Usenet - do I really need it?

[Benc]

I am writing this because I have no experience with usenet except I heard of it from time to time. I installed sonarr, radarr and sabnzbd, registered on one of indexers and then I realized I also need to register on one of newsreader pages like newshosting. Am I right about this? Because I never had a need to use usenet and after exploring about it I don't think I will. At least not for the fee most of the readers are charging.

So us non-usenet people can only use torrent part of sonarr indexers or is there some other way I missed?

 

[JohnDigital]

You must pay for access to a usenet server (newshosting, giganews, eweka, astraweb). Most are around $10USD per month. If you are a casual user torrents are fine, but a power user should be on usenet, if not both (VPN for torrents + SSL for usenet). Usenet downloads will saturate my 500mb/s connection, where if you get a few MB/s if lucky on torrents. Usenet is also run over an SSL connection so the downloads stay private. This becomes an issue if your ISP reports your torrent downloads to the man, then you get the threatening letter in the mail. Usenet FTW.

But your question is correct, you can only use the torrent parts until you get usenet access. Many usenet servers have free trials if you want to give it a go.

 

[JohnDigital]

Torrents are good for rare stuff, but with that said once you get into the news world, you'll never go back to torrents.

 

[Benc]

OK, so for now torrents will be sufficient and maybe I'll check out usenet later. Although whenever I think of it I keep getting an image of old BBSes :)