Specialized Private BitTorrent Websites - TV Trackers

April 11, 2008 by sharky

Television torrents are unquestionably the most popular genre of torrent — just take a look at the Top Ten Most Downloaded Torrents listed by mininova.org; 9 of them are TV episodes. TV torrents bring in big traffic, and remain the largest staple of new material for public BitTorrent trackers.

This notoriety has not gone unrecognized by private BitTorrent websites - all ‘general’ sites offer a robust selection of fresh TV torrents to round out their content. Private trackers are advantageous for TV releases for a variety of reasons:

— UNPARALLELED SPEED:With a private tracker, you’ll be able to download an episode of ‘Lost’ or ‘Heroes’ in less time than it takes to watch it.

— PRE-TIMES:Often a torrent is available in a matter of minutes after the original airing. Many sites offer a daily TV timetable, and members can expect these torrents to arrive on the site moments after the show ends.

— SELECTION:Private sites offer a superior selection to public trackers. Content is well-organized, and torrenters often have greater choices in formats (HDTV, x264, XviD). Full seasons are commonplace.

— NO DUPLICATE TORRENTS:When searching for specific popular TV episode on a public BT site, for example: “Heroes Season 1 Episode 19 (S01E19)”, unfortunately there’s a huge selection of results to choose from, and that makes it near impossible to pin down a good release. Private sites solve this problem quite handily - they offer just one torrent for each episode. This way you’ll be assured to get the best quality torrent each and every time, with little guesswork.

Specialized Private BitTorrent Websites - eLearning / eBooks

April 08, 2008 by sharky

If you’ve never poked your cursor inside a private eBook or e-Learning BitTorrent website before, you’d probably be awestruck by the sheer magnitude of content that these trackers contain. Anything and everything that has ever been written, typed, documented, taught, published, drawn, painted, penned, or even photographed can be found. Categories are numerous and plentiful; content is staggeringly vast; media exists in every known digitized format available. A good eBook / e-Learning tracker makes Wikipedia look like a comic book.

There’s little speculation as to why students, professionals, writers, designers, tradespeople (and anyone else) are clambering to get into these private sites. Hey, we all know books aren’t cheap - especially medical / science journals, University textbooks and trades/ technical/ law literature. Courtesy of textbooktorrents, here’s an example of what one can expect to find on the inside of a specialized e-Learning tracker:

Bit Che - Software for Torrent Searching

April 07, 2008 by sharky

Rarely does a piece of Torrent Search software make our headlines and qualify as newsworthy, let alone worth writing about. However, Bit Che is not your run-of-the-mill torrent search software.

So what separates Bit Che from the rest of the pack? For starters, it allows for private BitTorrent site searching (provided you have accounts to them). This is a monumental step forward in torrent searching development. Bit Che is also a great tool for:

Searching for hard-to-find torrents - In contrast to torrent meta search websites (that usually limit the querying to the top 10 public sites), Bit Che software implements many more sites in the search, with the ability to add others, and even add your own (for unlimited torrent searching).

Filtering of popular torrents - Torrent data is shown in the results, giving users the ability to quickly gauge what torrents are likely the best sources for a popular release.

BitTorrent Client Error Messages (Tracker Errors)

April 06, 2008 by sharky

When attempting to troubleshoot BitTorrent problems, there are a zillion factors that need to be considered. Many issues involve the BT client configuration, ports and connectivity. Other errors are rooted in the BT tracker, bad ISP, faulty torrents, or software incompatibility issues. Put all this together and you’ve got endless possibilities for errors, dropped connections and hair-pulling frustration.

Here’s a list of some of the most common BitTorrent error messages, what they mean, and how to fix them.

Using ‘C4C Firefox Extension’ to find Open Torrent Sites

April 04, 2008 by sharky

The ‘Check4Change’ (aka…C4C) Firefox Extension is yet another method to find private BitTorrent sites that are open to new signups.

Advantages: C4C can work with text on signup pages that are manually loaded into the browser that ‘Open Registrations Checker’ can’t access.

Disadvantages: The browser (or tab) cannot be closed, or else the service stops running on it.

How It Works:

C4C checks a loaded Firefox webpage (or tab) for any information that may have changed on the page. It works like this: Highlighted text is monitored by Check4Change, and any changes to it are then reported back to you. Pages/tabs are reloaded at chosen time intervals - if C4C notices any changes to the selected text, a notification message will appear in the taskbar.

The REAL way to get Private Tracker Invites

April 03, 2008 by sharky

Nevermind anything I’ve ever said before about getting private torrent invites. This takes the cake.

Looking for good private tracker invites, with no strings attached? Follow this. I received two in the same night - FTS and BitMe.

www.trackereactor.com is constantly giving away free invites to some of the best private BitTorrent sites - all for just hanging around. Follow these tips and I personally guarantee that you will get a good invite in the same day.

Open Letter to Rogers.ca: Come Pick up Your Equipment

April 02, 2008 by sharky

By nature, I’m not a whiner about the little things in life. And even if I was, I most certainly wouldn’t take it out on my helpless website. But I’m pissed - and what better way get a message across than to post it on my own site. However, much to the dismay of my blog, I’ll make an exception.

Rogers Canada - Changes to their TOS

Rogers’ customers were in for a shock this week when letters arrived across the country in reference to changes in their Terms of Service.

Not only have they jacked up the price of my Internet service by $2 a month starting in March, but now they’ve put a cap on monthly bandwidth, as well. The new limit is 95 GB per month, with an additional $1.50 per GB. This is not good news to P2P file sharers on Rogers. Not into the P2P scene? No matter, this is gonna hurt you, too! You’ll have to start being careful about how much YouTube you watch and streaming audio you listen to. All those things add up fast!

Tips to Optimize uTorrent Download Speeds

April 02, 2008 by sharky

Many torrenters aren’t aware of this, but by default µTorrent functions on some very uncharitable out-of-the-box settings. This is to accommodate users who have a slow Internet connection (dialup) or have a small TCP limit. Or perhaps they’re just an evil crew that wants to download faster than you! Whatever the motives, here’s how to get µTorrent running in tip-top shape.

Before we begin, you’ll need the latest stable version of µTorrent. Most private trackers are moving away from allowing any version that is not 1.7.7 or 1.8.x (but be sure to check their FAQ for more info), and most likely beta versions are also banned. Got it? Great!

IP Blocking for uTorrent in Windows XP & Vista

April 01, 2008 by sharky

For years now, Anti-P2P organizations have been polluting BitTorrent with fake peers and bogus torrent files, which send out fake or corrupt data in order to slow down file transfers and/or log the IP addresses of users who ’share’ the torrent. This is typically rampant on a communal BitTorrent level through publicly-accessible torrents from popular sites such as ThePirateBay, mininova, Isohunt, et al. Consequences range from those laughable (but sometimes scary) DMCA notices sent from your ISP; cease-and-desist letters; and even worse, pre-litigation letters from any company under the RIAA / MPAA / IFPI “umbrella”.

To significantly reduce your chances of connecting with malicious peers, the integration of IP Blocking is crucial to P2P safety. This can be approached through third-party software, including PeerGuardian2 or Blocklist Manager - but it can also be handled client-side through IP blocklists. µTorrent supports IP blocking at the BitTorrent protocol level - and it’s a great solution for Vista users who don’t yet have the option of using an external program such as PeerGuardian2.

PeerGuardian - IP Blocking for Windows Vista

April 01, 2008 by sharky

The first thing that PeerGuardian users notice when upgrading to Windows Vista is that the old PG2 doesn’t work. That being said, the PhoenixLabs team has been hard-at-work on a Vista solution, and thus far have come up with a working beta-release of PeerGuardian3 (called RC1-Test2).

Installation - Vista users

Download the latest version from http://phrosty.phoenixlabs.org/pg2-rc1/. The current release is “pg2-rc1-test2.exe“. NOTE: This beta release has been tested with all versions of MS Windows, although it is not recommended for anything other than Vista at this point in development. Non-Vista users should ideally opt for a “stable” release from the http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/ page.