Use Your XBOX 360 to Download Torrents, Extract RARs and Watch Movies

May 28, 2008 by sharky

This tutorial will show you how to set up your XBOX 360 to download torrents, automatically extract the RAR files and stream (link) the video files to your XBOX from your PC. You’ll also be able to browse your private tracker and control the torrents on your PC through µTorrent, all from the comfort of your couch and your XBOX 360. You will require:

• An XBOX 360

• Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition) or Windows Vista with Media Center.

• PC Software:

  • 1. MCE Browser — A plugin for Microsoft Windows Media Center which allows you surf the Internet using a Media Center remote control.
  • 2. AutoUnpack — A freeware utility to download and extract compressed files, similar to WinRAR or 7-Zip. The main difference is that AutoUnpack can be set up to monitor a specified folder every couple of minutes for new archives and automatically unpack them to a set folder.
  • 3. µTorrent

Strategies for getting Invites to Private Trackers - Invite Forums

May 27, 2008 by sharky

Looking for an invitation to a private tracker? Personally speaking, your best bet is through invite trading forums. Free invite "giveaways" to great trackers are bountiful - although the competition is fierce. Invite-givers are selective to whom they’ll provide invites to, so you’ll want to be properly prepared. Here’s the Do’s & Don’ts for requesting invites:

Private Trackers’ Invite Systems - When and How

May 26, 2008 by sharky

Ever wanted to know why it’s so hard to get invited to some private trackers? Ever wonder when and how a private tracker decides to give invites to its members?

Each site gives out invites to qualifying members who meet a set of positive criteria for the tracker - be it a good share-ratio, or uploaded GB, or both - and these conditions vary greatly from site to site. Obviously some are much more stringent than others; and some down-right just want money for them. Here’s a compilation of what each private tracker requires before issuing out invites. Maybe now you’ll understand why it’s so difficult to get into ScT.

New Torrent Sites (and Ones We’ve Missed)

May 23, 2008 by sharky

This is a compilation of 150+ private torrent sites that we haven’t listed anywhere else on FileShareFreak. Some of these sites leave a lot to be desired, and some are great - we can’t believe they’ve been overlooked. There’s even a few that belong in the Top 300 ranked BitTorrent sites.

Many of these are new torrent sites, but a few of them are older and somehow managed to slip under our radar. This article is now ‘closed’ - all new sites are now being added to the ‘Newest Private Trackers’ post.

30 Tips to Improve Your Sharing Ratio (on Music Trackers)

May 21, 2008 by sharky

(Most of this guide was posted at OiNK.cd and presently resides in the Waffles forums, but these tips pertain to just about any private music tracker).

Tip #1A — Freeleech. Ah, freeleech - the magical elixir to bad ratios. Most trackers have some form of freeleech, be it on selected types of torrents, or for special time periods (holidays, site milestones, etc.). Either way, become very interested in freeleech. And we mean interested! Download everything you can - fill up your seedbox (if you have one) and rotate the torrents, but keep it full. Also be sure to fill up your home BitTorrent client, as well. You want to complete as many torrents as you can in the freeleech timeframe - some sites will have ‘freeleech weekends’ or other short promotions. You should save your completed downloads - then, once freeleech is over, you can (re)seed those torrents and completed files for free upload ratio, during non-freeleech times (whenever you want).

Waffles.fm versus What.cd - Is There Really a Winner?

May 19, 2008 by sharky

It’s been almost 7 months since OiNK suddenly vanished from the music scene, and the smoke is beginning to clear on who is the winner - music lovers! Waffles and What are the likely candidates to unofficially fill OiNK’s shoes, and both have aptly filled the vacant music niche. And then some. So how do these two stack up against each other? Is there a best music tracker? We put ‘em Tête-à-Tête to find out.

Other contenders like Libble and STMusic have equally found a growing share of the market among music enthusiasts, and should not be overlooked. They possess two things that What and Waffles don’t: First; they’re fairly easy to get into, and second; you’ll be able to maintain a good sharing ratio (and thus keep the account).

We’ve put together a collection of stats and criteria used to distinguish the various qualities of four major music trackers. UPDATE: All statistics were collected ‘live’ from each tracker on Sept 23, 2008.

What.cd - The Next OiNK.cd?

May 17, 2008 by sharky

What.cd is one of the main music trackers (along with Waffles.fm) to come after the demise of OiNK.cd. With over 163,000 torrents (130K active) and 48,000+ members, there’s sure to be something for every music lover. What is visually appealing, the forums are active, and overall it’s a good community. Some consider it to be the same or even better than Waffles.

What.cd is quite relaxed on the minimum ratio requirement (0.4), and it’s not too difficult to find an invite to get into this great music tracker. They’ve recently upgraded the codebase (named "Gazelle") which implements a variety of revolutionary features; including increased speed, a wonderful ‘tagging system’ for music releases, and advanced browsing / searching functionality.

Featured Music Tracker - Waffles.fm

May 15, 2008 by sharky

After the demise of OiNK.cd, 180,000 music-lovers were saddened and left in turmoil - but not for very long. One thing’s certain: There are more choices for music than ever before - while some will attest that none come close to offering what OiNK did; others will say that the BitTorrent music scene is only now beginning to blossom. Numerous contenders that have risen out of the ashes, and two stand apart from the rest - What.cd and Waffles.fm. Both bring in huge traffic and have almost identical Alexa rankings (12,479 for Waffles and 12,660 for What.cd).

Whether Waffles is dubbed the new king of music is up for debate - BitTorrent users can’t seem to agree. Personally speaking, Waffles is by far the most aesthetically pleasing music tracker, and backs it up with an enormous selection & rich features. For those of you who’ve not seen inside Waffles.fm - let this be all the more reason to find an invitation. This is how music should be done!

Seedbox Ratio Building on Elite Private Trackers

May 14, 2008 by sharky

If you’ve already got an account at a great private tracker such as ScT or BitMeTV, then we don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to maintain a good sharing ratio. Everyone jumps on the recent additions, and a 50 : 50 S/L torrent quickly turns into 98 : 2. Getting into a fresh swarm is crucial and a seedbox can help, but there’s also another way — Why not just seed a torrent that you’ve already downloaded?

We’ve already discussed this same tip for µTorrent, but this is done with a twist for seedbox owners.

Seeding a Torrent to a Different Tracker

It works like this: You need two private tracker accounts. Download a torrent to your seedbox from a private tracker that you have a good sharing ratio at (or, one that is easy to upload to) and seed the finished files to a more difficult-to-seed tracker. This way you’re not incurring any download stats against your ratio, only the upload ratio will increase. Simply upload the new torrent, making sure the torrent name is the same.

TehConnection - A Colossal Movie Tracker Soon To Launch

May 12, 2008 by sharky

With the huge influx and availability of torrent ‘templates’, new BitTorrent sites are opening shop all the time. Their ease-of-use now makes it possible for virtually anyone to create a torrent website in as little as 30 minutes. Thus, rarely does a new tracker join the BT scene that really stands out - although we think we’ve found the next big thing. TehConnection will be that tracker that everyone wants into.

What the private BitTorrent scene is missing is a good, large-scale tracker that focuses solely on movies, specifically HD releases. If you can see into our crystal ball, TehConnection will fill that niche market as a dedicated movie tracker of monumental scale.

UPDATE: July 13/08 They now have almost 11,000 users (out of a 15,000 limit) with 1,750 torrents.

“OiNK For Movies”

Billed as the next “Oink for Movies”, TehConnection is striving to become a colossal tracker in the style of OiNK. Here’s a quote from the TC admin team:

RSS Downloading for Your TorrentFlux Seedbox

May 10, 2008 by sharky

With some elite trackers it’s not enough anymore to just have a seedbox if you want to do some serious ratio building. While it will give you an distinct advantage over non-seedbox users, it seems like all the users on some of the über-elite sites have seedboxes now - as in the case with ScT.

Professional seeders (if I may call them that) know where the real uploading action is - and that’s RSS downloading. If you can get into a torrent early enough, you’ll be in the group that’s supplying data to everyone else who comes into the torrent after you. To oversimplify it, time matters: Every second counts in a fresh swarm. You’ll upload more data in the first 30 minutes than you will in the following 6 hours. And after that you may as well just delete the seeding torrent.

RSS downloading works like this: You hook your seedbox into the direct download feed of a private tracker, and it automatically downloads the torrents as they roll in. You won’t even have to visit the website! This guide not only shows how to implement the RSS feature into your TorrentFlux seedbox, but also how to add RSS parsing to filter the results to show only what you want it to.

Firefox Addons / Extensions for TorrentFlux

May 09, 2008 by sharky

Here are three addons for Firefox that assist in managing your TorrentFlux seedbox. DownThemAll - a simultaneous download manager; FireFTP - FTP inside of Firefox; and TorrentFlux Add - a seedbox extension for URL downloading.

DownloadThemAll

The DownThemAll extension for Firefox will allow you to pause & resume downloads when downloading to your PC from your seedbox, and it also supports the dividing of files into multiple parts to be downloaded simultaneously, therefore increasing your overall speed.

DownThemAll is great for individual RAR files. Here’s how it works:

TorrentFlux - Adding Torrents From A Private Tracker URL

May 08, 2008 by sharky

In TorrentFlux, you may have noticed that adding torrents by URL doesn’t usually work; at least not with private trackers. Don’t worry - TorrentFlux isn’t to blame. This is a security measure implemented by the private site, and helps protect against passkey theft and other issues. Even if you supplied a proper URL (with your passkey in it), it likely still won’t work. The solution? - You need to add the private tracker to TorrentFlux through the "Cookie Management" feature.

Quickstart Guide to TorrentFlux - 2. Downloading Your Files

May 07, 2008 by sharky

What else is a seedbox good for besides seeding your torrents to build obnoxiously high sharing ratios? Well, for starters, you can also download the finished files to your PC. The bandwidth you consume during this transfer will not be counted against your account, so feel free to actually use what you’ve been happily seeding.

Downloading Your Finished Files

In this tutorial we explore two ways to get those finished torrents to your PC - via HTTP & FTP. A great thing about a seedbox is that when files are downloaded to your computer, the traffic is not classified as "P2P Traffic" by your evil traffic-shaping ISP. Download rates are hampered only by your (maxxed out) Internet connection and by the seedbox provider’s throughput itself.

Quickstart Guide to TorrentFlux - 1. Adding / Managing Torrents

May 06, 2008 by sharky

Here is a basic tutorial designed as a “quick start” to get you going straight away, once you’ve signed up for a TorrentFlux seedbox account. By no means is this the end-all of TorrentFlux guides, and the b4rt forums offers much more advanced documentation.

Part I - Adding & Managing Torrents

The entire premise of setting up a seedbox is to upload, or seed. Which is probably why they don’t call them leechboxes. In this tutorial we’ll explain the basics on how to add torrents, start-stop jobs and run transfers, and change (tweak) your seedbox settings to maximize performance. If you’ve figured out the general ins-and-outs of a BitTorrent client such as µTorrent or Azureus, then the transition to the TorrentFlux interface is simplistic.

Review and Comparison of TorrentFlux Hosting Services

May 04, 2008 by sharky

With the increasing popularity of seedboxes, more and more Seedbox Hosts are incorporating TorrentFlux pre-configured into their plans. Here’s a list of providers that specifically offer TorrentFlux hosting accounts. Services range from $2 to $200, depending on options.

NOTE: We’ve updated this article (Jan. 17/09), and added some new services to the list.

Seedboxes with TorrentFlux Hosting

May 03, 2008 by sharky

In layman’s terms, a Seedbox is simply a rental server which replaces your PC to download / upload files in very high bandwidth in both directions, and you can download the finished files back to your home PC using FTP or HTTP. Seedboxes are quickly becoming requisite to maintaining a good sharing ratio on many of the elite private trackers, and TorrentFlux (b4rt) is the preferred seedbox GUI / BitTorrent client in use today.

TorrentFlux is extremely versatile, user-friendly, and intuitive - not to mention simple to use. All torrents are easily managed in a web-based environment, from any computer. The question is - are you able to do it yourself; or is it better off to just opt for a TorrentFlux Hosting Company?

10 Reasons Why You Need a Seedbox

May 01, 2008 by sharky

So, you’ve come to your senses and decided to give mininova the slip and get yourself a private BitTorrent account. Good! How about a really great private account? Even better. If you’ve managed to squeeze yourself into an über-elite private BT tracker (such as ScT, BitMeTV or iTS), the first thing you’re gonna notice is an almost complete lack of ability to upload. Why is that? Well, you have a handicap: You don’t have a seedbox. Unfortunately, it also means your days on that l33t tracker are likely numbered. Without a good sharing ratio, the account will get pruned. The solution? Set up a seedbox.

A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server used explicitly for torrent transfers; more specifically - for uploading (seeding) at high rates. With a seedbox you’ll be able to manage your torrents through a browser from anywhere, anytime. Here’s 10 reasons for the advantages of using a seedbox over conventional home-based BitTorrent transfers: