I currently have an arr-stack setup on my home server with qBittorrent, which works relatively well. However, I mainly have two issues with it:
- There is very little content available on BitTorrent in my native language (Dutch), not even on private trackers afaik
- There are many torrents which take days to download, or even worse get stuck (hate it when that happens, especially if it’s at 99%)
This got me interested in Usenet.
As for point 1, I found an NZB indexer which seems to have a lot more Dutch content. I still have some questions, however.
- I understand that apart from having access to indexers I’ll also need a Usenet provider. How big are the differences between providers? I can find plans between €2 and €20 per month; does it matter that much which I take, apart from retention rate and download speed? Do all providers host all newsgroups?
- As for point 2, I understand that if content is on a provider’s servers, then you will be able to download it with whatever speed your provider gives you. How much content will I actually be able to find? Why isn’t content constantly taken down?
- Is using a VPN recommended with Usenet?
Edit: deleting most of my comment because it’s a duplicate from the person who answered hours ago, leaving my indexers comment.
Something that you didn’t mention, but needs addressing - indexers. Yes, there are free indexers but they’re often capped at a certain number of grabs per day. Expect to pay for access to these as well - but some have lifetime memberships at a reasonable price. Get more than one and sabnzbd can prioritize by user-assigned weight. (By the way,these are typically what gets hit by content protection/LE). Indexers provide the nzb files that tell you download client where in the providers’ server to find the download bits/bytes.
The *arr stack works wonderfully with Usenet, I think if you go this route, you’ll be surprised how little you have to fall back to torrents.