I have been out of the loop for over a decade, where do I begin?
Title, I haven't Yo ho ho'd in forever in internet time.. What/where do I need to start again? I'm tired of ads and 3+ streaming services to watch stuff that's interesting. Running windows. Thanks dudes and dudettes.
if you're in Australia ignore all VPN advice. Companies can only come after you for the cost of a single copy of whatever you pirate making it functionally legal here.
Torrents are your best bet for now because they are super easy.
Usenet is a paid service, absolutely worth it but you're paying for at least 2 different services to make it work and setting up a whole bunch of software. Just steer clear of the Arr suite until torrents fail you (and they will)
Please could you elaborate about how qbittorent is a good VPN and why is port forwarding important for torrenting ? I'm kind of confused about those statement…
A bit of topic but why the hell does the champagne wiki reccomend Edge as a browser citing it's AI capabilities? Is this copied directly from MS marketing material?
Edit: I am starting to read through it and there Is so much bad, outdated and just wrong information there:
they recommend to set a DNS level adblocker using an app that isn't supported on the android version the guide is for and completely forget that you can just set the DNS server without any additional app on any modern android version (what is what the provider of the Dns server they recommend reccomends)
they tell you protonVPN doesn't support Torrenting (maybe just bad wording) and recommended mullvad because of that
I don't really want to continue beyond before-you-begin
Edit2:
Uh why is there an extensive article on how to deal with addiction and how to do meditation in the piracy section?
I don't think I should continue any further
Edit3: you can contribute to the wiki by sending markdown files in a discord channel. Wikipedia should switch to this model as well imo
Get Qbittorrent and use it's built-in search engine.
The fully automated gay space answer:
Look into selfhosting - (optional but makes it easier/coler)
Look into Plex (or Emby or Jellyfin) - optional but makes it pretty
These are the apps you'll need:
Radarr - Gets movies
Sonarr - Gets tv shows automatically as they come out
Prowlarr - the thing that does the searching for radarr/sonarr.
Overseerr - Makes it simple to request stuff
Qbittorrent - downloads things
(There is also Lidarr for music and Readarr for books)
If all set up correctly, you simply just request something with Overseerr and it shows up in Plex minutes later with artwork and metadata all pulled in and presented nicely. You can configure the apps to look for specific resolutions/file sizes/formats/etc. TV shows are downloaded as soon as a new episode is released. It's better than any streaming service by leaps and bounds.
Recognize that there may be some costs involved: hard drives, a raspberry pi, VPN/VPS/seedbox, even just electricity.
Get a good VPN and use it for any torrenting you do from home. Nord is not a good VPN. (unless your government doesn’t care or you use a seed box, then do whatever)
Use public torrent trackers if you have to but:
If you have some private torrent tracker accounts from yore, try to get them re-activated. Surprisingly they may have your old info. This will probably require IRC.
If not, look into interviewing with RED, OPS, or MAM to learn the ropes, then use them to get invited into movie/TV/general PTs.
If you don’t like the sound of torrenting look into newsgroups. This will cost money in two ways: a newsgroup account and a news indexer.
Check out the arr suite, especially radarr and sonarr, to automatically get what you are interested in.
Next to what everyone already said let me just mention I also returned recently after being out for like 10 years and the progress is amazing. If you’re willing to selfhost, Servarr is super amazing, my whole family got away from Netflix and I have a huge bullshit free library of stuff to watch.
On a side note I've been using Google to find streaming sites by typing "free full stream" and then the title I want, and scrolling down the search to the DMCA Complaints. They have a lovely list of sites that have your movies and shows, thanks Google!
Is this a community, or is this a circlejerk? I don't think categorizing beginners who don't know where to start as leeches creates the kind of environment people of all knowledge levels want to spend time in. You don't personally have to educate them, but telling them off for asking is pretty rude.
My guy, I am 2 kids deep since I last hit the high seas, I am absolutely lost on what plugins or sites or programs I need to even begin. Maybe be a bit helpful instead of insulting lost people? I'll use the megathread link the other people posted.
I re-hoisted the flag after a decade and two minions myself this year. The old ways still work fine, but there's also a ton of new things to make life easier.
Check out the .arr suite, burn uTorrent and get Qbittorrent and try out Jellyfin.
Feel free to ask me directly if you need some pointers.