Topic: Newsgroups thread (guide)

[.adam]

If you get a decent Usenet client, it should join them for you. I use Unison on the Mac and it unRars all the files for me and deletes them after the new file has been created.

[kirzer]

I use this: http://sabnzbd.org/

Always joins and repairs all the files for you. I also use the nzbdstatus addon for firefox which lets me easily send the nzb files to sabnzbd.

[blert596]

If you get a decent Usenet client, it should join them for you. I use Unison on the Mac and it unRars all the files for me and deletes them after the new file has been created.

Yeah, all the other rars that I've downloaded have been joined when using Grabit - so all I normally have to do is click on the actual movie file. Just that this time it hasnt happened.

When I get home I'll have a go at getting them joined up.

[scatman]

Yeah, all the other rars that I've downloaded have been joined when using Grabit - so all I normally have to do is click on the actual movie file. Just that this time it hasnt happened.

When I get home I'll have a go at getting them joined up.

grabit normally does it, but on the odd occasion it doesnt

[iSmiff]

The one thing i'd advise anyone on low bandwidth internet deals is to sign up with two providers, Astraweb and any other one, do astraweb on unlimited and get one that will let you pay a few dollars for a hundred gb or so

it's very easy when downloading big amounts, say a HD season of a tv show at about 30gb for it to fail, even with pars, if you have the backup newsgroup it will most likely get the missing files on it and you've not wasted 30gb of your download

[Graeme]

The only problem I've had so far is downloading a movie and all I ended up with was various parts with and avi.001, avi.002

Open the .001 with WinRAR and you will then see the .MKV you were expecting. Tell WinRAR to extract the file and providing all of the .002 and .003 etc are in the same folder it will extract fine.

[Graeme]

The one thing i'd advise anyone on low bandwidth internet deals is to sign up with two providers, Astraweb and any other one, do astraweb on unlimited and get one that will let you pay a few dollars for a hundred gb or so

it's very easy when downloading big amounts, say a HD season of a tv show at about 30gb for it to fail, even with pars, if you have the backup newsgroup it will most likely get the missing files on it and you've not wasted 30gb of your download

Don't think thats really necessary to be honest. Been with Astraweb years and can't ever recall a download that failed. The occasional one might have a couple of blocks missing but nothing the PAR files won't fix.

[blert596]

I'm trying to d/l a movie at the moment, but for some reason Grabit is returning everything with "article not found".

I've tried multiple instances of the movies from NZB but all of them are returning the same. I downloaded a movie earlier on and everything worked well. Now whatever I try returns the above. I havent changed anything.

I can connect to the virginmedia server and refresh it.

Any advice appreciated

[iSmiff]

Don't think thats really necessary to be honest. Been with Astraweb years and can't ever recall a download that failed. The occasional one might have a couple of blocks missing but nothing the PAR files won't fix.

i've had a number of items fails on astraweb, most have been quite old and might be around the retention limit, but when you get 23gb our of 24 and the pars don't fix it it can be bloody annoying, i got 100gb from some place (never expires) for about 14 dollars or something, for the extra protection from wasting my times it's been well worth it, you'd not even need 100gb, 10 would likely do you for a year

[Kashinoda]

I'm trying to d/l a movie at the moment, but for some reason Grabit is returning everything with "article not found".

I've tried multiple instances of the movies from NZB but all of them are returning the same. I downloaded a movie earlier on and everything worked well. Now whatever I try returns the above. I havent changed anything.

I can connect to the virginmedia server and refresh it.

Any advice appreciated

Might not have been mirrored on the virginmedia server for whatever reason, or a damaged nzb file.

I'd suggest Newsleecher over grabit by the way, links in the opening post.

[buzzing]

I signed up to NZBMatrix with a hotmail account the other day mate.

Odd. Tried hotmail agaain and it worked ths time - Site looks cool. Shame about the 20 days retention until you join the VIP

[blert596]

Odd. Tried hotmail agaain and it worked ths time - Site looks cool. Shame about the 20 days retention until you join the VIP

Glad you got in mate. I've paid the £7 for access and am now beginning to wish I hadnt.

At the start I managed to dl no problem with really good speeds.

Since last night I cant seem to dl anything at all. And what I can get into is really slow.

I'm loading an nzb into grabit and all I am getting is "Article not found" permanently. It doesnt seem to matter what the nzb is. Initially I was getting good speeds but now I have tried at least 10 nzbs and not one of them gives me a return.

I'm connected to the server (news.virginmedia.com) through port 119 as recommended and I can refresh the groups and articles. However, the fastest speed is 70kb/s which is pretty awful. I'm refreshing again at the moment and so far its took 30 mins to do 40%.  My broadband speed test is showing 30M as it should do.

I went back to torrents and downloaded a 2G file at over 3Mb/s, so it appears the broadband is OK.

Sooooo, I decided to give newsleecher a go. No improvement there. I set it up as recommended (Port 119, 20 connections, gave it a directory to DL to). And so far have managed to DL nothing from that either. I get the nzb opened, connect, select from the queue and it seems to run through that. But again the speed is very very poor. Fastest I've seen is 7kbs after setting my speed to 30M and no limit. Strangely the top boxes seem to DL (or do something at least - I dont know what) quickly and the bottom bit showing the connections says offline, connect on demand.

Getting a bit pissed off with it now as I've no idea where to go next. As far as I can tell all my settings are OK (not sure if I should try a different port or even what one to try) and it was working great for a few movies. I'm on the Virgin XL package and have downloaded about 20G so I doubt if theyre throttling me for that (even after midnight I wasnt getting anything).

Any suggestions?

[Kashinoda]

Any suggestions?

It's news.virginmedia.com, very slow at the moment it seems... just run a test and was getting 200kb/sec with them. Switched back to Astraweb and was getting 6MB/sec.

I'd say the problem is temporary, I've always been able to max out my 50MB line with virgins free usenet.

Goto Newshosting and start a free trial to see if you have a problem with other servers.

https://controlpanel.newshosting.com/signup/index.php?package=60

Select unlimited and $14.95 a month, it will be free for two weeks or 30GB (whichever comes first).

Very straightforward to cancel through their control panel so once you've tested you can close your account and not pay anything.

Hope that helped.

[iSmiff]

i'd also like to say, it's not NZBMatrix's fault if you get slow downloads, it's nothing to do with them at all

[blert596]

Thanks guys. Cheers Smiffy, I realise that NZBMatrix isnt at fault.

Kash, I got the free trial for Newshost and have tried it on an SSL and also a standard port, but still get a max of 1.1Mb/s.

If I stop Grabit and grab a file on a well seeded torrent I can get 3.2Mb/s.

[buzzing]

Number of connections in your client hasn't been changed has it?

[Kashinoda]

Thanks guys. Cheers Smiffy, I realise that NZBMatrix isnt at fault.

Kash, I got the free trial for Newshost and have tried it on an SSL and also a standard port, but still get a max of 1.1Mb/s.

If I stop Grabit and grab a file on a well seeded torrent I can get 3.2Mb/s.

Using the European server? have you tried port 80? Think Newshosting might be 60 connections also.

[Graeme]

How is it this morning blert?

I use the Virgin server and its normally fine so not sure what the issue is but will figure it out.

[blert596]

Using the European server? have you tried port 80? Think Newshosting might be 60 connections also.

Thanks Kash. I'll try Port 80 tonight when I get home, although changing from Standard to SSL changes ports anyway does it not (119 to 543?) . I'm going to get my head around TCP/IP,UDP, and ports tonight I think.

Grabit only allows up to 50 connections by the looks of it and i'm going to use that as I'm not sure about Newsleecher just yet. How would I specify the European server?

[Kashinoda]

Actually yeah if you want SSL you can only use  port 443, 563.

Also my mistake, their standard unlimited package is 30 connections not 60.

For the European server connect to news.ams.newshosting.com, try non-SSL and use port 80 as well (standard web browsing port).

Virgin servers fine for me now, no idea what else to suggest mate as it sounds like heavy throttling. Why would you want to use Newsgroups if you get top speeds with Torrents anyway?

[iSmiff]

is there any user friendly usenet search engine, one that doesn't return 1 piece of a rar file for a file

say i wanted Sopranos, Season 1 episode 3, if i search for that i might get one rar for it and other gibberish, is there a search engine that would group all the rars together for that episode?

[filthy1980]

just started on the newsgroup scene, well actually signed up over a year ago but only had a 2mb connection so speeds were always a bit shit, recently got infinity BB so thought i'd get back on it,

i'm using red orb as the server, grab it client and am returning decent speeds

the only thing i don't understand is how the "repairing PAR's" thing works, as i was d/l a series and a % of the articles come up as "article not found" and a quick google mentioned that people could recover the files by "repairing the PAR's" no idea how to go about this though, any ideas anyone?

[blert596]

Actually yeah if you want SSL you can only use  port 443, 563.

Also my mistake, their standard unlimited package is 30 connections not 60.

For the European server connect to news.ams.newshosting.com, try non-SSL and use port 80 as well (standard web browsing port).

Virgin servers fine for me now, no idea what else to suggest mate as it sounds like heavy throttling. Why would you want to use Newsgroups if you get top speeds with Torrents anyway?

Thanks again mate. Will give the european server one a go afer checking what the score is with virgin now.

Not all of the stuff I want is well seeded (I had a 6G file the other day that was only seeded by 2 people). I got the good speeds just by looking for a well seeded file.

[FiSh77]

just started on the newsgroup scene, well actually signed up over a year ago but only had a 2mb connection so speeds were always a bit shit, recently got infinity BB so thought i'd get back on it,

i'm using red orb as the server, grab it client and am returning decent speeds

the only thing i don't understand is how the "repairing PAR's" thing works, as i was d/l a series and a % of the articles come up as "article not found" and a quick google mentioned that people could recover the files by "repairing the PAR's" no idea how to go about this though, any ideas anyone?

use grabit or sabnzb as they will automatically repair damaged files as long as you have enough pars

to do it manually use quickpar, the only time i have to do this is if there isn't enough blocks on my main server then i'll try to download enough missing files to enable repair from my payg server

[Graeme]

is there any user friendly usenet search engine, one that doesn't return 1 piece of a rar file for a file

say i wanted Sopranos, Season 1 episode 3, if i search for that i might get one rar for it and other gibberish, is there a search engine that would group all the rars together for that episode?

I'm not sure I follow what you mean.

The search engines are what they say on the tin - they search for content on newsgroups and tell you what they found and in how many RAR files etc as uploaded by the uploader. Some of the NZB's you find on NZBMatrix will have an 'NZB File Details' tab within the page which allows you to see all of the individual RAR files which make up the NZB and you can select which ones to download....





Even so, the episodes themselves are all broken down into seprate RAR files and aren't indexed so you'd still need to download all of this to get the single episode.

Is that what you meant?

[iSmiff]

 i'm on about sites http://binsearch.info/

etc, the results they return are a bit WTF do i do with this junk, overwhelming i'd call it, mostly because i'm not sure what i'm looking at

[FiSh77]

binsearch can be hit and miss depending on what you search for and what files are available

i just look for complete collections which display the size of the combined rar files and how many parts are available, if this info isn't available i usually swerve it as it'll either be incomplete or possibly a virus, i generally stick to scene releases and get nzb's from sites i trust so the only time i use binsearch is if i have missing/damaged files and can search for a specific rar file with the correct filename as this will usually find what i want and not give any dodgy results

[Kashinoda]

i'm on about sites http://binsearch.info/

etc, the results they return are a bit WTF do i do with this junk, overwhelming i'd call it, mostly because i'm not sure what i'm looking at

Like Fish said, you need to click 'Collection'



Then select 'Inverse' and 'Create NZB' on the next page.

[iSmiff]

I think I might have a usenet addiction, just looking on nzbmatrix and it appears i've download over 3300 nzb files since i joined, all linux distros of course

*cough*

[buzzing]

binsearch can be hit and miss depending on what you search for and what files are available

i just look for complete collections which display the size of the combined rar files and how many parts are available, if this info isn't available i usually swerve it as it'll either be incomplete or possibly a virus, i generally stick to scene releases and get nzb's from sites i trust so the only time i use binsearch is if i have missing/damaged files and can search for a specific rar file with the correct filename as this will usually find what i want and not give any dodgy results

Recently been getting loads of dud files too i.e. They need a p/w - Before their filter or whatever they uise used to pick it up really well

[FiSh77]

How is it this morning blert?

I use the Virgin server and its normally fine so not sure what the issue is but will figure it out.

Think it was something to do with a damaged cable near Amsterdam, I downloaded a 700mb file a couple of days ago which took over 20 minutes with the speed fluctuating all the time and maxing out at around 600kb/s

Did a bit of searching to find if virgin were throttling and found out about the damaged cable so switched to my us based server and have been getting full speed, not switched back yet so don't know if it's been fixed

[scatman]

I've heard some big news on the newsgroup front in terms of piracy. It seems all newsgroup services are going to start deleting files deemed copyright protected bar Astraweb. Some sort of thing they've all signed up to, it's concerning for me because I'm on giganews lol! Was thinking of switching to Astraweb this has just made it easier for me.

I hate binsearch but on the odd occasion i have to use it. So many fake files and viruses put on there, the most annoying ones are the password protected ones that arent labelled as password protected

[Kashinoda]

I think I might have a usenet addiction, just looking on nzbmatrix and it appears i've download over 3300 nzb files since i joined, all linux distros of course

*cough*

Downloaded NZBs: 2,644

You win

[hope_valley_parker]

Downloaded NZBs: 2,644

You win

Downloaded NZBs: 189

Christ, I'm SUCH a n00b.....

[scatman]

I'll check mine later lol, I've downloaded sporadically over the years, Movies, TV shows, apps, games

[golly51]

I switched from torrents to newsgroup about 3 years ago and I love it. I am average at best on a pc but have never had any trouble with this. I have virgin 20m broadband, hard wired to my pc. I use News bin pro64 and nzb matrix to search. Oh and astraweb is my server, good value at £7 a month. The only grumble I have is virgin throttling which is a pain in the ass. I would NEVER go back to torrents again, it is not in the same class. 
  I load all my movies onto an SD card, plug it straight into the side of my TV.

 It can take as little as ten minutes to download and load onto my USB stick(depending on the format). Much quicker than going to Blockbusters.

[wacko]

I seem to have fairly unconventional tastes, so I've always got much better speeds from the usenet.

[buzzing]

I've heard some big news on the newsgroup front in terms of piracy. It seems all newsgroup services are going to start deleting files deemed copyright protected bar Astraweb. Some sort of thing they've all signed up to, it's concerning for me because I'm on giganews lol! Was thinking of switching to Astraweb this has just made it easier for me.

I hate binsearch but on the odd occasion i have to use it. So many fake files and viruses put on there, the most annoying ones are the password protected ones that arent labelled as password protected

That's not good for those that use the service

[blert596]

I've come across sometng a bit strange that I dont fully understand.

I've been trying to download a documentary that I can only find a single NZB for. I'm on newshosting and I can find the rars on there. I'm also on virgin but it doesnt have them on there.

However when I download them some of the rars just stop downloading at various percentage complete. The rest of the rars download OK. I've tried it a few times now and it is different rars each time that decide to not complete. Sometimes rar 2 will stop. I dl the nzb again and the this time rar 2 will complete but rar 4 may not.

I've downloaded to various folders and managed to get all the rars and Pars finished, but extracting just gives me corrupt errors. On the NZB Matrix forum you cant request reloads.

Any ideas how I can try and find elsewhere apart fromhaving to pay to go on another server? The documentary is called Sniper School.

Ta

[Kashinoda]

I've come across sometng a bit strange that I dont fully understand.

I've been trying to download a documentary that I can only find a single NZB for. I'm on newshosting and I can find the rars on there. I'm also on virgin but it doesnt have them on there.

However when I download them some of the rars just stop downloading at various percentage complete. The rest of the rars download OK. I've tried it a few times now and it is different rars each time that decide to not complete. Sometimes rar 2 will stop. I dl the nzb again and the this time rar 2 will complete but rar 4 may not.

I've downloaded to various folders and managed to get all the rars and Pars finished, but extracting just gives me corrupt errors. On the NZB Matrix forum you cant request reloads.

Any ideas how I can try and find elsewhere apart fromhaving to pay to go on another server? The documentary is called Sniper School.

Ta

I've PMed you a link for the Sniper School NZB I found on NZBmatrix.

What I would advise though, is getting a backup server. You buy these in one off blocks of say, 10GB. When you have a download and it has missing parts, your client uses the backup server to collect the missing parts and finish your download.

http://blocknews.net/ grab 10GB from, cost $4.50 and will last you a year or so easy (the account doesn't expire). Blocknews has fantastic completion and retention, when I have files with missing parts on Astraweb it always has the remainder.

In Newsleecher add the server and on the advanced settings select it to have priority 2 rather than the default 1, not sure how you set it up on other clients but it'll be something along those lines.