Astraweb Usenet - Unlimited DSL Package - £7.00 @ Astra Web
Switched from giganews - much cheaper and a better service in my opinion.
Price is dependant on exchange rate. Paypal accepted.
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934 Day Retention
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All Comments (181)
Jump to unread Post a Comment1. Signed up and paid my $11, then jotted down the server and port details etc.
2. Downloaded & installed SABnzbd+ and entered above details (When u run the SABnzbd+ program it runs in the background, you need to open http://localhost:8080/sabnzbd/ to in your browser to show it).
3. Visited NZBclub to search for files
4. Clicked "get NZB" on the file you want and it opens in SABnzbd+
5. The web browser then shows the speed and ETA of your files. When finished it does all the hard work for you, extracts the files from the hundres of .rars and you're done!
Usenet is a bulletin board system which was launched in 1979 as a way for scientists to communicate, essentially it's a public email system. It evolved in to hundreds of thousands of topical interest groups. There are a huge amount of alt.bin groups which offer legal and highly illegal content. Many people who use Usenet aren't actually aware of it's real face, they just use NZB searches and load NZB files in to their usenet client to automate the download. I urge anyone to get hold of a really decent newsreader and check out the real Usenet, I suggest Forte Agent as a good client. However many reading this will just want to download TV shows and possibly illegal content (highly likely). I've used Usenet since 1993, it still is a fantastic source of information and the archives go back to around 1981. Sadly for many of you, you won't see the real Usenet,
One warning if you decide to see the real Usenet in its intended format (as a massive list of groups, each contaning many headers (messages/content)), you may be offended by the very nature of some of the groups which offer the sickest content known to man, car crashes, child porn, bestiality etc. However most groups are self explanatory and you aren't likely to venture in to any unwittingly, whatever your vice you'll find it on Usenet
You didn't get my point which is considering the age of Usenet and its content for the past 3 decades, there isn't a need to worry. Usenet is not a closed club, it contains literally hundreds of thousands of newsgroups, it is very well known, no where near as much as P2P, but it won't be getting clamped down on, by its very nature it is an open system. Decent access to Usenet is via commercial providers, who are operating a business, there is plenty of competition, there is unlikely to be a massive hike in prices enforced by the Government or the RIAA for example.
Believe it's shot up since though. Ive got it at price in perp.
newsdemon are absolute rubbish if u use over a certain amount of bandwidth you have to keep contacting them to "reset your account", Was with them for a couple of years. Astraweb are a premium provider at pretty good prices. The news rover software newsdemon offer you is rubbish too. Give newsleecher a go, you won't go back to that antiquated buggy piece of crap that is news rover...
I swore by both newsdemon and news rover for a long time until I forced myself to get used to another program you won't regret it,. Also if you are a pirating scoundrel which anyone who pays for a usenet sub must be, you can get fully working versions of the latest finsl newsleecher with working supersearch for free. So no need to stay with newsdemon on that premise.
Seriously do yourself a favour you won't regret it mate.
I download on average 250GB each month @ a steady 20MB/s on Newsdemon and have never had a problem... I did however have an issue with Astraweb topping out at 15MB/s. I would say both are good providers.
Do you require a bank account linked for direct debit or is it charged to the debit/credit card monthly through Paypal?
Currently using a BlockNews (no problems), considering Astraweb for primary use with the block account for backup block filling.
http://www.slyck.com/Newsgroups_Guide
This is a good cheap deal but I read comments nearly every day about unfinished binaries on new nzb's with astra. I am with supernews and although the retention is less, its only £6.50 a month and I can max my connection all day every day.Even better, I can dump the nzb's onto my nas and let sabnzbd do all the hard work in the background!
But how long is it before RIAA etc have the right to demand bank details from the usenet companies themselves?
Isn't this an instant easy trail to the person paying for the service? I know they're supposed to delete logs n stuff, but isn't this still risky?
Interested on everyones thoughts....
There are newsgroup servers around that advertise as not logging anything. If anyone like the RIAA turn towards these services i would imagine they would all stop logging, paying for the service is totally legal.
Yes I agree the paying for the service is legal, but the downloading of copyrighted material via those means still isn't. I have used BT in the past, but the potential of getting caught via honeypot seeding is too darn risky nowadays.
So what I am saying is how can we be sure of being 99.9% safe in the use of newsgroup stuff. If someone can convince me I'm in. It's just the holding of my payment details, name & address that puts me off slightly
What evidence do copyright holders have available to them regarding newsgroup access? They only know that the file has been uploaded, they don't know for certain that anyone has downloaded it, let alone who they are. Without being armed with that sort of evidence they simply are not going to get a subpoena to examine a newsgroup providers logs, even if such logs were kept.
And in the highly unlikely event that they do manage to acquire incontrovertible proof that you'd infringed their copyright, as you haven't uploaded anything they can only possibly sue you for your infringement not anybody else's. The worst that could happen is a single strike out of the three you get under the digital economy act.
Close enough to 99.9% safe for you, erroll? If not you could always take steps to anonymise your payment...
Much better, rapidshare files get removed too easily and relies on them be re-upped. Newsgroups Servers keep everything uploaded for whatever the retention is. You sign up for a newsgroup on their website at a monthly fee. Once you have your subscription setup you need to download a newsreader program that will manage all your downloads, I personally prefer Grabit but different people have different preferences. Once you've entered your newsgroup account details into the program the easiest way to go about finding files is to use a newsgroup search engine for what are called NZB's these files instruct the program what to download. Binsearch is a free search engine but is unfiltered so you need to be careful, there is also NZBmatrix which has been filtered and is a lot more user friendly.
Just sayin. ;)
astraweb + nzbmatrix + unison + imac = geek heaven
Awesome just giving this a go now, thanks for the advice, wanted to switch ages ago but never got round to it but this has prompted me, voted hot now rocking ssl.