watching pirated streaming sucks compared to OG torrent way

Sometimes I’m just too lazy for torrenting because downloading whole 8 seasons when I want to watch series is kinda off. Whenever I give chance to streaming it’s always low quality and sucks. I checked streaming links on reddit’s r/piracy, you know the wiki, year is 2025 and it’s still slow and sucks. Maybe I don’t know good sites. Can you link me up, and what do you think about streaming vs torrent way in general? Thanks guys.

59 comments

Nah, torrenting 8 seasons of a show I want to watch is the way to go.

Feel free to use mine https://jfin.gravitywell.xyz/
Create an account using this invite code: ARRLEM so I know you came from Lemmy
For best results uss a browser or client thar supports HEVC and AV1.
There is jellyseerr for requests, its hooked to both usenet and various private trackers.
- Thank you very much! Unfortunately after confirming the information in the signup dialog, it says "Please wait" and hangs. Is it me?
  Edit: It works on the second try on the computer, thanks again
- thank you!! How can I buy you a coffee?
  
  I suppose the easiest way is probably ko-fi
  There is also librepay and some crypto addresses options listed on the bottom of the main page https://gravitywell.xyz/ if you prefer that.
- Invalid Code :(
  
  oops, I set it to a one time use and someone used it. New one (ARRLEM) should work for everyone now. Valid for 1 month as of this posting.
- OMG, that's an amazing effort. Definitely saving it!
- How does your create account system with invite codes work? Is jellyfin tied to another system for account management?
  
  I'm using WizARR for the invite system, it links directly into jellyfin.

I hate streaming anything unless it's coming from my server.
Bandwidth and storage is expensive, so free streams will usually be heavily compressed and look terrible.

Put first episode on max priority + download sequentially. Go make a cup of tea. First episode is ready to stream. Do same to second episode before you start watching the first and Robert is your father's brother (Bob's your uncle).

After 20 years of pirating the slow way (manual searching and torrenting), I invested the time to setup a proper *arrr flow into Plex, Ombi for auto adding plex watchlist to the dl queue, and Usenet indexes and access + nzbget.
Now I can search for a movie in the plex app, if I don’t have it I add it to my watchlist, and it sends me a notification 5 mins later that it’s available.
I did all that about 6 years ago and it’s been so nice. Well worth the time to setup. I forgot how painful the manual way is.
- You forgot the number one rule about the usenet: you don't talk about the usenet.
  
  The most talked about thing on Usenet? That's right: Usenet.
- is there a good guide you followed?
  
  https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26287096
  Gotchu fam'
  
  about what

https://hydrahd.sh/
This is the best site I've come across, but it's still not perfect.
My advice is to keep spending time getting experience using free streaming services. Since very few are like kissanime/cartoon (been around forever, haven't changed layout), if you go awhile without using them then it's like having to relearn what to do.
This is unfortunate, but the more people we have looking at them the better they should be.
- Thanks this is perfect

You can download a torrent for a full season or full series, and only download like the first three episodes, or the first season. And then if you like it, download more of the torrent.
Nobody is making you download all 8 seasons.
Or if you want to anyway, but don't want to wait for the whole thing to finish download, most torrent clients let you set priority for individual files, and you can set the first couple episodes to "maximum" and start watching right away while the rest download.

I exclusively stream torrents. It's almost flawless for me. The trick is you need a paid service like real debrid to get access to the good links. If you are only searching free ones, it's going to be low quality, and selection sucks. I use RD and Kodi personally, it also allows you to torrent traditionally, too, and without the need of a VPN if your isp is nosey.
- Yep, this is my setup. I did the whole *arr apps, Plex and Usenet setup for years, but hated dealing with storing the files. It also didn’t help when my 8TB drive decided to act up and make files inaccessible.
  Now I stream everything through Stremio with RD+. Works on every device flawlessly.
- fmhy and trying a couple options always worked out for me

downloading whole 8 seasons when I want to watch series is kinda off
You can untick every episode except the first few when you download.
You can also download a torrent sequentially and play it while it's downlading but it's fiddly.

Yeah I've tried it a couple times and don't see the appeal. It's like watching nothing but cam copies except half the time the files won't load. I don't understand how streaming became so popular.
Also set up radarr and sonarr because it makes everything easy.
- I don’t understand how streaming became so popular
  Have you ever found yourself using someone else's PC for some reason and they've got 20 browser toolbars, 3 anti-viruses and no ad blocker, and they've just been using computers that way forever, thinking it's perfectly normal?
  Yea, some people have extremely low standards.
- It’s like watching nothing but cam copies except half the time the files won’t load.
  I dunno what sites you tried but this hasn't been my experience, especially if I'm just going through whatever current season of show XYZ is running. Even recent movies don't generally have cam quality unless you're trying to watch them very close to the release date.
  Sometimes you get broken links or stop and start with load times and in those cases I'll take the time to fire up TPB, but mostly it's been no problem finding decent quality streams that load right away, and that's been true for me for at least 15 years since using shit like icefilms back then.

Can't say Jellyfin sucks
- Oh, but I will. For it to be a fork of enby, it's fucking amazing how bad the androidTV app is in comparison. The media player has improved,but its still way slower then using an external one,which is weird. It also freezes for a solid 5 seconds minimum every time I swap subtitles (while the vlc external player does it on the fly), and it makes me change subtitles every single time I load a chapter. Envy's player lets the user set a preferred subtitle language and it makes an effort to preselect one. Not only that,but you can seal that on a series basis and you can select the subtitle before starting the video on the user interface.
  It has improved since I last tried it and at least it doesn't die while transcoding or whatever, but the difference in performance of the android app/web version to the androifTV app is crazy. It would be better to adapt the android/web version of the app the manage a TV input than make the androidTV app actually useable...
  Besides that its amazing :)
  I rescind most of what I said because I just checked that the android app has TV casting (it didnt last time I checked) and the android app does have the preselecting and the player is waaaay smoother. Its comical that casting is a better user experience then using the native app but whatever.
  
  Tell that the mpv player that is unable to playback non-srt subtitles.
  My issues with playback are very limited and it's usually just the playback device that sucks, can't play the codec or not/bad configured HWA.
  For example don't encode files to x265 4K if you can't decode or transcode x265 at 4K. My (device) experience is Chromecast w/ GoogleTV (AndroidTV), Android and WebPlay.

Check out stremio
- This is what I use. Stremio, Torrentio add-on for Torrent sources, and a bit of tinkering so I don't see the paid options. Works pretty well for single episodes of some shows (for others I download the box set).
  Edit: I mean it works for full shows, but when I really like a show enough I'll have a hard drive copy.

When I was a kid, I didn't even know what torrents are and ended up suffering with all the noise in the videos. Or find some really shitty quality ftp server download.
Luckily, I've since became enlightened and find torrents for everything. I set the first 3 episodes of a series at high priority, it only talkes between 30 minutes to 3 hours (depending on popularity), and then I can start watching, and then set 4, 5, 6 on high priority and once I'm done episode 3, I find that 4 5 6 is already done and the rest are at 90%.
Be a little patient and you get to enjoy higher quality.
And if you have dont much freetime to wait for downloads, you should be pre-choosing a show and have the first few episodes downloaded before your previous one is done watching.
I just use VLC for everything, torrented straight to the device, and video files played locally.

I torrent on my media PC and stream from there.

The only place I’ll stream from is the archive.

if you use streamio then you can choose whatever quality you want

Streaming sites are great to share the spirit of piracy with your friends that do not want to get into any other piracy option. Literally just sending them a link so they dont buy the movie on amazon is always worth it

I'm old but i still think popcorn time was the best solution. P2P streaming.
- Popcorn time and the Torrent plugin for stremio are nice but are leech-central and not sustainable if everyone did that without seeding

Sign up for some debrid service -> profit.
- Yeah Debrid + Stremio and you're set.
  
  This has been working for me for a whilst however if one of the links in the chain goes down at some point then you have nothing to watch. I might even have to talk to my family!
  I’m gonna start considering local server. I remember the good old days of getting up in the middle of the night to check limewire.
  
  what’s the advantage of debird vs just watching the torrentio links on streamio?

OG Megaupload was end of an era when it came to streaming shit for free

You need something like nova player for android

59 comments