Pirate Bay has new, decentralized system - trackers abolished

[bds]

Orrrrr you could get into real private trackers, where you have to keep a ratio, but the download speeds are way faster and the content is almost always far better.

BDS,
Torrent Elitist, mo'fuckers.

[Triple Zero]

tell me about the better content. because that has to be bullshit. the new content is released via the newsgroups and other channels, and only later (quickly, but later) hits the torrents, both public and private.

afaik there is not much quality content released that is only on private trackers and not on public. maybe some stuff that is ripped by and distributed only in that particular private community, but seriously that's retarded, you are pirating anyway so why bother hoarding?

the speeds I don't really care. I used to have a very fast connection and I got my episodes in 8 minutes and movies in 30 from public trackers. currently my connection speed is much slower. but unless I'm ever going to get at some university T1 or backbone connection, I couldn't take advantage of anything faster than what public trackers would have to offer me anyway?

and then there's the problem of the people that "host" these private trackers, they usually have zero knowledge about torrents (or DHT, or which clients actually report bad ratios, or whatever) and care mostly about their l33t warez/moviez status and power trip.

though I might be wrong. It's been ages since I've been on any private tracker forum, but afaik there's not much there that cant be found with public torrents.

except for the ratio thing, since everybody is doing that, seeding to get your ratio up takes a long time, and therefore most files will be seeded abundantly for a very long time as well.

maybe I'm missing some of the advantages, so enlighten me?

[Captain Utopia]

One advantage I found is that the older stuff is generally easier to find, since you're on a private tracker, and other members are motivated to archive old files to keep their points up. Also, in terms of completeness and quality - less files (relatively un)compressed into dozens of .rar files, less annoying .txt and .nfo files, also episode titles for shows are more likely to follow the same naming scheme/format which makes things easier.

But you're right I think, for newish popular stuff where you don't mind a small amount of inconvenience getting to your content, public trackers are great, and they're okay for older stuff.

[Cain]

Demonoid has served me pretty well.  There are some older films and stuff on there which are harder to get on TPB or Isohunt, and a generally better book selection.  Also, because you have to be a member to download, people seed for a lot longer (to ensure a better share ratio), whereas there is no incentive to do this on TPB.

[LMNO]

So far, Demonoid has done me pretty well.

So, next question.  I have both BitTorrent and Vuze.  I initially tried to download something using BT, and got nothing.  So, I tried Vuze, and it worked right away.

Is there a difference, or was it just coincidence, and all the seeds happened to be online after I quit out of BT, and launched Vuze?

[Cain]

BT might not have been configured correctly re: your firewall settings and so on.  I know it was bugging me, so I switched to utorrent, which has worked fine ever since.

[LMNO]

Good to know.

Either way, I got some good stuff.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

REMINDER: Check out Peer Guardian.

[Triple Zero]

LMNO, seriously, check out http://utorrent.com it's way more lightweight than Vuze or BitTorrent.

[LMNO]

Will do.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I've used uTorrent and it rocks.

[Freeky]

uTorrent is indeed the bomb. It goes pretty quick for me, most times anyway.

[bds]

BDS SUPER QUICK GUIDE TO PRIVATE TORRENTING SHIT.

SUPER QUICK GLOSSARY

"Scene" - Where a large proportion of the torrents (the new new stuff, anyway) on the internet begin, the scene is basically the term for any release group who upload files quickly and usually after a leak from somewhere. For a better definition, check this article. (recommended, it's goddamn interesting.)

In terms of private trackers, I'm currently on...

TehConnection (Movies) (I'm staff there)
What.cd (Music)
BitGAMER (Games, of all sorts. PC, Xbox, PS3, Wii, all sorts.)
Fux0r (PR0NS LOL)
TVTorrents (TV shows)
Underground Gamer (Old freakin' games)
RevolutionTT (Scene stuff)
Bit-HDTV (Hi-def stuff)
LzTr (Movie/Game soundtracks, classical stuff)
Oh, and Demonoid.

If you want an in to any of these places, PM me and I'll see what I can do. No promises, mind. Also if your connection is the suck, don't bother, it's sometimes pretty hard to keep ratio on certain of these.

Okay, so. Couple quick reasons why content is better.

1.) User generated rips, which are almost always exclusive to whichever private tracker uploaded to. For example, What.cd has damn near 700,000 torrents, and very few of these are scene rips. They also do a nice line in FLAC rips, which are rarely found on publics, and also vinyl rips, which are damn near impossible to find on public sites.
2.) The community is so much nicer. Everyone is striving to attain the highest ratio possible, so content standards go up. For example, user rips on what.cd are all uploaded with log files, letting you know exactly what it is you're snatching. Movie rips on TehConnection are all (ish) uploaded with Mediainfo settings and screenshots, so no more downloading shitty cam rips of films masquerading as 1080p HD rips. For me, with my music downloading, quality is most definitely very important, and I just don't trust the stuff on public trackers not to be transcodes from like, 32kbps .wma or some shit.

tell me about the better content. because that has to be bullshit. the new content is released via the newsgroups and other channels, and only later (quickly, but later) hits the torrents, both public and private.

Shit hits private scene trackers way faster than it hits public trackers. I occasionally watch the times, and the fastest private's usually have content up within a couple minutes after it PRE's.

afaik there is not much quality content released that is only on private trackers and not on public. maybe some stuff that is ripped by and distributed only in that particular private community, but seriously that's retarded, you are pirating anyway so why bother hoarding?

Wrong, there's far more quality stuff on private sites. And you can be way surer of its origins too.

the speeds I don't really care. I used to have a very fast connection and I got my episodes in 8 minutes and movies in 30 from public trackers. currently my connection speed is much slower. but unless I'm ever going to get at some university T1 or backbone connection, I couldn't take advantage of anything faster than what public trackers would have to offer me anyway?

I think you'd be surprised, I currently max out my connection far faster and more effectively on things downloaded from privates than I do on most things snatched from publics. But YMMV, I guess.

and then there's the problem of the people that "host" these private trackers, they usually have zero knowledge about torrents (or DHT, or which clients actually report bad ratios, or whatever) and care mostly about their l33t warez/moviez status and power trip.

Nope, the mods on pretty much every tracker I'm on all have a good knowledge of what they're doing, and the site devs are usually freakin' insane codemonkeys.

though I might be wrong. It's been ages since I've been on any private tracker forum, but afaik there's not much there that cant be found with public torrents.

There's way more shit on private's, I find it much easier to find stuff there than on publics, tbh.



Oookay, that totally came out longer and shittier than I expected. But I hope I at least kinda answered your question.

[LMNO]

Question: I prefer obscure/unpopular/non-popular things.  Torrent seeds are based upon the amount of people who like a piece of content, and help host it, right?  So, it's a popularity contest, just like everything else.  Any tips on people looking for hard-to-find content?

[bds]

Well, it would depend what kind of obscure things you were looking for. But, by nature, private trackers are generally better for more obscure stuff, because of the way the seeding works. As everyone is trying to keep their ratio high, they're more likely to keep whatever they just downloaded seeding for longer. Which means more seeds overall, and very little hit and running (where people just snatch a file and don't seed it at all.)

However, the only problem is, you have to keep your ratio up too, which is notoriously difficult on slower connections.