I started pirating movies again after a decade
I started pirating movies again after a decade
I was a happy Netflix user until 2018, before that I haven't really pirated any movies (with very rare exceptions) for almost a decade but I recently started again. I'm was doing my monthly budgeting and realized I was paying for too many subscription services. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Shudder, Disney+, Hulu and Crunchyroll. My family likes to watch different types of content that is distributed on many different platforms.
I was never subscribed to these many services until a couple years ago. I was thinking which service I should cancel when I realized I had the option to cancel all of them this entire time. I'm torrenting again and I started saving a considerate amount.
The only service I'm paying for is Spotify which I think it's fairly priced and offers all the music my family listens too (and it's convenient). All the competitors pretty much offer the same content and that's how streaming services should be.
I remember back in the day using eMule and BitChe (to look for torrents). Now I'm using Deluge as my torrent client and I I get my torrents from 1337x. What sites are you guys using?
I wish streaming companies would take notes from Spotify. It’s not too expensive, non-exclusive, acceptable quality even on higher end gear.
Doesn’t shove idiotic recommendations on my face, doesn’t bug me about my address, doesn’t randomly drop in quality because my neighbour is taking a piss. Looking at you, Netflix, you expensive useless piece of shit.
(I’m fact, Spotify’s recommendations are so good that I’m constantly finding new stuff I actually like.)
Expanding from just torrents - I highly recommend looking into usenet! Downside, you have to pay for a good indexer. You can get a one time purchase depending on what site you go to, mine is ~$80 per year. After that, set up your nzb/Usenet download client (I recommend sabnzb, these are all free), then you can troll through that for movies, tv, etc like a torrent site. Generally it's more reliable, and if you find something on there you can download it and it'll max out your download speed (if you let it) instead of getting single seeder torrents that get stalled.
Want to get (slightly) techier but much better? Get Radarr for movies, Sonarr for TV shows, lidarr for music, and readarr for books. (There's also whisparr for porn, mylar3 for comics, Bazarr for subtitles and others, but I haven't felt a need to run these yet) Basically you can find movies, tv, etc that you want and "monitor" them, and let the program do the rest. They scan multiple sources (Usenet and torrent sites) that you setup for the content you want, compare it to filters you put in place (quality, number of seeders, age, number of other downloads, etc) and download it for you. New movie that isn't hd yet? It can grab a webrip or lower def version for you, and automatically replace it with a 1080p version when it's available. You can also grab prowlarr to manage your indexers (nzb site torrent sites) across all of your apps so you have one source of truth.
My setup:
- Indexers in prowlarr Nzbgeek (paid, mentioned above) 1337x Pirate bay (Some other misc torrent sites)
- Download clients Qbittorrent (for torrents) Sabnzb (for usenet)
- Frontend apps Radarr - movie manager Sonarr - tv manager Readarr - book manager Lidarr - music manager - no longer use, switched to paying for Tidal Plex - media server to aggregate and stream the video files from above Calibre - media server for ebooks only
I may be a pirate, but I do it with class and comfort.
1337x is my favorite right now for TV/movies and Nyaa for anime. Between that and Usenet, I can get 99.5% of what I want.
I use qbittorent and Sabnzb for downloads.
Since you've been out of the piracy game for awhile you may consider looking into *arr apps (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, etc). They can auto download movies/tv you want and format them in a way that Plex/Jellyfin like, so you can get a whole library of content with just a few clicks. There's a bit of a learning curve to the setup though.
I'd be fine with a minimal streaming service and being able to rent shit I want to watch but rental streaming prices are fucking ridiculous. It is $20 to rent Fast X. It is only $25 to "buy" it. One that is not still in theaters is still $6 to rent. And if it is ancient, it is $4 to rent. When I was a wee lad, in the early 2000s, it was $3 to rent a new release and $1 for old movies. That required a storefront and an employee. Shit should not have gone up in price 100% and 300% respectively. General inflation has not gone up nearly that much and more efficient tech is supposed to make things cheaper.
So fuck all that. I'll pay for Disney because I have a kid. But they are starting to remove shit so it is likely I will be dropping that sometime in the future.
If you are into self hosting, I suggest you look into unraid, from there look at sonnar/radarr/libarr (tv/movies/music), run these in radar as dockers. I recommend looking a spaceinvaders videos on YouTube to get you started.
These three dockers will help with automating your torrent downloads.
Once you get comfortable with this I would suggest looking into seedboxes to host your download clients outside of your local network. And I would also suggest looking into nzb downloads to help pull more content. There are some excellent nzb sites to sign up for.
Been torrenting all through with 1337x and yts.mx despite paying for Netflix. The occasional piratebay for more obscure movies. RARBG was my favorite tracker, but sadly, they are no more.
Luckily I live in China where nobody bothers about copyright laws, so I can max out my 1gbit connection that costs me 2 full dollars a month 🙃
Very similar situation here. Around 2017/2018 I had Netflix and Prime Video. I was able to watch 95% of the content I wanted to watch and only had to download some obscure 90's SciFi series they didn't have.
But the industry had to fuck it up and create too many platforms. We have Netflix, Prime, Disney+, HBO, Paramount Plus, Apple TV+ and many more. I am not subscribing to your service because one or two titles might interest me. It's way too much cost for a lot less value I had in 2018.
I even wanted to make an exception for Apple TV+ because their series are absolutely amazing. But they force you to buy an expensive Apple device to watch the content in 4K on the Safari Browser. Go fuck yourself, Apple. It's not even a technical issue, because they play the trailers in 4K but then switch to 480p with a terrible bitrate.
Don't go to the big media outlets and start crying that piracy is too damn high if you make it more inconvenient to watch your programs legally than just downloading an MKV file from somewhere.
I stopped paying for services because of the ease of not having to jump between different apps on the Roku to watch various movies. Locally hosting my content had simplified everything for the whole family.
I feel like I must be the only person in the world still still using Piratebay! I switch between that and Kickass Torrents and have done for years. They've been through a variety of guises but seem to have settled down now. I use Tixati to leech and seed, never used a VPN and never had any trouble from my ISPs. It's been interesting reading the comments though, might look at some of the suggestions.
I feel you. I said heck it and cancelled them when I entered the adulthood in which you're exclusively surrounded by people who are pissed about your existence unless you give them money. Paying for things you cannot physically touch has become a rich thing for me, among with grave service, licensing and censorship issues. To truly watch everything I'd have to subscribe to more than one and get into a VPN.
Just Fmovies suffices and I particulary appreciate their subtitle feature, being a foreigner.
Spotify? You might like ViMusic over at F-Droid.
Plex shares solved my streaming need and negated my laziness and hatred of downloading files to a penstock for my ps4.
£5 for everything I could ever need with a netflix like interface, and if for whatever reason something isn’t on…it’s obtained and visible to watch. Bliss!
welcome back, still using 1337x now
https://torrentgalaxy.to/ is a public tracker that has some decent stuff.
https://torrentleech.org is a good private tracker that has frequent open invites. All their boxsets are freeleech so it's pretty easy to build up a good ratio
Shit, I never stopped.
I relate so much to your situation.
I was a subscriber of Netflix, HBO, Disney+ and Apple TV+.
Started to look at alternatives and ended up with a Real Debrid subscription coupled with Stremio and Torrentio.
It’s been smooth sailing for me.
I see a lot of mixed people between piracy and paying for streaming services.
- Streamio + Torrentio
- Plex/Jellyfin etc + Real Debrid
- Starr stack (not for everyone)
I use a starr stack with custom scripts and shell out more money then if I just payed for services.
For those that don’t want to dive super deep into piracy and want good access to content. Use the Streamio + Torrentio or Real Debrid they’re honestly great and make things easy.
It feels as though we are moving back towards cable with all the different services and none of them are really anything to brag about anymore. I canceled my Netflix when they raised the prices and stated they would end password sharing. I then canceled my HBOMax when they started pulling content I liked to watch and I had already previously canceled my Hulu account since they really didn't have anything worth watching. Now I am down to Amazon, Paramount+ (as it is free with WalMart+), and Crunchyroll and I rather like have less choices as it gives me the push to go do something else besides watch TV.
Qbittorrent has search engines as plugins, just google it and choose which ones you want
I started using illegal streams last year after also getting tired paying out of the ass for multiple streaming services. Now I pay only for Spotify and Crunchyroll, and HBO when House of the Dragon starts airing (then I cancel when that's over). Movie/show companies turning online streaming back into cable over greed don't realize they're biting their own faces off. I may pay for Netflix again for the final Stranger Things season, but I won't be keeping it afterwards.
Oh, and if an anime isn't on Crunchyroll, it gets torrented.
Also the constant canceling/dropping shows and movies is maddening and is only pissing people off more.
Not only the hassle of too many competing services, it's the fact the buggers drop things all the time. Went to rewatch Enders Game the other night after reading the book and could I find it on any of the services I pay for? Nope (it used to be there), they wanted more money for it. Fk you, off to real-debrid, it's like they want to force us back again.
I’m curling up to a movie right now on Hooplah & last night watched one on Kanopy, two streaming services I get free with my library card.
I finally got this all setup but I really just use plex and then I2P to source and download content with/from via biglybt and an I2P setup and manually select my torrents and let em download overnight (raspberry pi setup so it’s not disruptive)
Next up I’ll be looking into sonarr or maybe just whipping up or borrowing a Python script to facilitate searching for and init the magnet links for bigly
I cancelled Nowtv because it added adverts and you have to pay extra for 1080 which is ridiculous.
So I started watching some of their stuff on Beetv... Then I started looking at my other streaming services.
I stopped torrenting because streaming services made it more convenient. It no longer is.
I'm currently using "Torrent Search Revolution" on my phone, and it is so easy! Is searches a bunch of sites at one (you can remove sites from the site-search list, not sure about adding to it though). The only downside, so far, is you don't get any extras you'd get from going to the site- no comments, no still-frames for QC. You gotta know exactly what your looking for.
Edit- I forgot, you asked for sites! Primary - Torrentday Secondary - tpb, 1337x, YTS, eztv, ext, magnet.dl, nyaa, cloudtorrents (the aforementioned app searches all of these)
I use FMHY. It's a listing of a bunch of sources.
It's so bad, that I've gone almost a decade without watching a movie outside of public television.
I am finally getting around to cutting the cord here in a month (Xfinity raising my prices another 40$ a month). I have a Plex server on a WD myCloud, and am ripping DVD's left and right. I need to start hunting for a decent VPN, and site to pull torrents from.
Me too! After paying for three subscription services and not finding anything to watch after a while, and seeing services raise prices and even add ads, I decided enough was enough.
Piracy is really good these days. 4k movies. :)
I'm in the same boat. I stopped for about 10 years and then setup a media server. Started with music and then movies TV series. Mostly using open directories which has been pretty great.
Been using PIA for over ten years with no issues.
Man, I've been thinking about doing the same thing. I was just talking with my wife about how nice it was when you basically had Hulu and/or Netflix.
What's really pissing me off is having Disney/Hulu/ESPN as one account - that used to be called cable and I fucking hated it.
YTS is good for movies.YTS is bad for movies, it turns out.
This is why i pay for spotify, because it's so much easier than downloading and hosting music. The music industry got it right. Sign up with any music service and you'll get likely the same or very similar music libraries. But with TV and movies, there's all this fucking exclusive shit. They can eat shit if they think I'm gonna pay more for streaming than fucking cable/pay TV. Fuck that shit.
I am still using ed2k/kad network, never stopped in nearly 20 years!
I pay for a seed box that is powerful enough to run a Plex server and comes with 8TB of storage for a little more than a Netflix subscription. I'll stick with that.
I prefer much more to pay for Real Debrid even when their servers are not as perfect as Netflix or alike, they are cheaper and have all the content that you'd normally want to see.
I never stopped 😂.
But in all seriousness I'm still languishing on janky old school public trackers too, commenting here to help me remember to read through these suggestions at a later date.
If I actually cared about watching stuff, I probably would be to. Right now all of my entertainment is YouTube/Twitch with AdBlock, so kind of pirating? Maybe when I actually bring a girl home I'll pirate something to watch if I can't just steal my parents Netflix login still lol. I have zero intentions of ever subscribing to streaming services.
welcome again.... and i stopped pirating movies and started streaming over internet on pirate website.
Iptv, stremio, real debrid and torrentio ftw! I'm paying for things, but it's a fraction of what we paid for all the subscriptions. And I can actually find things I want to watch!
I'm using Qbittorrent and LimeTorrents.
Guide is a little outdated, but works like a dream. Ibracorp (Google them) is also very handy.
#stremio anyone?
I was mainly torrenting before Netflix but ever since NF has gone to hell I've been on the lookout for a more family-friendly way to stream. After trying out a few options (Kodi, fmovies, Stremio etc) I've found that nothing beats the Stremio+Torrentio+Real Debrid method. You do have to pay subscription for Real Debrid but it's really cheap and not compulsory.
Never really stopped, what with being a low income resident in eastern parts of EU.
But a big reason in addition to cost and many services or content simply not being available in my country is all the technical loops you have to jump through to get the best experience—I remember the time when to get full HD streaming you had to either use a specific set-top box or certain Intel CPU-s integrated graphics in a specific browser. If you didn't, you'd be limited to 480p. The same still goes for 4k and Atmos today.
Speaking of Atmos, ironically being a DIY audio enthusiast has pretty much locked me out of that. No way to decode Atmos on a PC, you have to use an AVR. But my speakers use (along with other uncommon components) digital crossovers that take digital inputs and multichannel digital outputs are verboten on AVR-s because MPAA and licensing terms (I believe only the 30000€+ Trinnov and Storm Audio pre-pros have them). Not to mention that even 3000€+ AVR-s have DAC performance no better than my 50€ Asus sound card. In the end, it's just not worth the cost and hassle of setup.
For me, convenience of streaming is also a non-argument; with Jellyfin, Navidrome and Tailscale I can access my whole library from any point on Earth that has internet access. And streaming quality is only limited by the internet connection quality, not by my hardware not having some obscure DRM feature.
My family still has netflix so I use that sometimes. But... most of the time I'll download from a few places for movies:
- rarbg, though the original went down I found a new one at https://therarbg.com/
- yts, again the original went down but I've been using https://yts.mx/ which is fantastic.
- stremio. set it up with some plugins and it's pretty useful.
- this one is a little weird but https://databasegdriveplayer.xyz/player.php?imdb= I have a browser extension to pop up the relevant link on the imdb page, so I can just click that. not always best quality, but for some rarer titles it really does end up helping.
for client I've always really used transmission. it's small, comfy, works.