I’m a pretty heavy torrent user, running a media server complete with sonarr/radarr for automatic downloads. I download a lot, and have multiple TBs of upload on various private trackers. I’ve been torrenting forever, but I’ve always wondered about usenet. Over and over on this, and other, forums I see people saying that usenet is way better - but why?
I understand what it is overall, but what makes it better than traditional torrenting? In my mind, it’s always just seemed like a different means to the same end. I pay for a VPN and torrent for “free”, or I pay for usenet access and download directly from there. As someone who’s “snobby” around the quality of the stuff I torrent, does usenet provide an advantage there?
Usenet fans, I’d love to hear what makes you love it! I’m always open to trying new things, and if It really is better I’d love to know why! (Plus, maybe what providers/tools etc you recommend).
As a disclaimer, I’m someone relatively new to usenet
Usenet has provided a much more consistent option for media quality for my server. Most titles in the last 20-25 years have around ten distributions ranging from 720p to 4k. The biggest difference are downloads. It’s no contest: better bandwidth with much much more consistent speeds. You won’t stumble on something with one seeder on a 300kbps connection. There’s no requirement to seed content back, although I recognize that if you’re using private torrent trackers this is likely the case for you already
Overall I enjoy how much better usenet is to gather media from when it comes to the amount of time from request -> server availability
Interesting, faster downloads would for sure be a plus as you’re right that sometimes you get stuck with something crazy slow using torrents