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The End: NZBMatrix closes

nzbmatrix.com

11–20 of 137 posts

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#11
post #8

Coupled with this is problems with payment providers, we have been through pretty much everyone out there, in the end they all pull out. Here lies the real problem

These guys could benefit from BitCoin, if it were ubiquitous. Too bad...

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#12
post #3

The masses need to pick a new site to invest their energies in, rather than scatter at random to lots of different sites! Any particular one out there that's better than the rest?

As someone who hasn't used usenet for downloading content, why is it that it seems that a few central indexing services are the way people access this medium? Wouldn't it be possible - and preferable - to distribute the index through p2p? That way, there would be no single point of failure.

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#14
post #8

Coupled with this is problems with payment providers, we have been through pretty much everyone out there, in the end they all pull out. Here lies the real problem

These guys could benefit from BitCoin, if it were ubiquitous. Too bad...

The page up at Newzbin2.es (or at least the Google cached version for those of us in the UK) which shut recently mention that BitCoin is too complicated for most people. I never used it so can't say...

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#18

Can anyone explain what this was, for us who didn't know it?

Think of it like Pirate Bay, but for newsgroups. Newsgroups are massive with some providers archiving binary groups for up to 4 years (and growing). Sites like NZBMatrix index the content and provide nzb files which tell your client what to download so that you don't have to constantly download the headers for a bunch of sites and search through them. Sites like NZBMatrix were also somewhat curated to help keep passworded files out of the results.

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#19
Never understood the appeal of NZBMatrix. Just use a search engine like Binsearch, NZBIndex.nl, etc.

In any case, with more and more takedown requests being directed at usenet providers, I think usenet's days as a safe haven for piracy are numbered.

Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes

#20
post #12
post #3

The masses need to pick a new site to invest their energies in, rather than scatter at random to lots of different sites! Any particular one out there that's better than the rest?

As someone who hasn't used usenet for downloading content, why is it that it seems that a few central indexing services are the way people access this medium? Wouldn't it be possible - and preferable - to distribute the index through p2p? That way, there would be no single point of failure.

The index would be insanely huge. A lot of these indexing sites are used for their API. Dedicated applications like SickBeard automatically compile lists of wanted files (movies, TV rips and music) and use them to search against the provider. The provider returns a file (NZB) that contains references to hundreds of encoded files hosted on newsgroups.

Here's a breakdown of one NZB, for a single 3.88GB file.

Inside are 74 RAR files, and 15 additional PAR files containing parity for recovering corrupted data.

Each of these 89 files is split into 37 parts of 1.4MB for ~3200 pieces total.

These pieces are then encoded with yENC (similar to base64) and then uploaded to the newsgroup.

Every single one of these yENC pieces is referenced in the NZB file, making for a total of 400KB. Just because of this, the NZB indexs are enormous; hundreds of gigabytes, probably terabytes in some cases.

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