How to Download Movies From Usenet
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Usenet occasionally comes up when talking about piracy, but most people really don’t know what it is or what it does. We won’t explain technically what it is, but here it is in layman’s terms: Think of Usenet as a big, unregulated, uncontrollable message board in the sky where damn near EVERYTHING IS AVAILABLE for those who know how to get at it.
The key difference with Usenet is that users can attach files to their messages. That’s the gist of it, at least. And since you can attach a file to a message you can, conceivably, attach many files to many messages. That’s what people do. You’ll find these file-laden posts on something called binary groups. And that’s where the piracy aspect comes into play. Literally thousands of groups devoted to literally thousands of categories, each one filled with all sorts of pirated content. Entire albums, entire movies, entire video games—getting 0day DreamCast games back in the day was top-notch—et cetera. Basically, Usenet rules and is what all the cool kids use. Hopefully you’ll be able to use it, too, after this.
Before you can downloads gigs upon gigs of premium content, you’ll need two things to access Usenet: access to a Usenet server and a newsreader. Like I said, Usenet can be thought of as a giant message board, but one that you need permission to access. Some ISPs give you access to a Usenet server as part of your monthly Internet bill, many so not because the very few people who know how to use it eat up most of the bandwidth. If your ISP doesn’t have usenet access then you can get it from a 3rd party commercial company. It’s not that expensive when you think about what you’re getting.
There’s a few big, commercial Usenet providers. Some of the popular ones are Giganews, Easynews and News Hosting. We recommend News Hosting because that’s what we use, and for only $14.95/month for “all-you-can-eat” it’s a great deal!
What you’re paying for when you subscribe to these services—it’s like $20-$25 per month for unlimited downloads—is access to their Usenet server. Once you have access to a server, either via your ISP or one of the commercial guys, you’ll have access to the files. Now you’ll need a news reader. Wikipedia has a giant list of news readers, but here’s two right off the bat. If you use a Mac, get Unison … outstanding. Windows users should get Grabit or NewsBin Pro.
- Setup
Type something like “Giganews” or “RoadRuner” for the description (it doesn’t matter), then the server address in the appropriate field. The server address can be found deep inside you’re ISP’s Web site or (usually) in the “welcome aboard” e-mail that the commercial guys will send you. If you’re using an ISP’s server odds are you won’t have to input a username or password. For the commercial ones, yes, use the username/password either you picked or what they gave you. That might vary from service to service. Port 119 for the win.
Somewhere around the server settings you’ll want to set how many headers you want to download. (Think of headers as the individual messages. They’re not really, but this isn’t being posted in alt.technical-nonsense, now is it?) Our connection is pretty damn fast so we have it set to download 5 million headers. Yes, 5M. You’ll want to set this number pretty high in order to have access to as many files as possible, NZBs notwithstanding. We’ll address NZBs in a minute.
OK, so your newsreader is configured.
Now you’re ready to party.
Real men browse Usenet groups manually. What I usually do now is choose a group that interests me, like, say, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.dance and look through it at my leisure. Oh look, a new Markus Schultz remix. Downloaded. Oh wow, this week’s Trance Around the World. Downloaded. (Yes, I know the pics don’t match. Creative license and all.) And so on. This method of downloading from Usenet takes a while because you have to wait for all the headers to load and then you have to sift through the material on your own. Again, that’s why I do, but I have all the time in the world to kill. For those with less time on their hands, NZB files are the way to go.
- NZB Files
NZB files are metadata that simply tell your newsreader where on the Usenet sever (what group, what’s the exact file name, etc.) the files are. It’s sorta like a Torrent file. There’s no data there, just a pointer in the right direction. NZB files are created magically by Web sites. There is NZBIndex.nl (popular because it’s free) but Newzbin.com is the original and best (for search and retrieval) .. however it does cost 60 cents per week ($2.40/month). From there, you’d browse their listings like you would any Torrent site. Look—someone posted No Country for Old Men in the high-def group. Grab the NZB file then double click it and you’ll be downloading as soon as your newsreader launches.
Now full-length movies are quite large in size, so groups that upload these movies to usenet typically split files up into rar files. Please tell me you know how to use those. A lot of time, you’ll also find Par files. Should anything happen to your files while they’re being downloaded (or maybe they were posted corruptly to begin with), the Par files will repair them. To use the PAR files you need MacPar Deluxe, and QuickPar (windows).
That’s a quick little primer on Usenet. Google around for more information.
Hmm, what else? Oh, key groups to keep an eye on.
• alt.binaries.sounds.complete_cd
• alt.biaries.cd.image
• alt.binaries.divx
• alt.binaries.hdtv.x264 (high-def movie rips)
(BitTorrent users should know that pretty much all the scene stuff that you find on your go-to Web site is on Usenet several hours beforehand)
