I’ve managed to successfully setup the Stremio + Torrential + RD trifecta, but I am extremely disappointed in the amounts of German torrents. There are plenty of English and Russian ones, but I very rarely find on in German and therefore I can’t use the service with my family.
I have set German as our primary language in the Torrentio Settings and I could not find any other Settings that would affect the languages provided. Is the lack of german torrents because of Germany’s strict torrenting regulations or did I just miss something?
There just aren’t many german torrents, at least on public trackers. Might be because of this law firm that constantly sends out letters asking for hundreds of euros per infringement.
I’ve had more luck with Usenet, especially the indexers SceneNZBs and DrunkenSlug. The former is a collaboration with the forum House Of Usenet, which gives me almost always the result I want (e.g. remux, german english dual language).
Automation with *arr works great, but it’s not the type of search and play like with Torrentio + real-debrid. Downloading the entire movie/show takes time depending on the bandwidth.
I am very new to the whole torrenting and stremio thing, so I have basically no clue how to utilise any new indexers. I just looked up what it actually means and as far as I understand, they are the tools to find suitable torrents for the target media, is that right? So, is the goal here is to replace Torrentio and hook it up to stremio by itself?
Because the setup has to be cheap and secure, I will probably have to rely on RD and I am not aware of any way to use its service outside of Torrentio.
Or does switching to the *arr alternatives provide enough security while living in Germany. I am really not looking forward to getting annoying letters for any leaking.
Indexers are search engines for usenet, just like trackers allow for searching for torrents. You’re curently using torrent trackers through Torrentio, which downloads the torrents through RD. RD then streams the media to you. This is convenient but as far as I know only works with public trackers, since most private trackers require you to directly upload as much as you download.
Yes, the *arr apps download the requested media through torrent or usenet. They usually run on a server (old laptop, RPi, …). They allow for searching and then automatically downloading content in the right resolution, language and size through torrents or usenet. This downloaded media might then be watched through Jellyfin or Kodi.
If you use torrents directly (public or private), always use a VPN in Germany. Downloading through usenet isn’t a big risk without VPN, just like torrents with RD isn’t risky either. Using *arr with torrents means a VPN is necessary to avoid unfriendly letters.
I don’t know whether Usenet works with Streamio but there might be a plugin. It might be that Streamio just doesn’t work well for german content.
Sorry, it’ll be difficult beating Streamio + RD in ease of use and cost. I’m using *arr and Jellyfin which means I have a server (desktop pc) with a big HDD running 24/7. Since I’m using usenet the cost of indexer and provider comes on top.
Thanks a lot for the explanations!
The setup just ain’t right for me. I am extremely happy with the simplicity RD provides and I don’t want to actually store the media on my hardware, nor am I looking forward to letting my PC run throughout most of the day, just so my family can watch whenever they want.
I guess I will have to accept that I will not be able to reliably get German sources with my setup. I am glad that my family is bilingual and therefore is also happy with watching movies in Russian, which provides more than enough public trackers. Though most current movies don’t actually have proper voice dubs and rely on fan dubs because of the current political situation I think.
Yes, one of the main reasons I set up *arr was that I have a server running anyway, so I better put it to good use. RD seems gets mentioned a lot and after trying it out for a few weeks the value and simplicity is great.
Glad to hear that you’re family is bilingual as I won’t get far with english only with mine. That’s a major reason I switched to usenet as it’s easier to find dual language content than getting into private trackers.