Do you still Torrent?

[TFMF]

Random poll for you all...

Do you still find yourself with uTorrent or Vuze or some other bittorrent client running 24/7? Or have you stopped torrenting completely? Do you find yourself streaming a lot of your content now instead? Do you only torrent when you really need to? Do you buy stuff now? Do you hate all these "Do you" questions?

I for one rarely torrent now, unless there's the odd song or album I want to download. I hardly even watch TV anymore (Except Dexter!). Over the past 2 years, I've been buying a lot of DVDs rather than downloading the episodes, but that's maybe just because I have the money to spare...

What about you?

[motoxjesse]

Well i don't have money to spare, like some people ^^, buuuuut since i picked up this extra job working weekends at a pawn shop, im buying more movies now vs downloading.........no time to download anymore really....or just lazy

[maybrick]

Technically, no I don't. I use magnet links. But to better answer your question, I don't download nearly as much stuff as I did in the beginning 5 or 6 years ago. I never download movies or music anymore (except in the VERY rare instances that I really can't find them for sale legitimately). I use magnet links strictly for about a handful of recent programs which I inevitably buy when the box sets come out anyways. This week or so the only two I'll be downloading are Little Mosque on The Prairie and Kids in the Hall: Death Comes To Town (neither of which are airing in the US so far as I know). Both of those series will be over before Supernatural and Smallville come back from break, and a little later on it'll be Doctor Who and Ashes To Ashes. I hardly consider myself an egregious copyright offender in comparison to a lot of folks.

[USWhoFan]

Torrent? What's that? Never heard that term on this site before.

But seriously, I only torrent TV shows I don't get in the US when I want to see them, IE: Doctor Who, but nearly 100% of the time I purchase those shows once available on DVD.
No actually 100% of the time, I own every single episode of Doctor Who that's available, or has been available for purchase on either DVD or VHS. Or both.

[vystral]

Nice try, MPAA.
I've moved on to usenet. Better speeds and much more reliable. Occasionally, there might be something I can't find on usenet. In that case, I use magnet links.

[maybrick]

What is Usenet?

[MacPicard]

I use a bittorrent client maybe once a month but more like once every three months, especially now that they are a lot of streaming websites for the shows I like, I just download from there as they offer it in divx formats. I tried usenet but didnt feel like paying the subscription; for most music I just buy it via lala, amazon or itunes and when a series I like comes out on dvd I will buy that format too.       

[vystral]

You get what you pay for when it comes to usenet. $14/mo gets me unlimited downloads at a constant 25Mbps speed. It's not for the feint of heart, though. Took me a while to get to a point where it's faster for me to find something on usenet and download it than on bittorrent.

[motoxjesse]

You get what you pay for when it comes to usenet. $14/mo gets me unlimited downloads at a constant 25Mbps speed. It's not for the feint of heart, though. Took me a while to get to a point where it's faster for me to find something on usenet and download it than on bittorrent.

are your uploads faster as well??

[hayden]

You get what you pay for when it comes to usenet. $14/mo gets me unlimited downloads at a constant 25Mbps speed. It's not for the feint of heart, though. Took me a while to get to a point where it's faster for me to find something on usenet and download it than on bittorrent.

What speeds do u actualy download at on that? do u ever reach 1mb/s?

I actually still torrent the net to hell. Private trackers = 

I can see where torrents are inevitably going to go though, so i have been investigating into other means of piracy. haha. magnet links are much the same as torrents IMO, so i've given them a pass for now. Recently however, ive been doing alot of streaming... Mainly because im not at home atm, being in the UK and all. cant complain really. lol.

But quiet private networks seem to be the safest option, ive been looking into irc and ftp's on the side, although alot of work would be involved in either one with providing uploads and what not..

[vystral]

My internet connection is 25 Mbps (megabit). It is the nature of Usenet that it utilizes all of your bandwidth. That translates to a constant 1.5 MBps (megabyte) down. Uploading is not an issue. You don't connect to peers when you download from Usenet, you download straight from the server. Uploading is not necessary.

I made a little download calculator (http://ericadam.net/flash/calc.html) to figure out how long things take to download. A typical DVD image (around 4.7 GB) takes 51.34 minutes from Usenet.

[motoxjesse]

A typical DVD image (around 4.7 GB) takes 51.34 minutes from Usenet.

Woh! I wish! would take me at best one day, maybe one and a bit!

[vystral]

That's a DVD rip (700 MB) in just under 8 minutes!

**nitescifi forum does not condone piracy**
 

[Amnot Borg]

That's a DVD rip (700 MB) in just under 8 minutes!

**nitescifi forum does not condone piracy**
 

or a CD in the same time.

[hayden]

That sounds pretty decent, especially with the no upoads. lol. The only downside to a private tracker is that i have to keep my DL:UL ratio up, it has to be atleast 1:1.