This is a work in progress. Excuse the mess.

Ok, for a lot of you, downloading your television has become the norm. For a frew of you who're only starting to scratch the surface of this, I wanted to give you some resources as to how to download files posted to Binary Usenet Newsgroups.

It is likey that your provider has a news server. If you have Cox, you have both news.east.cox.net and news.west.cox.net. They'll both allow you UNLIMITED downloads from binary newsgroups, at 50k per connection, with as many as 4 connections (I recommend only using 3 of them, so one can stay free for headers, etc) per server. Cox, unfortunately, only has 3-4 days worth of retention on their larger binary newsgroups.

There are free usenet servers available (http://www.google.com/search?q=free+news+servers). I linked Yottanews (http://www.yottanews.com/freeaccount.php), and I've included pictures on how I've configured my server.

I pay for Easynews (www.easynews.com). They're currently giving me 40 gigs of download a month for $10 and they have 30-day+ retention on their binary groups. It beats the unlimited-3day on Cox, and the 1-gigabyte free you can get through Yottanews.

Since I'm paying for Easynews, and have the others available to me, I configure my news-reader (http://www.newsleecher.com/?id=download) so that Cox (fast but no retention) is first on my list with a priority of 2. [I reserve 1, so I can bump something up for a special needs case download.] Then I have Yottanews' free below that, and, then if nothing is on my free servers, I use my Easynews reserve. [Easynews gigs roll over.]

So, what does all this mean? Television is posted to newsgroups. [Ok, so is everything else, Music, WareZ (complete with a big Z), ponography, movies in every format from every source...] You guys like downloading your television.

This should get you started.

I've also included a ZIPPED NZB file for the Season 1 Episdode 1 BBC Show "Bodies" - something you probably didn't catch on your TV.

Rybit, if you could let us have bigger NZB files, it'd help. A couple of megs even :) [Ok, at least a couple hundred k, instead of 1k]

Done. EasyNews is very nice, especially their web-based tools.

Man. It always amazes me when everything goes in circles.

Nothing's actually gone in circles, from a technology standpoint. Newsgroups have always been rock solid for binary downloads. People just keep flocking to what's new, while things like IRC and USENET and other distributed old-school services keep on running.

I have tried doing this a few times and where I get lost is trying to get all the files that in a particular movie episode, etc, and squishing them back together. Does your reader do this for you?

I've got solid NNTP access from my ISP, but I still find torrents to be much more useful overall. You have to stay on top of the newsgroups so heavily to catch things as they come out, it makes it too inconvenient.

They're dandy though, if you want something that happens to be there.

I'm sorry Pali can you repeat that in english please?

I've got solid NNTP access from my ISP, but I still find torrents to be much more useful overall. You have to stay on top of the newsgroups so heavily to catch things as they come out, it makes it too inconvenient.
Which is why a news service like EasyNews is so great. With 30+ days retention on binary groups, all indexed and searchable, for purposes of "What'd I miss on television," it's all there.

There are just as many NZB agregation sites as their are .torrent sites. Also, with newsgroup access, you're not limited by anything except the bandwidth of your provider(s) and your own bandwidth. Something I often find SEVERELY lacking with .torrent downloads. I've got 5Mbits down at home, and 9Mbytes down at work. I don't have the patience to download something at 20kbits anymore.

Go to one of a dozen .NZB sites and search.

I like EasyNews for the fact that they have excellent web-based searching tools, because searching for stuff on newsgroups is a real pain in the ass. If you don't mind sacrificing a 25% discount on downloaded gigs for using NNTP, you don't even have to use a real newsgroup client for most needs. They offer web-based PAR tools, Zip tools, automatic RAR extraction for AVIs, etc. They have an extremely fast pipe. You can earn 2 gigs a month per idle CPU as well as another 2 for filling out a monthly members survey. Your gigs rollover. I've tried other newsgroups services--and I don't think EasyNews can be beat. They have first-rate customer service; if you're unhappy with their service, they will give you the month for free.

Rybit, no reason to sacrifice the 25% discount. All things in your EasyNews zip queues have NZB files generated for them automatically!

Queue your downloads, but instead of downloading from the ZIP queue, just download the auto-created NZB, then let NewsLeecher (or similar) download it with your FREE servers at a higher priority. That way, you'll download most things from your free server, and EasyNews will make sure they're nice and complete for you :)

In my case, 95% or article parts from 1-4 day old material comes from Cox, then everything else comes from EasyNews. No charge for headers on NNTP also with EasyNews, so you don't burn gigs downloading the headers for a.b.m

Rybit, no reason to sacrifice the 25% discount. All things in your EasyNews zip queues have NZB files generated for them automatically!True, but when I'm at somebody else's place, I'm too lazy to get a newsgroup client installed, configured with my account details for a one-time download ... that's when their web-based tools come in handy!

I'm on the road with work alot and often not home for a week or more at a time. I usually hit the movie groups with grabit http://www.shemes.com/index.php?p=features and hit the Bellsouth servers first (horrid retention).


After a run with smartpar, I hit http://www.usenetserver.com/ for the fills. I prefer a server with a fixed monthly price and unlimited DLs.

Now, since my Apex DVD player died, someone please come out with a 1 click proggie to convert PAL to NTSC. ;)

Well, EasyNews is fixed at $10 and with the rollover, I haven't had it not be unlimited yet. (Especially with the oportunity to earn extra gigs.)

However, someone seems to have lost their disk 4 of WoW, and I don't see how it could hurt to link to where it happens to be on UseNet now, so, if you have 14+ day retention servers available to you, here goes.

PS: Ryb, thanks for the larger limit on NZB files. How about that icon for them now? :)

I found an excellent tutorial/guide to newsgroups. http://www.slyck.com/ng.php?page=1 At least it's helping me, so I thought I'd share.