Sometimes I’m just too lazy for torrenting because downloading whole 8 seasons when I want to watch series is kinda off. Whenever I give chance to streaming it’s always low quality and sucks. I checked streaming links on reddit’s r/piracy, you know the wiki, year is 2025 and it’s still slow and sucks. Maybe I don’t know good sites. Can you link me up, and what do you think about streaming vs torrent way in general? Thanks guys.

  • Gravitywell@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    Feel free to use mine https://jfin.gravitywell.xyz/

    Create an account using this invite code: ARRLEM so I know you came from Lemmy

    For best results uss a browser or client thar supports HEVC and AV1.

    There is jellyseerr for requests, its hooked to both usenet and various private trackers.

  • malin@thelemmy.club
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    1 day ago

    https://hydrahd.sh/

    This is the best site I’ve come across, but it’s still not perfect.

    My advice is to keep spending time getting experience using free streaming services. Since very few are like kissanime/cartoon (been around forever, haven’t changed layout), if you go awhile without using them then it’s like having to relearn what to do.

    This is unfortunate, but the more people we have looking at them the better they should be.

  • airgapped@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Put first episode on max priority + download sequentially. Go make a cup of tea. First episode is ready to stream. Do same to second episode before you start watching the first and Robert is your father’s brother (Bob’s your uncle).

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    I hate streaming anything unless it’s coming from my server.

    Bandwidth and storage is expensive, so free streams will usually be heavily compressed and look terrible.

  • locuester@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    After 20 years of pirating the slow way (manual searching and torrenting), I invested the time to setup a proper *arrr flow into Plex, Ombi for auto adding plex watchlist to the dl queue, and Usenet indexes and access + nzbget.

    Now I can search for a movie in the plex app, if I don’t have it I add it to my watchlist, and it sends me a notification 5 mins later that it’s available.

    I did all that about 6 years ago and it’s been so nice. Well worth the time to setup. I forgot how painful the manual way is.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    You can download a torrent for a full season or full series, and only download like the first three episodes, or the first season. And then if you like it, download more of the torrent.

    Nobody is making you download all 8 seasons.

    Or if you want to anyway, but don’t want to wait for the whole thing to finish download, most torrent clients let you set priority for individual files, and you can set the first couple episodes to “maximum” and start watching right away while the rest download.

  • unperson [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    downloading whole 8 seasons when I want to watch series is kinda off

    You can untick every episode except the first few when you download.

    You can also download a torrent sequentially and play it while it’s downlading but it’s fiddly.

    • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      13 hours ago

      Oh, but I will. For it to be a fork of enby, it’s fucking amazing how bad the androidTV app is in comparison. The media player has improved,but its still way slower then using an external one,which is weird. It also freezes for a solid 5 seconds minimum every time I swap subtitles (while the vlc external player does it on the fly), and it makes me change subtitles every single time I load a chapter. Envy’s player lets the user set a preferred subtitle language and it makes an effort to preselect one. Not only that,but you can seal that on a series basis and you can select the subtitle before starting the video on the user interface.

      It has improved since I last tried it and at least it doesn’t die while transcoding or whatever, but the difference in performance of the android app/web version to the androifTV app is crazy. It would be better to adapt the android/web version of the app the manage a TV input than make the androidTV app actually useable…

      Besides that its amazing :)

      I rescind most of what I said because I just checked that the android app has TV casting (it didnt last time I checked) and the android app does have the preselecting and the player is waaaay smoother. Its comical that casting is a better user experience then using the native app but whatever.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 hours ago

        Tell that the mpv player that is unable to playback non-srt subtitles.

        My issues with playback are very limited and it’s usually just the playback device that sucks, can’t play the codec or not/bad configured HWA.
        For example don’t encode files to x265 4K if you can’t decode or transcode x265 at 4K. My (device) experience is Chromecast w/ GoogleTV (AndroidTV), Android and WebPlay.

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          12 hours ago

          When you say Chromecast, do you mean that you cast the android app to the TV? Because that experience is fine, its the native androidtv app I’m complaining about. And it’s not only the player, the android app is able to select the subtitles on the menu before launching the MPV player. In any case yeah, I’ll test the performance of the android app casting and just do that.

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    I exclusively stream torrents. It’s almost flawless for me. The trick is you need a paid service like real debrid to get access to the good links. If you are only searching free ones, it’s going to be low quality, and selection sucks. I use RD and Kodi personally, it also allows you to torrent traditionally, too, and without the need of a VPN if your isp is nosey.

    • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
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      1 day ago

      Yep, this is my setup. I did the whole *arr apps, Plex and Usenet setup for years, but hated dealing with storing the files. It also didn’t help when my 8TB drive decided to act up and make files inaccessible.

      Now I stream everything through Stremio with RD+. Works on every device flawlessly.

    • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      This is what I use. Stremio, Torrentio add-on for Torrent sources, and a bit of tinkering so I don’t see the paid options. Works pretty well for single episodes of some shows (for others I download the box set).

      Edit: I mean it works for full shows, but when I really like a show enough I’ll have a hard drive copy.

  • punkisundead [they/them]@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    Streaming sites are great to share the spirit of piracy with your friends that do not want to get into any other piracy option. Literally just sending them a link so they dont buy the movie on amazon is always worth it

  • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Yeah I’ve tried it a couple times and don’t see the appeal. It’s like watching nothing but cam copies except half the time the files won’t load. I don’t understand how streaming became so popular.

    Also set up radarr and sonarr because it makes everything easy.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I don’t understand how streaming became so popular

      Have you ever found yourself using someone else’s PC for some reason and they’ve got 20 browser toolbars, 3 anti-viruses and no ad blocker, and they’ve just been using computers that way forever, thinking it’s perfectly normal?

      Yea, some people have extremely low standards.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      It’s like watching nothing but cam copies except half the time the files won’t load.

      I dunno what sites you tried but this hasn’t been my experience, especially if I’m just going through whatever current season of show XYZ is running. Even recent movies don’t generally have cam quality unless you’re trying to watch them very close to the release date.

      Sometimes you get broken links or stop and start with load times and in those cases I’ll take the time to fire up TPB, but mostly it’s been no problem finding decent quality streams that load right away, and that’s been true for me for at least 15 years since using shit like icefilms back then.

    • Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Popcorn time and the Torrent plugin for stremio are nice but are leech-central and not sustainable if everyone did that without seeding