit public hotspot."

Try living in an area that can only get a 3Mbit DSL connection. The speeds I see on my iPhone are actually faster than my home connection.

4/22/2011 9:04:56 PM

^^Im still trying to justify the added cost to turn up 50

4/22/2011 9:39:39 PM

Re: download speeds, it could be better, but it could be a lot worse. 6-7 minutes to download last nights episode of fantasy factory. That was off one bar of weak ass 3G tethered from my iPhone.

4/26/2011 11:47:49 AM

Other than nzbmatrix - what are the others I should be looking at?

Also- does it matter what usenet provider you use? I signed up with newshosting.com and its working fine so far. Does your provider determine what content you may or may not have access to? I have noticed that I can find some shows but not all and I was just wondering.

10/10/2011 11:01:10 AM

The biggest variance is completion rate but I think they're all pretty similar. I've been with usenetserver from the beginning so I don't know much else.

Also this software is amazing:

http://sickbeard.com/

Use it with Sab.

10/10/2011 11:21:02 AM

Yep - got sickbeard and SABnzbd all set up with XBMC on the ATV2

10/10/2011 11:47:31 AM

I was with giganews for years and recently switched to uns for 10/month and I don't miss GN at all. I too love sickbeard and sab. Still need to setup the one for movies. Forget what it's called.

10/10/2011 12:04:10 PM

couchpotato

10/10/2011 12:46:12 PM

Yep that's it.

I just use NZBMatrix now since Newzbin is defunct. There's http://www.nzbsrus.com too, but I can't really remember if I donated/subscribed and if it was even possible to use an API key.

10/10/2011 1:25:55 PM

Quote :

"since Newzbin is defunct"

Uh, what? Admittedly I don't download as much anymore but still works for me. Am I missing something?

10/10/2011 2:55:20 PM

same here - I have newzbin working with Sickbeard

10/10/2011 3:15:26 PM

There was that period of time where the site changed hands after the owners went through legal battles. Then credit was wiped out and it was deemed "Newzbin II" or whatever after some new owners magically restored a backup of the site and mirrored it. It got real odd for a bit so I stopped using it.

10/10/2011 3:29:06 PM

nzbxxx! haha

10/10/2011 3:38:39 PM

So I know with the rise in popularity of NZB files and search engines, I've got to be in the minority here of people that have this issue, but I'm having less than no luck with UNS support on this issue so I thought I'd ask here and maybe I'll get lucky.

There are a couple of groups that I like to regularly download headers for just to see what's available. Normally on my connection, I can download approximately 500,000 headers per minute. For the last week or so, it has been much much slower than that. Right now I just updated one of the groups, the headers have been downloading for 7 minutes, and I have downloaded ~450,000 headers. According to my newsreader software (Newsleecher) I have been downloading headers at my full allowed bandwidth for the entire time. So either that part isn't true, or UNS changed the way they handle headers (or something else that I'm not considering has happened, feel free to throw out suggestions)

I don't suppose anyone with UNS service happens to be experiencing the same thing, or would be willing to download a million or so headers and let me know how long it takes them?

3/3/2012 10:27:01 PM

I have UNS, but like you assumed, use newzleecher with sabnzb and sickbeard. I haven't downloaded headers since 2005 when I thought you had to.

I'll test though if I can remember how. What's one of the groups?

[Edited on March 3, 2012 at 11:25 PM. Reason : ]

3/3/2012 11:24:27 PM

One of the ones I download from is a.b.teevee. Thanks.

3/3/2012 11:33:23 PM

So for someone that is just interested in movies, TV shows, and perhaps the occasional e-book, is this a viable option?

Which of these services would cater the best? I'm a little confused reading through this last page with all the different programs mentioned.

UNS as the service, SABnzb+ for TV shows, NZBmatrix for movies while using SickBeard and CouchPotato? I don't even know what all of that means, lol. It also sounds like a lot of this can be automated, which would be fantastic.

We don't have cable, and mainly the only shows we care about are breaking bad and the wife loves true blood. I cannot justify ~$100 a month to watch true blood (cable + hbo).

3/26/2012 8:33:22 AM

SABnzb+ is a client. NZBmatrix is a site that indexes stuff on Usenet.

For example if you're using Sickbeard you're going to use UNS + SABnzb + NZBmatrix + Sickbeard for the whole process to work.

e.g. something airs. Sickbeard refreshes and grabs an nzb file from NZBmatrix then sends it to SABnzb to download then runs a script for post-processing.

3/26/2012 9:30:02 AM

I've been having a lot of problems with NZBMatrix lately.

3/26/2012 9:56:14 AM

Empty nzb files? I get those. I wish there was a delay. You just have to retry them like 5 minutes later and they work. Essentially someone posts an NZB before it's actually uploaded.

3/26/2012 10:06:45 AM

http://www.ainer.org/sick-beard-install-setup-configuration-guide-for-ubuntu-linux-mint

^x4Check out these guides.

^ Or corrupted maybe.


[Edited on March 27, 2012 at 10:39 AM. Reason : ]

3/27/2012 10:34:01 AM

Do yall do the free NBZMatrix account, or pay the $10 to sign up for the VIP features?

4/22/2012 10:02:00 AM

Don't you pretty much have to? It's like $10 for 10 years. I thought the free account only allowed a retention of like 20 days. Maybe that's changed.

4/23/2012 9:47:16 AM

Quote :

"Do yall do the free NBZMatrix account, or pay the $10 to sign up for the VIP features?"

To have sickbeard and sabnzbd configured to automatically download stuff with nzbmatrix, you need the VIP features to get access to the API key. You can do a sickbeard setup without sabnzbd or the nzbmatrix API but it's not quite as effective.

4/23/2012 5:53:02 PM