Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Torrent meta-search engine

torrentbutler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#21

Post by derefr »

shii wrote: post #18
derefr wrote: post #17

If they're going to link directly to torrents anyway (and thus discard any shred of legal deniability), could they link more directly to the torrents? If there was a button on/around the movie poster itself that linked directly to whatever they/users considered the "best" version of the torrent, that'd be helpful. Half of my problem with torrent aggregators like ISOHunt is deciding which version is actually going to…

I think the point is users are going to discriminate themselves and choose as from their own preferences. Some people (like myself) hate seeing humongous torrents if movies that don't fit the usual scene requirements. Others only use certain public trackers and not others, etc.

To satisfy most people, they could probably put one button for the highest-seeded torrent that contains roughly 700MB of content per 90 minutes of film, labelled "CD-quality", another for "DVD-quality" (if it exists), and then the rest of the people can click through. Actually, just filtering out any results that aren't in the Browser's Accept-Language languages would be a great boon to me.

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#22

Post by MikeMakesIt »

BoppreH wrote: post #20

If this is all automated as they claim, that's a hell of a good job. Poster, length, rating, credits, synopsis and trailer, everything one could ask for. And then they throw a full-sized screencap as the page background. Brilliant.

Would be fantastic if they open sourced the code powering it

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#23

Post by rfugger »

sajithw wrote: post #5

From a legal aspect, how is this going to last at all? IANAL but I was under the impression most meta-search engines operated in at least a semi-grey area because they don't spoon feed illegal content to you. Most just index the big trackers and (conveniently) don't discriminate between illegal and legal content. I feel like when you are dropping torrents into buckets more specific than "video" and "audio" (e.g. link…

Hosted in Canada (netelligent.ca) might buy them some time...

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#24

Post by katovatzschyn »

rfugger wrote: post #23
sajithw wrote: post #5

From a legal aspect, how is this going to last at all? IANAL but I was under the impression most meta-search engines operated in at least a semi-grey area because they don't spoon feed illegal content to you. Most just index the big trackers and (conveniently) don't discriminate between illegal and legal content. I feel like when you are dropping torrents into buckets more specific than "video" and "audio" (e.g. link…

Hosted in Canada (netelligent.ca) might buy them some time...

Or create a strong enough legal precedence to help transform Canada into less of a piracy haven.

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#25

Post by moe »

Aesthetically and technically this is very nicely done. But in terms of usability I actually find a plain list of movie names easier to parse - unless it lacks critical information and is drowned in ads like on most torrent aggregators...

My favorite interface is the "Overview"-mode in the iTunes store. I wish all content sites would look like this (in case you don't know it, scroll all the way down, then click Functions/Overview).

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#26

Post by shii »

derefr wrote: post #21
shii wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is users are going to discriminate themselves and choose as from their own preferences. Some people (like myself) hate seeing humongous torrents if movies that don't fit the usual scene requirements. Others only use certain public trackers and not others, etc.

To satisfy most people, they could probably put one button for the highest-seeded torrent that contains roughly 700MB of content per 90 minutes of film, labelled "CD-quality", another for "DVD-quality" (if it exists), and then the rest of the people can click through. Actually, just filtering out any results that aren't in the Browser's Accept-Language languages would be a great boon to me.

That actually sounds great, and I agree that that'd cover the vast majority of use cases. Another argument for open sourcing it to be forked to the community's tastes :)

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#28

Post by dotBen »

Judging by the amount of Russian covers for Western movies, I'm guessing the site is based in Russia - in which case they probably have quite a safe haven against copyright take-down etc.

Re: Torrent meta-search engine

#30

Post by rbarooah »

mistermann wrote: post #15
rbarooah wrote: post #13

The fact they use a hushmail address for contacting them made me actually laugh out loud.

Why? Honest question, I have no idea. I haven't heard of hushmail in over 10 years, but I just encountered a guy I'll be working with that uses one, I honestly thought they shut down.

Nothing against hushmail. Just seemed funny that after a page of statements about how they aren't doing anything wrong, they use a service designed to conceal their identities. I'm not criticizing them - it's just funny.
Post reply on HN