I use a seedbox to run qBittorrent with Jackett, and have a bunch of sources on there. I know there are other methods, but that works for me and I’m comfortable with it.

Rarbg has been gone for about five months and it’s harder and harder to find 4k TV rips. For current shows, sometimes you can get episodes as they air, but it’s rare to see full seasons.

The tipping point was when I searched for a Netflix show from two weeks ago just now, with zero 4K results.

I’ve always hated private trackers since they’re a pain in the ass, but is that the only option now? Do I need to look at a different method entirely? I’ve been torrenting since that existed, but if I need to do something else, let me know.

I don’t expect to get torrent sites in any responses, but you can do that if you have any 😂

  • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I think it’s about audience. People who care about quality and bitrates and such usually have their couple of private trackers. People who just want to watch things regardless of quality just get whatever

    • KribensisOP
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      8 months ago

      That’s what I’m asking. Until recently, one didn’t need to bother with private trackers unless they wanted, say, a 4K rip of Suspiria from 1977, or some other incredibly specific thing. Private trackers, at least to me, were more trouble than they were worth. Why should I deal with them at all when I can get everything I need without begging for an invite and then annoying myself?

      As a result, I have never joined a private tracker, not ever.

      But now? I’m not sure. Something does seem to have changed systemically.

          • charles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            8 months ago

            Honestly I don’t see a difference in 4k/1080p with streamed media. Physical media on the other hand is night and day.

            • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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              8 months ago

              It can be about the compression. I know I had downloaded like 4 versions of Your Name because it has been re-encoded by several different groups and sometimes higher resolution with more compression was far worse to look at than lower resolution with good bit rate.

              Some people have a magic touch and they just make incredible files and I so want their settings for handbrake when I rip my own media.

        • LilB0kChoy
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          8 months ago

          This is what it is for me. I’m blind in one eye and wear glasses because I’m near sighted with astigmatism in the other.

          It’s really hard for me to tell the difference and most of my library is 1080 or 720 because it mostly looks the same to me. I don’t want to give up the extra storage Ford 4k files.

      • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        There are semi private trackers out there that you can get an invite fairly easy, as do open signups pretty often.

        You don’t need to think about it too much, as most 4K content usually crosses the trigger for freeleech. That means you are fine as long as you don’t do a Hit ’n Run, which in itself is an asshole thing to do.

        I have a fully automated system and don’t even bother checking where I am downloading from, or what my ratios are, all is taken care in the background.

        • KribensisOP
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          8 months ago

          Do you mind if I ask more details about your system?

          • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            The whole Arr suite, plus others. I have a 24/7 low power machine running the following on unRAID with containers:

            • Radarr
            • Sonarr
            • Prowlarr
            • Overserr
            • qBittorrent
            • a VPN container
            • Recyclarr
            • cross-seed
            • qbit manage (this is key)
            • unpackerr
            • autobrr

            I have more of course but this is what’s relevant to you.

            I also have some custom scripts for patching some things up to my like.

            • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
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              8 months ago

              how did you set it up (like, what’s the process a file would do to get downloaded)? this seems a bit more complex then the normal *arr stack setup

              • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Just the normal monitor process in the Arrs and then the magic happens in qbit manage. There you can set up targets for your torrents (share ratio, seeding times, etc). Also autobrr puts me in the very first people to download a torrent, so it helps in keeping a good ratio. Cross-seed also pumps up the ratio a lot.

                Recyclarr is very important for me because I am assured to request only the very best quality for the things I care.

                My setup is complex but only because I invested way too much time in. You can get to 80% what I have in a few days and still get awesome results.

                • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
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                  8 months ago

                  wow! i have to admit i often leech from public trackers since my vpn doesn’t support port forwarding anymore (mullvad) so i didn’t really know of the setup to get a good ratio, only the downloading part. I’ll have to look into it. by the way, do you use a vpn with port forwarding or just use trusted private trackers?

                  • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    Yes I PF. The VPN container drops the dynamically assigned port to a file that a start up script for qbt reads and hard writes it in the config file. Fun stuff.

                  • sosayethme@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    Here’s the docker equivalent (gluetun is the VPN container in my setup):

                    network_mode: container:gluetun

                    So for any container I want to run through the VPN, I just stick that line in.

                  • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    Not compose, I use unRAID. This put this container in the other container’s net. If you google for unRAID you find it quite fast.

            • KribensisOP
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              8 months ago

              Nice system. It looks like I could run most of that on my seedbox. Of course, I still need the content 😂

          • spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            Check out YAMS [dot] MEDIA. YAMS (Yet Another Media Server) is essentially what the other fella is running but super simple. Depending on what system you’re running you could be up and running your own home server in about an hour.

        • KribensisOP
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          8 months ago

          Haha! It’s a real example. There was a Reddit thread in r/movies (which is a surprisingly good sub), and that came up. I ended up grabbing it. With more thought, it was a bad example, since I was able to get it on public trackers 😉

      • matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 months ago

        What show are you looking for? I’ll check my trackers and see if I can get you an invite to somewhere that has it. Shoot me a DM.