A few people have requested this so here you go.
Do not discuss the downloading of copyrighted materials or provide links to anything of that nature here!
Newsgroups (usenet) are a nice alternative to Torrents, although you are going to have to
pay a monthly fee in order to use it!
However, you will benefit from being able to max out your connection from start to finish, you don't need to seed either of course... you're downloading from servers not other people! If you're a heavy downloader, especially of HD content then this could be very beneficial to you.
I'm on Virgin media 20MBit and I can download a
10GB file in around
1 hour 30 minutes at a speed of 2.3MB/sec (2,300KB/sec).
To download from Newsgroups you're going to need 3 things.
- A download client
- A website to grab your links from
- A monthly subscription to a server where you're going to download from!
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Okay firstly you need a subscription to a usenet server, I've used all the popular ones and I advise you choose
Astraweb... it costs $15.00 US a month and they are
very reliable.
You can sign up HERE. (
There's a special $11.00 offer HERE, thanks PaulV!)
NOTE: They do offer a cheaper $10.00 US a month package, your download is restricted to only 1MBbit (100kb/sec) with this.Now you have your sub, you need a program to download your files with. A decent free option is
Grabit which you can download
HERE, though I recommend using Newsleecher, there's a link below also.
Setting up Grabit:- When the program first runs it asks you for the name of your news server, enter eu.news.astraweb.com
- Click next until you get into the main program.
- Right click 'Default server' and click 'Server proporties'
- Now you can enter your username and password, also set the maximum allowed connections to 20.
- If you go to Edit - - > Preferences you can alter your download paths etc. Most settings should be fine as they are.
Alternative to Grabit - Newsleecher
I actually recommend this over Grabit as it has Traffic Management (I.e. setting download schedules, maximum speed etc.) along with a lot more functionality and tools.
You can grab the latest Newsleecher beta at the link below, it includes a fix so the 14 day trial will last forever. ;)
http://filebeam.com/7ab32f6e5b482095efcd259940ef9262
An installation guide along with recommended settings are included with the download!
So now you're ready to start downloading,
you just need a website to get your links from! Now there are free options available (such as
binsearch), however due to sheer usability and ease I'm continuing the guide with a paid website. If you navigate and sign up to
NZBMatrix they will give you a free account, however with this you can only download files that are up to 20 days old. If you pay to be a VIP member you can access their entire database, this is a
one off payment of £7.00.
NOTE: Astraweb lets you download files which are up to 1255 days oldOkay once you've done that you're ready to go! Lets say we want to search for 'snes roms', search results will look like this:
It's all pretty straightforward!
Age is how long the link has been posted on the site, very old files may be more corrupt but as I've noted Astraweb do try to go as far as 1255 days. Comments are very useful, this site has a lot more user feedback than others which is why I chose it... if you have problems with your download you can check there of course.
When you've found what you want, click the link and once you're happy there's a button labelled '
Download NZB', click that and open it into Grabit/Newsleecher and simply wait for it to finish.
Grabit/Newsleecher will repair and extract your download for you! Mostly all links will come with repair files (par2).
Enjoy!
PS - Feel free to add to this, there are a ton of usenet clients, servers and websites it would be impossible for me to go into every one. This has been made to keep things relatively simple!