On The Pirate Bay’s blog, the decision is pitched as a step forward, away from centralised trackers to newer, decentralised systems like DHT and PEX:

Now that the decentralised system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.

Which is all well and good, but DHT support isn’t in all torrent clients yet, and many cheaper routers choke on the added connection load. It remains to be seen how smoothly the transition will go — the main site is still up and searches still work, so you can go judge for yourself — but there’s little doubt that The Pirate Bay, as precariously positioned as they are as a company (read: owned by a bunch of incredible sketchballs), was under external pressure to get rid of that giant, 25 million+ torrent liability of theirs.

And because we’re all People On The Internet here: Godspeed, I guess. [TorrentFreak via Lifehacker]

The other major bit they’re missing — where to get torrents where the policies are a little, um, flexible — we’ve got you covered. If you’ve got more tips, shower the comments with ‘em. [Maximum PC]

So says a new survey out of the U.K., anyway. [The Independent via Boing Boing]

Given their earnest public defence of filesharing and aggressive posturing, I always assumed the Pirate Bay was just a couple of fellas, who happened to start a popular website, happened to get in trouble for it, and happened to become icons for a vocal, if misguided, movement against copyright. This, it turns out, is not the case: The real Pirate Bay is a shadowy property that’s been passed from mysterious shell corporation to mysterious shell corporation, and seems awfully hard to get a read on, much less buy, according to Nate Anderson at Ars:

GGF wants to buy The Pirate Bay site from a mysterious company called Reservella, based in the Seychelles islands. Reservella has no known contact information, no website, and the company that helped it register in the Seychelles refuses to provide any contact information. The Pirate Bay’s current admins claim to Ars that they don’t even know who’s behind the company. That’s odd enough, but they also tell Ars that Reservella acquired the company from another unnamed company, who took it over in 2006 after the Swedish government seized some Pirate Bay servers.

The Bay’s founders have “absolutely no connection” to Reservella, a “fact” which morphs this whole fiasco from a weird situation into an incomprehensible one.

On top of it all, Google has honoured a DMCA complaint filed by a porn company called Evasive Angel, which alleges the Pirate Bay is hosting links to unauthorised content including Horny Black Mothers 8 and Big Butt Latin Maids 2. (No, really, it’s in the filing.) Not that delisting the site from Google will stop anyone from going there, but still.

In short, the future doesn’t look so great for anyone involved, be it the company that (still) wants to buy the Bay, the founders of the site, or people who use it regularly. Actually, no, scratch that: Everyone is screwed. [Ars Technica, BoingBoing Gadgets]

Connecting to your TV via HDMI/composite and your router via ethernet, the Digital Entertainer can stream a boatload codecs from your PC or networked storage, load media from a USB stick or stream YouTube from the web.

The catch, however, is that you’ll need to purchase PlayOn ($US40) if you’d like to stream the premium internet video services like Hulu, Netflix and CBS from a computer.

In other words, the Digital Entertainer’s $US150 price jumps to almost $US200. And for $US200, you’re in console territory with the PS3 and Xbox 360 supporting UPnP, popular codecs like DivX and PlayOn services. Plus, the 360 obviously supports Netflix out of the box.

I’m not saying there’s no point to one of these media streamers, but for $US150 when they’re not a turnkey solution to everything you want to do anyway, it’s probably smart to shop around a bit. [Netgear]

NETGEAR Introduces Digital Entertainer Live, Compact All-in-One Set-top Box for Playing Home Media and Streaming Internet Video on HDTVs

Plays Movies, Videos, Music and Photos from USB Drives, Computers and Network Attached Storage; Accesses YouTube, Roxio CinemaNow On-demand Movies, Internet Videos, Hulu, Netflix and More

SAN JOSE, Calif. – September 8, 2009 – NETGEAR, Inc. (NASDAQGM: NTGR), a worldwide provider of technologically innovative, branded networking solutions, today launched the newest Internet-connected set-top box in its popular “Digital Entertainer” product family. The new Digital Entertainer Live (EVA2000) is an easy-to-use and affordable Internet set-top box that enables viewers to play their digital media collections, YouTube videos and a wide range of other Internet content on big-screen TVs. Rather than having to watch downloaded movies and online videos on small computer screens, families can now enjoy media collections stored on USB storage devices, computers and network storage directly on their HDTVs, from the comfort of their couch.

In addition to personal media collections and YouTube, consumers can now easily browse, download and play newly released pay-per-view movies from Roxio CinemaNow. They can also view videos on their TV from a wide variety of Internet sources, such as Hulu, Netflix and CBS, through free software trials and optional subscriptions. The Digital Entertainer Live incorporates all of these functions into a single compact player, an advantage for cluttered home entertainment cabinets.

“People are amassing a huge amount of their own downloaded and personal digital music, photos, and videos, as well as consuming more and more Internet video,” said Phillip Pyo, NETGEAR’s director of product marketing for connected home entertainment products. “According to comScore’s Video Metrix service, between January 2007 and July 2009, there was a 331 percent jump in the number of minutes of video watched per average viewer per month. It went from 2 hours, 31 minutes to 8 hours, 20 minutes.”

He added, “The vast majority of people are still watching these videos on small computer screens, so it’s logical to assume that the amount of time spent will continue to increase as devices such as the Digital Entertainer Live make it even easier to watch online video on HDTVs. NETGEAR is thrilled to offer an affordable, content-rich, and easy-to-set-up and -use solution that bridges this gap and enables people to fully enjoy their home media collections and online video from popular Internet sites on the best screen in their home – their big-screen TVs.”

The Digital Entertainer Live – Product Features
The Digital Entertainer Live is a compact, “plug in and go” home media player with a simple remote control that enables consumers to easily access their digital movies, videos, music and photos directly from their USB storage devices and watch them on their TV. Users need only plug a USB hard drive containing digital media content into one of two USB 2.0 ports on the Digital Entertainer Live and connect the Digital Entertainer Live to their HDTV using an HDMI or composite cable. The Digital Entertainer Live also features regular RCA jacks for connecting to older analogue TVs.

Furthermore, with its integrated network port, the Digital Entertainer Live easily makes an Ethernet wired connection to the Internet and the home network, enabling access to digital media content stored on computers and network storage devices in the home network, as well as Internet content over the web. If consumers do not have an Ethernet connection available near their TV, they can use the optional Digital Entertainer Live Wireless USB adaptor (EVAW111) that connects the Digital Entertainer Live to the Internet and the home network via Wi-Fi. Alternatively, they can use existing electrical power outlets and a powerline device, such as NETGEAR’s Home theatre Internet Connection Kit (XAVB1004), to connect the Digital Entertainer Live to the Internet and the home network.

By connecting the Digital Entertainer Live to a broadband Internet connection, consumers enjoy the full YouTube experience – searching, browsing and watching millions of videos with access to subscriptions, playlists, country selections, categories and channels – all without the need for a computer. Instead of huddling around a small computer screen to watch the latest funny video, consumers can now show it on their TV for everyone to enjoy.

To widen the search for Internet video content, the Digital Entertainer Live is shipped with a built-in Internet video search engine that can locate videos on the entire worldwide web. The Digital Entertainer Live performs dynamic keyword searches of more than a hundred thousand websites for Internet videos without needing a computer. The search feature yields dynamic results with each letter inputted and automatically categorizes popular subjects into easy-to-find folders.

The Digital Entertainer Live also supports pay-per-view movies on-demand from Roxio CinemaNow, where users can buy or rent a range of newly released movies as soon as they are available on DVD and watch them in minutes. Consumers no longer have to wait for the mail or drive to the nearest rental store. They simply browse all the movies on their TV and download them to a USB storage device using their Digital Entertainer Live and Roxio CinemaNow account.

Additionally, the Digital Entertainer Live includes a free trial of VuNow, which provides access to hundreds of other Internet videos, live Internet TV and live Internet radio streamed from popular sites from around the world, such as Bloomberg, CNN Video, C-SPAN, ESPN, Germany’s 2DF, Al Jazeera, BBC Worldwide, China’s CCTV, Germany’s DWTV, Euronews, EuroSport, France 24, France’s Orange Sport, Germany’s RTL, and Sky News. The Digital Entertainer Live also comes with a free trial of PlayOn software. By running this optional software on a computer also connected to the Internet and home network, users enjoy hit TV shows and movies from popular Internet video services such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, BBC iPlayer, CBS, NFL, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and more, wherever the service is normally available via the Internet.

“There is an ever-increasing amount of digital media – TV episodes, movies, photos and music – being stored on computers and other devices throughout the home, as well as on the Internet,” said Jayant Dasari, broadband and television infrastructure and services research analyst at Parks Associates. “In fact, some people have even maxed out their personal computers with media, requiring external storage, such as one that connects via USB. Due to this increase in distributed digital media content, consumers are looking for ways to enjoy their digital media and online videos in one place. Internet-connected set-top boxes are one solution that enable the entire family to benefit from viewing the broadest spectrum of digital content on their HDTVs from the comfort of their living rooms.”

Pricing and Availability
Backed by a one-year warranty and 24/7 technical support, the NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Live (EVA2000) is available in the U.S. through leading retailers, e-commerce sites and value-added resellers at an MSRP of $US149.99. The Digital Entertainer Live Wireless USB adaptor (EVAW111) has an MSRP of $US39.99. Worldwide availability of the Digital Entertainer Live is planned for the coming months.

It kind of sucks that even a monitoring app got banned. But, according to Apple:

…this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

So no torrent apps, at all, period. Right then.

Instructions on how to install µMonitor on a Jailbroken iPhone can be found here: [µMonitor via TorrentFreak]

With two major torrent sites all but snuffed out in the last few weeks, there are only a few decent alternatives left. Although if you’re of a hardier type, there’s always Usenet. [Torrentfreak]

*Spoiler: It’s B.

This point of this guide is to get people acquainted with the basics of Usenet, but if any of you old timers (I’m looking at you, Jesus) have any tips, tricks, advice or teary memories to share about your decades on the ‘Net, that parties in the comments. Anyway!

What is Usenet?

I’ll spare you a deep historical and technical explanation, because it’d bore you to death, and I’m not expert (read: old and bearded) enough to give it, so here are the basics: Usenet has been around since the late 70s as a sort of sister tech to the early bulletin board systems that the first generation of true nerds cut their teeth on. It was designed for discussion and lived across tons of decentralised servers. For most intents and purposes, it’s been replaced by the internet as we know it today, but it’s still very much alive, albeit with a different face.

You see, somewhere back in the 80s, someone started uploading binary content—files, not words—to Usenet. This was an awkward fit, and it some ways it still is. But it quickly became one of the main uses for the service. Why? Because nobody seemed to care much about regulating it—they still don’t, for whatever reason—and because, man, it was fast. Like, unbelievably connection-maxing fast. These factors made it a perfect refuge for for files of all types, and now the pure amount of stuff available on Usenet rivals—and in a lot of categories, exceeds—the best torrent trackers, many of which we don’t even have anymore.

For download junkies, Usenet is a wonderland. But it’s got a reputation for being a little tough to get into, so it’s mostly been populated by, shall we say, the nerdier types. This isn’t really fair, since Usenet isn’t at all hard to use. Here’s how to get started:

Hacking the Gibson (a.k.a. “Choosing a Usenet Service”)

There was a time when ISPs weren’t just cool with Usenet binaries—they actually hosted them. Some still do, but in those rare cases there are usually crippling bandwidth restrictions, throttling measures and all kind of missing content. To mine the Usenet gold you really care about—the alt.binaries content—you’re going to need to buy access. Sorry! Usenet isn’t a peer-to-peer service, so you’ve got to pay someone, somewhere for all that bandwidth and storage. The good news is, you can get away with spending about $US15 a month for unlimited, unthrottled access. If you’re not comfortable with this, get your feet wet with a free trial, like GigaNews‘, or just buy a one-off download pass, good for a few gigabytes.

There are a couple things to look out for in a Usenet provider, but most major, reputable services are roughly comparable. Retention is a word you’ll see a lot, and there’s good reason for that: Usenet servers, given the pure volume of content they get loaded with, have to clear themselves out every once in a while, meaning that files have a limited lifespan. Retention is just a term to describe how long a provider can afford to keep uploads; the longer they can hold onto uploads, the more files they have. Most of us expect 365-day retention nowadays, so don’t settle for much less.

You’ll also see connection numbers advertised, which is how many parallel connections you can have to the servers during downloads. More=faster, but past about 10 concurrent downloads, the numbers really stop meaning anything, unless you’re on some kind of insanely fast commercial connection, in which case WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWNLOADING FILEZ, HMM?

Lastly, there are download limits. This should be more obvious, but just just in case, this represents how much you can download from your provider in a given month. This one’s all you: If you really don’t think you’ll break 10GB a month, only buy 10GB a month. Once you really start to kick your torrent habit, though, you might be surprised at what you’re capable of.

I’ve been using Astraweb for years—they’re cheap and fast enough to saturate my connection—so the rest of the tutorial will assume you’ve chosen them. If you’ve gone with another provider, the only difference will be your server settings, which your provider will give you after you sign up. Remember: Usenet servers are all meshed together, so no matter who your provider is, the available downloads should be the same, at least for as long as your provider keeps them around.

Choosing a Client

As with torrents, there’s some pretty weird stuff going on behind the scenes with Usenet. As I mentioned earlier, adding binary files to Usenet was kind of an afterthought, which can make the procedure for downloading them kind of complicated. For example: Usenet binaries have relatively low size limits, so any large files (movies, software, etc.) need to be split up into lots of small piece. You know how sometimes a torrent comes in about about 40 .RAR files that have to be rejoined once they’re downloaded? That’s because it came from Usenet, where files can’t be much more than 20MB. So, your client’s got to be able to handle all these group downloads and preferably join them together for you. It’s complicated, but manageable, thanks to modern clients.

There a plenty of Usenet clients out there, but most of them are either don’t support the kind of file downloading we want—your email client falls into this category—are command-line-based or, you know, cost money. I’m done spending your dollars for today, so I’ll point everyone toward the only free, cross-platform Usenet binary client I know of, and one I’ve been using for quite a long time: It’s called SABnzb. The guide will be based on this, though you can try to follow along with some other free apps if you like. Mac OSers may want to try Hellanzb (GUI version linked) and Windows folks could go with Alt.binz. But SABnzb is, to put it bluntly, pretty great.

SABnzb runs a local web interface, so it’ll look the same no matter what OS you’re on. Here’s what you’ve got to do:

1. Download and install the client (For Windows, it’s an installer like any other app; for Mac OS, it’s a DMG)
2. Start it up. It should open a browser window with a control panel-esque page on it
3. Navigate to the “Config” Page and click “Servers”



4. Input the server settings your Usenet provider gave you after signup (Astraweb’s at left)
5. Staying in the “Config” page, click “Folders”



6. Choose where you want downloaded files to go, and where you want the temporary files to live before they’re finished downloading and joining together.
7. Choose a “Watched” folder. This how SABnzb will know what you want it to download. Make it a place that’s easy for you to save to, from a browser. Your default browser downloads folder is a safe bet here.

That’s it! Now just leave SABnzb running, and we’ll start to explore Usenet. Feel free to play around with more of SABnzb’s options, like the cool theme featured in the top image, but follow this general rule: if it’s not totally obvious to you what an option changes, you should probably ignore it. The only thing you might have to worry about outwith this list is enabling an SSL connection, if your ISP is throttling your download speeds. More on that here.

Finding Those Files

Now that you’ve got access to Usenet, and the right tools to draw those sweet, sweet files from it, it’s time to dive in. Since Usenet in the raw is an incomprehensible mess, something has emerged called the Newzbin, or NZB standard. NZBs are a lot like torrent files: They’re little pointers that contain information about all the little scattered pieces of a given download, and which give clients like SABnzb everything they need to make the downloading experience seamless to users. To explore Usenet is to explore NZBs—and to do that, you need a good NZB search engine. The best is the original from Newzbin, the people who invented the NZB format. Unfortunately, it too is paid, and currently invite-only. Instead, you can use one of the decent free alternatives, like NZBs.org, Binsearch or Newszleech. Searching takes some practice, but once you get a sense of how people name stuff ’round these parts, it’s a breeze.

Once you find your NZB, download it to the directory you marked “Watch” in SABnzb. Alternately, you can just download it to wherever you want, and add it to SABnzb at the program’s homepage, under “Add File”. Now check on your SABnzb queue, where you should see something like this:
It’s working! And yes, it’s really going that fast. If it’s not downloading, you may need to check your server settings: Sometimes ISPs block the default port (119) meaning you’ll have to use another one that your provider supports. A common one is 8080 and 1818.

SABnzb takes care of all that nasty RAR rejoining and extracting for you, so once the download is done, your designated download folder should have a fully-cooked, ready-to-watch/listen/run file. So, that’s Usenet!

Odd and Ends

As you’ve probably guessed by now, there are a lot of ways to make Usenet, and specifically SABnzb, more powerful. For that, have a look at this fantastic thread on SomethingAwful by one of the app’s developers and the SABnzb wiki, which answer just about any support question you might have.

Also, there’s a big subject we didn’t ever address here today, which is where all this content comes from. It comes from volunteer users like you and me, but the process can be a little involved, and hey, you’re brand new to the world of Usenet—let the rest of us worry about uploading for now. That said, when you’re finally ready, here’s a primer.

So that’s about it! Please add in your experiences in the comments—your feedback is a huge benefit to our how-to guides. Happy torrenting Usenetting!

]]> http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/how-to-use-the-heck-out-of-usenet/feed/ 9 http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/five-pirate-bay-bittorrent-alternatives/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/five-pirate-bay-bittorrent-alternatives/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:20:00 +0000 Matt Buchanan http://www.gizmodo.com.au/?p=348083 The Pirate Bay we know and love, though still harbouring torrents for now, is going away. But that doesn’t mean BitTorrent is dead. Far from it. Here are five places to get your torrent on after it closes for good.

Demonoid
Demonoid, besides having a solid community and good quality torrents—no porn, exceedingly few viruses—also operates the other major torrent tracker besides The Pirate Bay. (A tracker is what help makes the whole BitTorrent system work, since it makes sure every peer’s talking to each other properly.) It doesn’t have the best selection around, but what most of what you’ll find there is quality. The catch is that you need to snag an invitation from a member or when they periodically dole them out to the public.

Mininova.org
Mininova’s always one of our preferred torrent sites—tons of torrents from multiple trackers, not a lot of crap in the interface, and the search isn’t bad. Actually, it’s kind of the like The Pirate Bay, but with less crap and fewer headaches. The catch now is that they’re slowly implementing a new copyright filter to keep copyrighted torrents from being uploaded. But you should still be able to find True Blood on there, no problem.

ISOHunt
ISOHunt is a BitTorrent and P2P search engine that’s got what feels like the most sophisticated search engine of the bunch. But like the others, you just punch in what you’re looking for, and it pulls up results you can sort by seeds, date or whatever. It has one of the most massive indices of any site, so it’s a good thing the search engine is up to it. Still, with a lot of torrents, it can be hard to find exactly what you’re looking for.

BTJunkie
BTJunkie claims to be the largest torrent search engine of all, with around 5,000-25,000 new torrents added to the index daily. The quantity doesn’t seem noticeably better than the other sites listed above, however. Also, the interface is really ugly. But you know, it’s there if you need it.

EZTV
If you’ve downloaded a TV show, whatever site you snagged it from, chances are, it came from these guys. They’re the most prolific TV rippers around, and usually have solid quality rips of shows up within hours of airing. If you’re interested in TV, you might as well just go to the source—their site points to wherever their files are hosted, so you don’t have to search through a million different sites to find the right EZTV torrent.

The whole scene is admittedly a bit depressing now, after years of high profile closures—Suprnova, OiNK TorrentSpy and LokiTorrent—so these are what’s left of the big sites. And even they’re not guaranteed to survive. Demonoid went offline for several months back in 2007-2008, Mininova has a copyright filter attached to it, and really, any site is just a police raid away from possibly going down. So tread carefully, and don’t get too attached to any of them.

And of course, you should drop your own suggestions in the comments.

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