Lots of good private torrent trackers have been opening up recently. Although we have covered most of these in separate posts, we thought it best to integrate all of them into one article to avoid the confusion. This post features summarized information about four private torrent trackers that are currently open for signup; GameGui (Games), ScL (General/0Day), STN (General/0Day) and TorrentVault (General/0Day). Note that these sites won’t say open forever – some of them will close down after a few hours and you’ll have to be quick if you are to get in.

GameGui
 
Site Name: GameGui (http://gamegui.org)
Stats: 11400+ users and 2800+ active torrents
Signup URL: http://gamegui.org/signup.php
Description: GameGui is a specialized games tracker that has never been featured on FILEnetworks Blog before. This site has Chinese origins but almost all indexed releases are international scene/p2p releases. Site language is also Chinese however all major functions come with English labels. Both PC and Console games can be found here.

ScL (The Clover)
 
Site Name: ScL
Stats: 9800+ users and 3800+ torrents
Signup URL: Site rules prohibit public display of URL
Description: Everyone should know about this one by now. ScL went down a couple of days back due to a billing issue. When it came back, fans were treated to a nice surprise – 24 hour open signups. ScL is celebrating their second birthday and currently double upload is enabled for all torrents on site. To read more about the downtime and open signups, refer to this article. 
Note: Some users were having trouble with confirmation E-mail earlier. When we checked just now, E-mail confirmation was not required.

STN (StoreThe.Net)
 
Site Name: StoreThe.Net (http://storethe.net)
Stats: 5700+ torrents and 2100+ members
Signup URL: http://storethe.net/signup.php
Description: STN is a general tracker that’s been making quite a buzz these days. Great pre times, amazing torrent uploads, one of the best request systems – it has almost everything you look for in a 0Day tracker. If you couldn’t get in via the initial open signup or the subsequent IRC invite giveaway, signups are now open again for 96 hours. Full review can be found here.

TorrentVault (TV)
 
Site Name: TorrentVault (http://www.torrentvault.org)
Stats: 5400+ torrents
Signup URL: http://www.torrentvault.org/signup.php
Description: TorrentVault is a decent General/0Day tracker with lots and lots of TV torrents. Pre times are pretty good for TV releases. Interface is very similar to that of TorrentLeech. Our full review of this site may be found here.

Read the rest of this article...

Tracker Open Signup Update – GameGui, ScL, STN and TV Now Open

Some of you might remember that we posted an article about SceneX (sX) a few weeks ago. Back then, SceneX was a private torrent tracker dealing with general content. Two months have passed and a lot has changed at sX – it is now a HD torrent tracker. Well it’s not just any HD tracker – it’s probably the first ratio free private HD torrent site around. Site’s visual layout has also been overhauled and it now sports a brand new look. SceneX is currently closed for signup and the only way in is via an invite. Don’t worry - interested members can easily obtain a free invite through sX’s official invites IRC channel.

Although sX now brands itself as a HD tracker, it might be a little different from other similar sites you know of. While majority of the site’s content comprises of HD torrents, other extremely popular releases would continue to be available on the tracker. And all indexed HD torrents will be on permanent free leech. This is better explained in a forum post:

sX is now a high definition tracker. But not just any ordinary HD tracker. First off we will have all of our HD content freeleech. So, in a way this is a ratio free HD tracker. However, we feel it would be neglectful to the sX community not to offer the major release that come out whether it be a game, or application, or a big hit movie in XviD before it hits HD. Those torrents will NOT be freeleech.

Above should explain why a ratio is still calculated on sX. Your download stats will be unmoved by any HD torrent you download – however download data will still be counted for any other type of torrent (and thus affect your global ratio). Basically, the ‘ratio-freeness’ on sX is made possible by permanent free leech on HD torrents – a concept similar to the one used by Scene Inspired (S-I). As usual hit and run is prohibited, even on torrents that are on free leech:

You must seed for at least 48 hours within a 5 day period or you will get a warning. It does not have to be consecutive but if seed break is longer then 24 hours then you may be warned.

As of 29/09/2009, sX tracks over 400 active torrents. Majority of these (as highlighted earlier) are HD content (Blu Ray, HDTV, etc).

Currently there are around 2200 registered members on sX. Signups are currently closed (they might open up for 1-2 days in the future but not sure when) but interested members can get in via IRC interview. All users get 2 free invites and 2GB upload credit upon signup.

Site Name: SceneX (http://scenex.me)

Invites Channel URL: http://scenex.me/ircinvite.php (requires Java)

Invites Channel Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/sx.invite (for use with mIRC and similar clients)

Note: If you are trying to access sX using any other browser than FireFox, you might run into glitches: “Please Note : This website is made to work with Firefox and Firefox only.”

Read the rest of this article...

SceneX Now A Ratio Free HD Torrent Tracker

UPDATE: ScL is now back and the site has open signups for 24 hours. Since tracker rules still apply, please do not post or ask for the URL – it’s not that hard to find anyway. For the official notice on open signups (posted on tracker homepage), see end of this article. 

Original Article: Fans of the ScL tracker (aka ‘The Clover’) were left stranded when they were greeted with the following message on site homepage yesterday “Domain ********* has been temporary suspended. Please contact Billing as soon as possible”. It’s been some time and ScL remains to be offline. Naturally, rumors have started flying about in the BitTorrent community, some even claiming the site is gone for good. Good news is that most of these stories are false – it’s highly likely that ScL will return, probably in just 1-2 days.

Although both the site and tracker are down, ScL’s IRC server is still functioning. And the topic in their support channel says:

News: ‘The site is down due to a billing issue... it will be up some time around Monday/Tuesday’

For the close to 6000 users of the site, this should be really great news. ScL is one of the better general/0day trackers launched in recent times - it has a great community as well as a torrent index with plenty of free leech packs (in ‘Depot’ section). And many would agree with me when i say that ScL is one the best private trackers ever, in terms of visual layout.

Open signup

As most of you now know, ScL is back and the site has opened registrations for 24 hours. This is a good opportunity for those who were waiting to get in. Quoted below is the official notice posted on homepage:

For the next 24 hours we will be having open sign-ups! Tell your friends! Tell you mom! Just don't tell Dan Glickman!
Lets welcome our new users to ********!
I would like to take this time to remind all users that dupe accounts will lead to both accounts being disabled.
Oh.. and account trading is a good way to end up in the level of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theaters.

Note: ScL’s rules prohibit mentioning full site name or URL in public. We respect trackers wishes so please do not ask for these details, invites, etc on this thread. We are posting this because we (having posted news of several ScL open signups here) have a lot of readers who are already members of this site. Thank you for understanding.

Read the rest of this article...

ScL tracker is down but will return soon

Veteran BiTtorrent users among our readership should be familiar with the name ‘Araditracker’. Back in its time, Aradi was a hugely popular private torrent tracker with an excellent community. Unfortunately the site was shut down in late 2008 due to legal pressure and as far as the administration was concerned, there were no plans to resurrect it. So, has Araditracker been re-born? Not really. But TDS (commonly known as T*S due to site rules) is an entirely new private torrent tracker that’s run by old staff of Aradi. It’s a Gazelle based General/0Day tracker with movies and TV shows (among other things) and of course, there’s a lot of focus on community as well.

It’s only been three weeks since TDS launched and not many in the BitTorrent community know of its existence (not yet anyways).  this is probably because TDS is another private tracker that prefers less publicity. Site rules prohibit posting full tracker name or URL in public and users are encouraged to refer to it only as T*S wherever possible. (this article is posted with permission from staff –  it wouldn’t have made much sense without the the URL). Considering what happened to Aradi, TDS’s wishes to become ‘not so popular’ are understandable.

Anyways the site has been improving steadily over the past few weeks even without much publicity. Currently there are around 325 registered members and ~275 active torrents. These numbers will no doubt increase as days progress. As mentioned earlier TDS is a general tracker. However I noticed a large number of movie and TV torrents including HD releases being indexed compared to other torrents such as games, music, E-books, etc.

TDS is based on a customized version of Gazelle BitTorrent tracker script. Gazelle’s organization and performance enhancements should make TDS even more user friendly than Aradi’s ever was. Apart from BitTorrent tracker functions, TDS has a decent forum which hosts most of the community oriented activities such as radio (you get upload credit for listening to radio), competitions, chit chat, etc.

Public registrations at TDS are currently open and interested readers are free to join. All new members will get 2 invites upon signup. We do not know till when signups will remain open but they definitely won’t be open forever. Right now the entire site is set to free leech so go download some gigs.

Site Name: TDS (http://www.thedarksyndicate.com)

Signup URL: http://www.thedarksyndicate.com/register.php

Special thanks to Ceigg and rest of TDS staff for the information.

Read the rest of this article...

TDS Tracker Now Open For Signup – From Araditracker Crew

If you didn’t know already, there is a new General/0Day tracker that’s making huge waves in the BitTorrent scene. StoreThe.Net or STN is a ratio free private torrent tracker that has recorded explosive growth in the first 10 days since launch. When we first posted about this site about three days back, it was open for signup. However the huge influx of new users forced the site to quickly go invite-only and STN’s user limit is currently capped at 1500. If you are one of those users who couldn’t get in during open signup, there is still hope. STN now has an official invites IRC channel in place.

What’s so impressive about STN is that it’s still maintaining the insanely high number of daily torrent uploads we highlighted in the previous post. During the first 10 days it’s autouploaders have spewed out no less than 5000 releases. If there were world records for private trackers, I’m sure STN would be a good contender for the ‘fastest 5000 torrent uploads’.

If you were a member of this tracker, you might have noticed the slower pre-times/download speeds on some of the torrents earlier today. There was an issue with one of STN’s seedboxes but this has now been resolved. This is what STN SysOP told us about the problem:

Apparently utorrent starts to choke around 2500 torrents or so.
We are working on switching to rtorrent for the seedboxes.
Until then, we only only keeping 5K worth of torrents live (or approx 10 days) on the seedboxes.
However the members are doing a fantastic job of seeding, so there are 6K torrents active.

And as we mentioned earlier STN’s user base skyrocketed to 1500 in a matter of 2-3 days. Had the site not gone invite only, this number would have been a lot higher by today. But there is still hope for those who missed out on the open signups. STN has set up an invites IRC channel and potential new members would be able to get invited for free (provided they pass the interview). Good news is that you’ll be in with a chance even if you are a newbie. Bad news – invites will be limited.

Invites are currently closed, however Monday sometime, we will do interviews and give out invites. Probably not many, maybe 100-200.
Will welcome n00bs as well. So for every guy that is a seasoned pro, we'll invite a n00b too.

Invites channel details are as follows:

• Server: irc.storethe.net
• Channel: #StoreThe.NET.Invites
• Direct Link: irc://irc.storethe.net/StoreThe.NET.Invites
• Help: If you are new to IRC, please read this article. You don’t have to be a power user to join an IRC chan – it’s simple.

Note that invites are not being offered right now (consider this post a heads-up). Read the channel topic before you do anything stupid such as spamming the channel or PM’ing sysops. Good Luck!

Special thanks to Yocto (STN admin) for the information provided.

Related Articles

• StoreThe.Net – Ratio Free Scene Tracker With Fast Torrent Uploads

Read the rest of this article...

StoreThe.Net invite IRC channel now online

It’s a well known fact that you can download latest movie and TV shows from private BitTorrent trackers. However, the same cannot be said about matching subtitles for such releases. Most early/leaked versions of movie & TV releases do not come packed with subtitles - users are often left to download subs from external sources such as Opensubtitles.org and Subscene.com when this happens. If you were annoyed by this factor, TorrentLeech’s (TL) brand new automatic subtitle fetching service should be welcome news to you. TL has partnered with YourSubs, a trendy new subtitle index, to provide matching sub downloads for movie and TV shows uploaded to the tracker.   

If you haven’t already seen it, a news post from the front page is quoted below:

As many of you may have noticed, from now on, movie and tv torrents, include in their details page a subtitle list, grabbed from a brand new subtitle site: Yoursubs.org

It is still in beta phase, so small bugs may exist. Of course, we are going to optimize it in the coming week, and add new features like one-click upload of a subtitle, right from the torrent details page. In the mean time, whoever wants to upload subtitles, may do so at yoursubs.org and they will appear in TorrentLeech as soon as they are authorized by YS staff.

YourSubs.org is a relatively new subtitle index and to be honest I only heard about them for the first time in TL’s announcement. Anyways they seem to have a surprisingly good amount of indexed subtitles for a newcomer. Flashy interface and the modern look and feel is also a plus. However, I found the site’s search function to be a little inefficient – it would only return results if search query exactly matched full movie title (as displayed in drop down menu). TL users needn’t worry about this – so far the service on TL seems to work fine:

Image: YourSubs integration – how it looks on TorrentLeech 

With the popularity boost given by partnership with TL, expect YourSubs to grow rapidly in the future. And if you have a TL account (if you are a regular reader of FILEnetworks, you should have one by now), go check out this new feature – it should be visible on new movie and TV series/episode uploads.

Related Articles

• NonScene BRRip-x264 and BRRip-XviD releases now on TorrentLeech tracker
• Free TorrentLeech invites for FileList users – Now on IRC
• TorrentLeech Invite Giveaway July 2009 - 2000 IRC Invites

Read the rest of this article...

TorrentLeech : Now with YourSubs integration

Google Chrome has become browser of choice for many since its initial release back in last September. If you are one of them, here is some news that you might find interesting. ChromePlus is a customized, pimped out version of Google Chrome that adds several extra features that are otherwise unavailable in the original version. Currently there are 5 major additions including mouse gestures in ChromePlus and more are promised with upcoming builds. Best news of all – it’s free and there is no spyware inside. In addition, unneeded Chrome background communications are disabled in ChromePlus.

As we mentioned above, currently there are 5 main features offered in ChromePlus:

1. Double click tab to close page
2. Super drag
3. Mouse gesture
4. IE tab
5. Download Tools Support

You can find more information about these features and how they work, on this page. It’s worth mentioning that all regular features of Google Chrome are also available in ChromePlus.

Note that Google Chrome is known for its speed and reduced usage of system resources. Addition of new features would definitely add to the resource consumption of the app. However I don’t think the difference between original Chrome and ChromePlus’s resource usage will even be noticeable for most users. Anyways it’s an interesting app. Check it out.

[Click Here] to download latest version of ChromePlus from official download page (Windows Only)

Read the rest of this article...

ChromePlus – Pimped out Google Chrome

Fans of classic movies rejoice – our second Gormogon invitation giveaway is here. Gormogon is a private torrent tracker that specializes in obscure movies, TV shows, old time radio shows and even music. This is actually a reincarnation of the private torrent tracker previously known as Classic Cinema Zone (CCZ) but with a different administration and staff. Although only a few months old, Gormogon has already made a name for itself as a decent retro movie tracker. However, like most private BitTorrent sites, it’s closed for signup. This is where our invitation giveaway comes in – We, with a help of Gormogon staff, are giving away 150 free invite codes for our readrs - no strings attached.

Gormogon’s torrent index has grown at a healthy rate during the last three months. In fact, it has nearly doubled. When we last featured this site it only had around 2600 torrents, but now it tracks a little under 5000 files. Almost all of these torrents point to truly rare, obscure TV series and movies, some even produced before the 1950s. A limited number of torrents found on this site are tracked by external public trackers. However the vast majority are tracked by Gormogon’s own private tracker (ratio rules apply to these).

   

Apart from the content rich torrent index, Gormogon has several interesting site features such as ‘Collections’, Gallery, Bookmarks, Requests, etc. And if you prefer RapidShare or other one click hosting links to get your hands on retro stuff, you should check out Gormogon’s ‘External File Sharing’ threads located in their forums.

Anyways back to the invite giveaway.  To get invited to Gormogon, all you have to do is to send an invite request E-mail with the following format:

1. Set the subject of your E-mail to ‘Gormogon Invite – FILEnetworks Blog’.
2. Send the E-mail to loup[dot]garou[at]wowway[dot]com.

Please allow 1-3 days for the invite to be sent to you. Do not make multiple requests. Note that invites are limited and will be given out on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

By the way, this is what FedayeenTimmy, a moderator at Gormogon, had to say about those who joined via the first FILEnetworks giveaway:

Your readers have been very courteous, have become good strong members, and gotten very active. As a Moderator, I can't ask for better than that.

So well done folks – this yet again proves we have a good reader base who are well aware of P2P best practices. Let’s keep up the good work during this giveaway as well – please try to be active and respect tracker rules.

Special thanks to FedayeenTimmy for hooking us up with the giveaway.

Read the rest of this article...

Gormogon Invite Giveaway 02 – Classic Movie & TV Series Tracker

This is probably old news (unless you have been watching our Twitter) however since we got several E-mails asking why it’s not posted, here goes. ScienceHD, the hugely successful private tracker for science fiction movies, TV series and documentaries, has increased user limit and opened public registrations. As a regular reader of this blog you may already have a membership on SciHD since it’s been featured multiple times on FILEnetworks before – including when the tracker accidentally opened signups for several hours back in August 2009. Anyways this time around it’s not an accident – ScienceHD is officially open and interested members are free to join.

If you are hearing about this site for the first time, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Well let me put it this way – SciHD is well on its way to become the BitMeTV of documentaries and science fiction content. After being launched back in April/May 2009, site has undergone significant improvements in the past few months, both related to indexed content as well as site features. It now has a strong community of close to 5000 registered members and over 2600 active torrents containing a wealth of infotainment. Download speeds on most of the torrents are pretty good. Site navigation and usability has also improved over time with additional customizations added to the already versatile gazelle codebase that Sci-HD uses.

Speaking of the content on SHD, they can be grouped into two main categories;  science fiction movies/TV shows (entertainment) and documentaries/other educational content (infotainment). From TV shows such as Heroes, Eureka to HD documentaries from premium publishers such as Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The History Channel, etc, SHD should be a paradise if you are into shows like this.

Some of the torrent categories on SHD – there are lots more but we don’t have room here to display the full list 

As mentioned at the start of this article, SHD is open for signup. Site will continue to accept pubic registrations either for 1 week (5 more days from today) or until the membership count reaches 7000 – whichever comes first. Following list of summarized rules (quoted from forum) should help you survive on this tracker:

1. Use your Account: Inactivity rules here ==> kb.php?id=7

2. Use a valid Client: rules.php?p=clients

3. Keep a good ratio: rules.php?p=ratio

4. Follow the upload guide carefully and ask questions if in doubt before uploading: forums.php?action=viewthread&threadid=28

5. Follow our Golden Rules carefully. Especially do not get caught uploading SciHD materials marked "Exclusive" elsewhere, and do NOT trade our invites: rules.php

Keep an eye on their inactivity rules as this is a tracker that only seeks active members.

Site Name: ScienceHD (https://sciencehd.net)

Signup URL: https://sciencehd.net/register.php

Special thanks to AzzA & Ascend for the information provided.

Related Articles

• ScienceHD – Sci-Fi & Documentary Torrent Tracker
• ScienceHD cracks down on collectors - Be active or be gone

This story was first broken on our Twitter feed - @filenetworks.

Read the rest of this article...

ScienceHD raises user limit – Science fiction and documentary torrents

Ratio free trackers – they are invading the world of BitTorrent. After PackMe.in and X, this is the third no ratio private torrent site featured on this blog within a week. Like X, StoreThe.Net (STN) is a scene only torrent tracker which aims to index scene released movies, music, games, TV shows and pretty much everything else. Before you close this page (“meh, another 0day tracker'”) there’s something you should know. Within 7 days since launch, STN has added over 3250 torrents – and new ones are being uploaded every few minutes. I don’t know how long it can keep up but for the last few days, STN has pretty much been acting like a scene topsite.

According to STN admin, they have access to 2-3 different topsites (high speed private FTP servers used by groups in the warez scene to dump pirated releases). If that weren’t enough, they have an autouploader bot to ensure scene releases are indexed on the tracker without delay (and without missing out on anything due to human error). To quote the admin of STN:

“We currently have 2 boxes, 1 gigabit and 1 100mb/s, each are being fed directly from 2 very large topsites, and 1 niche topsite. We index and host the torrents, the seeding and actual storage of the releases is done by different entities. The technology we use makes it look transparent to the end user, but none of the releases are hosted by or at STN ;)”

Unsurprisingly, pre times on this site during the last few days have been excellent – consistently under 1 minute for smaller files and usually under 5mins for medium sized files.

Image: Some of the torrent categories tracked by STN 

And yes, this site is ratio free. You might see the tracker recording upload:download stats and calculate a ratio but it wouldn’t matter. Currently all users are encouraged to seed a downloaded torrent for 48 hours.

Even though they have over 3000 torrents indexed, don’t forget that STN is a brand new tracker. The site is only about a week old and there aren’t many registered users. No matter how many torrents a site has, it’s bound to fail without users. Thankfully, STN admins seem to have realized this - the site is not hard to get into and signups are currently open. According to the SysOp StoreThe.Net will become invite only when they hit 300-500 users.

Is this another successful scene tracker such as GFT in the making? So far things have looked great for STN but only time will tell if it could hold out in the long run. If you are interested, check it out.

Site Name: StoreThe.Net (http://storethe.net)

Signup URL: http://storethe.net/signup.php

Special thanks to STN admin for the information provided.

Read the rest of this article...

StoreThe.Net – Ratio Free Scene Tracker With Fast Torrent Uploads

Some great private torrent trackers are opening their doors to the masses these days. PackMe.in (aka PiN aka 'The Donkey'), a ratio free private torrent tracker that deals exclusively with torrent 'packs', is the latest site to open public registrations. This site has been invite only since their launch (about 2 and a half months ago) and potential new members had to go through an IRC interview if they were to be invited. While invite channels are still active, users can easily sign up using the special signup link provided at the end of this article.  This should be a great opportunity for our readers to join this innovative new tracker.

Talking about innovation, PiN is probably the first private tracker to specialize in packs. As we highlighted in a previous post, every torrent indexed on this site is a pack (a collection of related content). You won't find individual movies or TV episodes here - but if movie packs, games packs, full TV season packs , etc is your thing, you'd love this site.

For the past two-three months, PiN has amassed no less than 500 packs. In any other tracker, content in these 500+ uploads would amount to more than couple thousand torrent files. And what’s even more important is that most of these packs are exclusive to this tracker – note how many torrents have the ‘PiN’ tag at the end, instead of the usual scene group name.

And before we forget to mention it, PiN is a ratio free tracker. You wouldn’t need seedboxes or uber high speed internet connections to survive on this site. However like most ratio free trackers, hit and run is prohibited. Following is quoted from rules section:

Do not hit and run. You must seed or leech a torrent a total of 7 days within 21 days or to a 1:1 ratio. Regular hit and running will result in the disabling of your account.

It’s not just the torrents that are unique on PiN – everything from the login page, seed bonus system (aka pack points) to the user class scheme is cleverly designed, matching ‘The Donkey’ theme (and i think they pushed TBDEV to its limits in terms of customization). We won’t ruin these surprises for you – get in and see for yourself.

It’s unknown till when the open signups will continue. However it looks like they will be on for a while as the tracker is trying to get some new blood in (which should help boost activity on some torrents btw).

Site Name: PackMe.In (https://packme.in)

Signup URL:  https://packme.in/oya.php

If PiN has closed the open registrations by the time you read this, please look here for invite IRC channel details. You will still be able to get in through IRC interview.

Read the rest of this article...

PackMe.In - Ratio free torrent packs tracker now open for signup

Invite applications are becoming an increasingly popular way to recruit members for private torrent trackers. We’ve seen the likes of Sparvar, PTN, TemplateP2P, etc use them and the latest site to deploy online invite apps is PTFiles (PTF). PTFiles, which is a reincarnation of now defunct Phoenix-Torrent, has made significant improvements as a general/0day tracker since its return back in 2008. It has a good community, a feature rich site and lots of torrents – things most users would look for in a general tracker. In addition, PTF now have their own internal release group named EMBER (who seem to specialize in BRRip/DVDRip/DVDR releases of new and old movies).

At last check, PTFiles tracked over 2500 active torrents and had over 3100 registered members. Bulk of this site’s users seem to be very active both on forums as well as on IRC. As we mentioned in a previous article several months back, PTF’s new site interface (PTF 2.0) is not short of features. Apart from standard BitTorrent tracker features such as arcade, shoutbox, forum, bookmarks, trivia, etc, some really cool additional options such as the ability to create new themes (thanks to this feature PTF now has over 35 themes), ‘genres’ feature, moods addon, all kinds of bonus systems (reputation points, karma bonus points (coins), IRC seed bonus, etc), Requests/Offers sections, Wiki, tabbed torrent browse pages, flash games, TV guide, photoshop, pastebin, etc, are also available.

If you want to get into PTF you can either fill up the invite application or simply sign up during the daily open signup period.  A countdown to the next open signup window will be displayed in the questionnaire page, making things a lot easier for those who want to get in. This should look something like:

Registrations will be Open in X hour and YY minutes for a period of 2 hours. Tomorrows open registration hours will be set tonight after 23:59:59 GMT.

Anyways invite application is not hard and there are only a couple of questions that need answering.

Site Name: PTFiles (http://ptfiles.net/)

Invite Application URL: http://ptfiles.net/questionnaire.php (Use the ‘Signup’ link on this page to directly create an account when registrations are open)

Read the rest of this article...

PTFiles – Invite applications and random open signups

A pleasant surprise for those who thought FileList.org was dead and gone. It looks like the tracker might live to fight another day. I’m pretty sure majority of FileList’s users thought the site was gone for good when things because quite. Hell, TL even gave away invites to FileList members who were seemingly stranded. Anyways now it’s good news all around - Both FileList homepage and it’s BitTorrent tracker are showing signs of life after an extended period of inactivity. New torrents are being uploaded and there are several new announcements posted on site, some of which briefly explain the reasons for recent downtime.

Quoted below are several news updates quoted from site homepage:

2009-09-22 - We greatly apologize for the downtime. Explanations will come soon, it mainly has to do with the admin being on summer break.

2009-09-22 - If you have lost your password, click here to recover it.

2009-09-22 - Note: If you are trying to recover a forgotten password and you’re using hotmail, you will need to disable junk mail filters to receive the confirmation. Also make sure to look in the junk mail folders.

2009-09-22 - Questions or Comments? Visit us on irc for help. Network: EFnet Channel: #filelist If you think your account was hacked (password stolen) please report it to the channel op (@).

Things are looking positive even on the IRC channel. Channel topic reads:

Topic is ::: Filelist UP We're back! :0 sorta! Bare with us! check announcements soon for updates.

I’m sure a lot more information regarding recent inactivity will be made available in the coming days. More importantly, normal service might resume soon at FileList – over 20 new torrents have been uploaded today itself and more are being uploaded as we speak.

FileList.org is closed for signups and they do not have any IRC recruitment ongoing. This is just a heads up for existing members who thought the tracker was gone forever – it’s alive.

Read the rest of this article...

FileList tracker makes much awaited return

As we promised via Twitter yesterday,The Horror Charnel (THC) invitation giveaway is here. Unlike our last few giveaways, you don’t have to worry about ‘limited’ number of invite codes. This giveaway is handled by THC staff themselves and yeah, there are unlimited invites available. This should be welcome news to those who love horror, cult and sleaze movies – THC has a great collection of such movies and most of the torrents in its index are very rare and not found elsewhere. Unlimited invites offer should be a great opportunity for those waiting to get in as this tracker does not usually open its door to the public (last time it opened up was back in last February, on Friday the 13th :p )

THC by no means is a new private tracker. It’s a veteran site that has a good reputation in the BitTorrent community. As of 21/09/2009, there are over 3850 registered members and over 1200 torrents indexed on THC. For a tracker that has less than 5k users, seeder/leecher activity is surprisingly good. Note that inactive members are very frequently deleted and don’t expect to last long on THC if you are a collector.

The Horror Charnel is a community oriented tracker with tons of site features that bind the community together. It’s torrent index is incredibly detailed (see screenshot below) and everything from category icons to background images match the ‘cult’ theme of the tracker. They have some additional interesting features such as ‘Free movie of the week’, ‘theme of the month’, etc all of which promote activity and participation of existing users. A karma bonus system also exists.

Over 100 different torrent categories and sub-categories can be found on THC and some truly crazy ass movies are scattered among these genres, just waiting to be found (it has some of the most unusual categories ever found on a torrent tracker; ‘uber-low budget’, ‘women in prison’, ‘clowns’ and….. wait for it…. ‘mothers’, etc). Horror Charnel indexes both movies and TV shows - these range from relatively new flicks to those released back in the 1960’s. Some good movie packs and several complete TV season packs can also be found.

Back to the burning question – how does on get into THC? As we mentioned earlier this is a private tracker and public registrations are closed. However, you can easily request an invite directly from tracker staff via E-mail. You don’t have to do much:

1. Create two ratio proofs from two private trackers you are already a member of. These need to be un-edited.
2. Send your ratio proofs to this E-mail address: thc[dot]invites[at]gmail[dot]com 
   Set the subject of your mail to ‘THC Invite – FILEnetworks Blog’ 
   Clearly mention in message body, the E-Mail address you want the invite sent to.

If approved by staff, you will be sent an invitation. Good Luck!

Special thanks to Azazel and THC staff for the support given.

Read the rest of this article...

Unlimited Horror Charnel Invites – Horror, Cult & Sleaze Movie Torrents

Hits4.Us is a brand new music torrent tracker that has recorded some rapid growth in the past few weeks. It tracks a wide range of US/UK English music across a number of different genres, including some music video torrents as well. Behind Hits4.Us is a veteran crew in the BitTorrent scene; it’s brought to you by the same folks behind successful trackers such as XWT (a poplar wrestling tracker), A4N (decent general tracker) and XWT-Classics (another wrestling tracker). With the backing of such an experienced staff, future of Hits4.Us definitely looks bright. And for those of you who want to get in, signups are currently open.

If I remember correctly, this tracker was launched somewhere around the 1st of September. Within only three weeks, Hits4.Us has managed to recruit over 3700 members – an outstanding achievement for a private tracker indeed (the notice announcing tracker launch on XWT homepage should definitely have helped). Over 575 torrent have also been uploaded, at an average of ~30 new torrents per day.

Hits4.Us tracks English music from the likes of US and UK. Following paragraph which describes the type of content available on this tracker, is quoted from a forum post:

This is a Dedicated Music Tracker which means we will ONLY allow Music to be uploaded. The only exception to this Rule is Concerts/Music Videos and Music Applications.

Currently there are 31 different music genres defined as torrent categories. It appears that there are both scene and non scene content available on this tracker. Below is an screenshot of part of Hits4.Us categories and torrent index:

Like most sites from the XWT family, Hits4.us is open for registration. However open signups may not last forever so get in while you can.

Site Name: Hits4.Us (http://hits4.us)

Signup URL: http://hits4.us/signup.php

Read the rest of this article...

Hits4.Us – New Private Music Torrent Tracker From XWT Crew

Judging by the amount of hits we got for our previous NFS : Shift troubleshooting article, it seems a lot of folks were experiencing the dreaded ‘black screen crash’ problem with the game. If you tried the workarounds mentioned in our previous article (thanks to those who posted more possible solutions as comments btw) and still couldn’t get the game to work or got it to play rather sh1ttly, here is something else that you can try. Given below is a custom configuration file for NFS : Shift with settings that could minimize the occurrences of black screens or random CTDs.

Note that the idea behind this workaround was originally posted in EA’s support forums. Credit to whoever figured this out first.

How to apply updated fix

1. Make a backup of your current GraphicsConfig.xml file located in My Documents –> NFS Shift folder (in case anything goes wrong, replace edited config with backup copy)
2. Download the custom configuration file from this location. UnRAR the archive using WinZip or WinRAR.
3. Replace your existing copy of GraphicsConfig.xml (located in My Documents—> NFS Shift folder) with one in downloaded archive.
4. Run the game.

Note that the above configuration file will launch the game in 1280x720 resolution. If your monitor/VGA does not support it, please change the resolution by editing this line in configuration file (open GraphicsConfig.xml with a text editor such as notepad) :

<prop name="Mode" adapter="0" width="1280" height="720" antialias="0" refresh="60" />

For example, if you want to run the game in 1024 x 768 resolution, edit the above so that it reads:

<prop name="Mode" adapter="0" width="1024 height="768" antialias="0" refresh="60" />

If you still cannot get it to work, you can try manually editing other settings in the configuration file. However, placing incorrect values might cause the game malfunction – proceed at your own risk.

Please do not copy and paste this article elsewhere. You are of course welcome to link to it.
If you liked this article do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow us on Twitter. We bring you the latest BitTorrent news, private torrent tracker updates, leaks, downloads and more.

Related Articles

• How to fix Need For Speed : Shift black screen error or crashes

Read the rest of this article...

Updated fix for NFS : Shift black screen crash

We we have said many times before, ratio free private torrent trackers are becoming increasingly common. Some trackers such as GFT and PTN have had great success with this model while several others such as SceneRace are considering reverting back to a ratio based model. Anyways the growth of ratioless private torrent sites have not stopped and this article is about one such brand new ratio free tracker; X. X is a new scene 0-day releases tracker that is only a couple of weeks old. The site has been invite only from the start but if you are interested in getting in, an invite can easily be obtained via IRC recruitment.

As mentioned above, X is only three weeks old and is largely unknown in the BitTorrent world. However the site has already amassed over 1150 torrents (as of 20/09/2009) – almost all of these 0-day scene releases. Pre times on this tracker seem to be good and majority of the torrents have under 10-minute pre times. Both the high number of daily torrents and good pre times can be associated with X’s autouploader bot. Torrents however need more seeders/leechers – a problem almost all new trackers go through in early days.

Although the title of this article might lead you to believe that X is a scene-only tracker, it’s not. There are two browse pages – one for scene releases and the other for non scene content such as old movies and games. However, non scene section contains less than 10 torrents at the time this article is written.

As the title says, X is a ratio free tracker. Global upload:download ratio doesn’t matter on this site. However, you do need to seed every downloaded torrent to a 1:1 ratio OR for at least 48 hours (whichever is possible). A bonus system is also present on the site.

Like many other private torrent trackers, X is built on TBDEV tracker script. It has a slightly dark theme that’s easy on the eyes. Navigation is easy and the interface is not cluttered.

X seems to be a tracker that prefers less publicity. Following is quoted from site rules section:

Do not reveal our full name, URL, or details of our tracker anywhere else. Those who break this rule will be caught and banned.
Failure to follow this may result in a permanent ban. Refer to us only as X and ONLY to people you trust and intend to use your invite on.

There are some other rules pertaining to downloading, uploading, etc and reading rules.php is the first thing you should do if you get accepted.

Speaking of getting accepted, currently there is only one way to get into X – via IRC interview. You might be asked to submit ratio proof from other trackers during the interview. IRC server and channel details are as follows:

• Server: irc.p2p-network.net
• Port: 6667
• Channel: #X-invites
• Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-network.net:6667/x-invites
• Help: If you are new to IRC, please read this article. You don’t have to be a power user to figure our IRC.

Anyways good luck everyone with the interviews. And special thanks to X sysops and staff for the heads up.

Read the rest of this article...

X – New Ratioless Scene Releases Torrent Tracker

About two years back, there was a nice little application called Autopatcher. Autopatcher was similar to an offline version of Windows Update – it was a 3rd party setup package which contained all updates released by Microsoft. Needless to say, this was a huge hit among the Windows community. But then Microsoft spoiled the party by sending Autopatcher a ‘Cease and Desist’ notice which hampered the project. Windows Update Downloader is a similar utility that automatically retrieves updates from Microsoft and allows users to re-use the downloaded files. The next time you reinstall Windows, you won’t have to download and install every update from scratch (which is painful btw).

Windows Updates Downloader gets latest available update information from Update Lists (ULs). Regularly updated ULs can be found on WUD homepage. Once you get an update list, WUD allows you to download all or selected updates in it to your computer. Once the downloads are complete, you are able to integrated downloaded updates to your Windows installation using a tool such as nLite.

This tool should be useful for those who frequently install/reinstall Windows. In addition, it’ll save you a lot of bandwidth if you have multiple computers running Windows (you can use the same disk to update multiple PCs).

Download

A new version of WUD (v2.50) was released a few days ago. It features fixed service pack support and other minor updates. You can download this free piece of software from app homepage.

[Click Here] to download latest build of Windows Update Downloader from official download page.

Read the rest of this article...

Save your Windows updates and install them offline with WUD

It’s always exiting news when new trackers open up. It’s even more exciting when niche trackers go online. Wii-Leech is one such specialized tracker that is brand new to the BitTorrent scene. As the name suggests, this tracker focuses only on games and tools related to the Nintendo Wii video game console. Although Wii is hugely popular, there are only a handful torrent trackers that focus on this niche such as nTorrents and GCTracker (down). There definitely is room for more similar trackers and Wii – Leech seems to be a nice new addition to this list.

It’s only been a few days since this tracker has been launched it it already tracks over 120 torrents. Almost all of these are Wii games (both PAL and NTSC formats are available) apart from a few torrents related to Wii modding, toolkits and guides. Currently there are around 22% registered members but these numbers are expected to go up as the site gains more exposure.

Most of the indexed game releases seemed to be those pre’d by groups from the warez scene (not exactly sure how much p2p oriented content is there).

As you might have noticed, most new trackers launch with free leech, double upload, seed bonus system and other little gizmos.  Well Wii-Leech doesn’t have any of these – it looks like a tracker that is solely focused on content, as opposed to looks and extras. Anyways the site is brand new and nothing much can be said about it at this stage. But if you are looking forward to join a torrent community dedicated to Wii stuff, check this out.

Site Name: Wii Leech (http://www.wii-leech.info)

Signup URL: http://www.wii-leech.info/signup.php

Read the rest of this article...

Wii-Leech – New Private Tracker For Wii Games

Many would agree with us when we say Torrent Damage is one of the best General/0Day trackers around. A content rich torrent index, good download speeds, user friendly interface, friendly staff and a good community – it has everything you’d expect from a good private torrent tracker. If you are a member of this site, there’s even more good news – This weekend (starting 18th) is TD’s ratio building weekend. It’s the perfect opportunity to fix your stats as all members will enjoy ratio bonuses of up to 300%. And if you are thinking of joining this tracker, there are invites available on TD’s IRC. With ratio building weekend in progress, now would be a great time to join TD.

So what’s so special about the next two days? The following paragraph (quoted from Torrent Damage forum) should give you a pretty good idea:

From Fridee th' 18th Septembree at 22:00 UTC or thar abouts we be doin' a ratio buildin' until Sundee th' 20th Septembree at 23:59 UTC
GADZOOKS!! 300%!!
Th' way this works be, whatereyou download, only counts 50% towards yer download statistics, an' whatereyou upload counts 150% towards yer upload statistics. This gives ye an effective 300% ratio boost!
Example: Ye really download 100,000,000 bytes an' upload 100,000,000 bytes. Torrent-Damage will record a download o' 50,000,000 bytes an' record an upload o' 150,000,000 bytes, givin' ye an effective 3:1 ratio instead o' a 1:1
Also, this ratio buildin' be nay limited t' stuff which be uploaded durin' this time - 'tis everythin' on th' site!

If you can’t decode the ‘pirate speak’ above, it basically says the tracker will record 1.5 times the actual amount you upload and will only record half the size of your downloads, giving your global ratio a massive boost.

It’s not only the ratio building weekend that’s so special about this tracker. As we mentioned earlier, TD is a great general tracker in its own right. It’s a veteran BitTorrent site that’s been around for ages and more importantly, it has improved over time. For example, Torrent Damage launched TDv2 last January – the site now runs on a fast, heavily modified Gazelle codebase. It is also one of the larger general private trackers out there, with over 40000 members and over 28000 active torrents.

I’ve seen TD invites being requested on various BitTorrent forums but many don’t know that TD has an invites IRC channel. We talked about it several months back and if you still haven’t got in, information below might come in handy:

How to Join the Torrent-Damage invites IRC channel

Note that the invites channel is only accessible via the web based IRC client Mibbit (mIRC does not work unless you are TD staff or uploader).

Easiest way log into this channel is by clicking on this direct link.

If you are having problems with the above, follow the directions below:
Go to http://mibbit.com/chat/ and enter the following details there:
Server: falcon.torrent-damage.net (click on the ‘server’ link to enter server name)
Channel : #td-invite
Nick: A nickname of your choice 

Once you are in the channel, you will be greeted by TD’s IRC bot. Do exactly as it says – don’t say things like ‘please give me an invite’ since it’s only a coded script and won’t understand you anyways (and that would be embarrassing). You will be prompted to provide 1 speedtest and 1 ratio proof (screenshots you provide must be unmodified and un-cropped). Once you submit these (as per instructions by bot), wait patiently for staff to approve them and invite you to TD.

Site Name: Torrent Damage (http://www.torrent-damage.net/)

Read the rest of this article...

Torrent Damage Ratio Building Weekend

I don’t know about you but I’ve always wanted to do this, and I’ve found the perfect utility to do it. Volumouse is a simple but useful utility that lets you control system sound volume with your mouse wheel. The best part about it - your mouse wheel not only be limited to volume control. The application lets you define when exactly the mouse should control the sound volume. For example,  you can tell the application to adjust volume when alt key is pressed - in all other cases mouse wheel will be used for regular functions such as web page scrolling etc. Volumouse is a product of Nirsoft – it’s completely free and is not bundled with any unwanted cr@pware.

As you can see from the above screenshot, you can hand over volume control to mouse even for specific scenarios such as ‘Windows media player is focused’. You can set one to five of such conditions. Further customizations can be made to the way volume is altered. You can fine tune these settings and trust me, you’ll love it once you get used to Volumouse.

Download

Volumouse is totally free and is only 115kb in file size.

[Click Here] to download latest version of Volumouse from official server (link auto updated with latest build)

Read the rest of this article...

Volumouse – Use the mouse wheel to adjust sound volume

We have given out hundreds of Cinematik invites via FILEnetworks Blog before but the demand just keeps increasing. Cinematik is apparently a very popular tracker among our readers.  Here is some good news for those waiting to get their hands on a free invite – We, with the help of Cinematik administrators, are giving away 175 invitations to this tracker for free – no ratio proofs required and no strings attached. Invitations will be handed out on a ‘first come, first served’ basis (our Twitter followers should have got a heads-up). If you don’t know what it is, Cinematik is a private BitTorrent site that specializes in classic, independent, rare and outlandish movies.

We’ve seen people signing up for this tracker ‘just because they can’ and then abandoning their accounts without even using them. Please avoid doing this at all costs. By registering an account without the intention to actually use it, you are not only wasting the site’s resources but also blocking others from getting in (since invites are limited). Below is a brief description of Cinematik tracker (provided by Cinematik crew) - read it and if the content does not appeal to you, please do not waste an invitation.

Our mission is to provide cinephiles of classic, independent, rare and outlandish films a friendly location to discuss and share their own interests with current members of this ever-growing community."

We are a ratio-based tracker. It's a purely DVDR (DVD5/DVD9, PAL+NTSC) community, with a lot of rare releases. There are a lot of quality films as far as as classic, cult, foreign and indie go. Once you join you will soon get a feel for what is and isn't allowed on the site by browsing through it.

We do carry a lot of films that were big hits in their day, but you won't find the latest blockbuster flicks here.

We're part of the Golden bandwagon, thanks to our lovely bastard-sister-site AsianDVDClub, with a freeleech Movie of the Week and usually at least a dozen other torrents, picked by staff or suggested by members rotated semi-weekly. All the largest torrents have Silver status - usually big box sets - which is that only 1/2 the downloaded stats are counted.

Cinematik currently tracks over 16000 torrents and has a strong user base of over 8000 registered members. For those concerned, here is an screenshot which shows part of the torrent index:

Note: This is a FILEnetworks exclusive giveaway. We don’t mind you sharing this news with your friends at other BitTorrent forums/sites but please do not post direct links to the giveaway page or copy paste invitation codes from the list. If you want to share the news, feel free to link to this article. This giveaway should be productive for both the users as well as the tracker itself – we do not want random people signing up without even knowing what Cinematik is all about.

IMPORTANT:

• Do not make multiple accounts. You will be banned.
• Read Cinematik Rules and FAQ

Invitation Codes List: http://cinematik.net/filenetworks.php

Signup URL: http://cinematik.net/register.php?with_invite=1

Use the above mentioned signup URL to insert your invitation and register an account. Invitation codes page will initially contain 175 codes. Once a code is used, it will be removed from the page. If you cannot see any of the codes, it means all were used up. Good luck!

Special thanks to Cinematik administration and staff.

Keep reading FILEnetworks Blog, our Giveaway threads, and our private trackers section for more free invites and open signup updates. Follow us on Twitter for more news that isn’t posted on main page.

Read the rest of this article...

Cinematik invite giveaway 06 – Obscure & classic movie torrent tracker

You probably have not heard about XtremeZone but it’s a large Romanian 0Day torrent tracker with scene and p2p releases. Last time we mentioned this tracker was back in April 2008 – obviously it hasn’t had that many open signups. New users however could register on XtremeZone by making a donation, even during the times it was closed. Anyways this is a private tracker that can rival iPlay, TorrentBits and LastTorrents, in terms of download speeds and content. It has relatively good pre times, some great torrent packs and almost every major scene and p2p release indexed. If you are looking to be part of a good general tracker, Xtreme Zone is currently having free signups.

Although the exact number of registered members on this tracker is unknown, it’s clear that Xtreme Zone is a pretty large private tracker (based on Alexa Rankings and judging by number of seeders/leechers on popular torrents). Most popular indexed torrents usually have more than 50-100 seeders each. Xtreme Zone has a pretty large active torrents index as well – as of 16/09/2009 there are over 8000 files. Download speeds are pretty good on most of these torrents.

As mentioned XtremeZone is a general-0day tracker. You can expect to find almost every major scene and p2p release indexed here. In addition, there are close to 150 torrent packs (some of which are huge btw). Something that I noticed with packs is that some of them seem to be taken from other private trackers such as ScL, TL and TTi. Take a look at the screenshot below and notice the torrents that end with ‘ScL’ tag (there are a lot more of these):

Either way XtremeZone is currently open for free signup. We do not exactly know for how long the signups will remain open but it’s safe to assume that it won’t be for long. If you are looking for a good General tracker, check this site out.

Site Name: XtremeZone (http://xtremezone.ro)

Signup URL: http://xtremezone.ro/free-signup.php (signup link mentioned in homepage will take you to the donate page)

Read the rest of this article...

XtremeZone tracker now open for free signup

This has been a great month for PC gaming with the release of Resident Evil 5, Batman Arkham Asylum. Red Faction : Guerilla, etc. Today saw the release of yet another highly anticipated title for the PC, Need for Speed : Shift. First of all thank you EA for not fuc*ing up another NFS title – this game seems very promising. Based on my experience with the game so far (that’s 1-2 hours), car handling has been significantly improved. When maxed out, graphics looked pretty amazing  (especially the car models). Anyways purpose of this article is to provide possible fixes to some problems several folks seem to be having with the game.

NFS : Shift screen goes black

You might be able to load the game just fine but sometimes – mostly when you get control of a vehicle (when you load a race) - monitor might suddenly go black. Nothing but a black screen will be visible. This seems to be happening a lot under Windows XP. There are two possible fixes that might solve this issue (provided that your system meets minimum requirements)

Run game under compatibility mode for Windows 98.

Yeah it’s strange, we are used to running games under XP SP2 compatibility when problems arise. Since the black screen might be related to XP environment, try running with Windows 98/Me compatibility.

1. Right click the NFS : Shift executable (or shortcut).

2. Select ‘Properties’ and go to the ‘Compatibility’ tab. Choose Windows 98 from the list, select it and press ok.

3. Run the game.

There is another solution but this might be a little extreme. From the responses I saw on various gaming forums, Windows 7 users have had a lot less problems with NFS : Shift than XP users. If possible, try running the game under Windows 7.

Do you use a game controller?

Lots of people use 3rd party controllers rather than mouse + keyboard to play NFS games. Sometimes, issues or incompatibilities with such hardware might cause random crashes or black screen errors. If you are experiencing any, try removing your game controller and playing the game.

Whatever you do, please update your DX9 to the latest monthly runtime (regardless of using Vista, XP or Windows 7). It can be downloaded from here. This will fix most (if not all) missing dll file errors and other issues related to DirectX. Also, don’t forget to update your display and audio drivers.

This post will be updated as more fixes are discovered.

If you liked this article do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow us on Twitter. We bring you the latest BitTorrent news, private torrent tracker updates, leaks, downloads and more.

Read the rest of this article...

How to fix Need For Speed : Shift black screen error or crashes

I'm just wondering why we didn’t post about this site earlier. My-Anonamouse is probably one of the most underrated private trackers ever. Many people brand this as an E-learning tracker but IMHO it’s much more than that. Actually I don’t know of a category to place it on as My Anonamouse caters to several different types of content. If you are a book lover, you’ll find a lot of E-books and audiobooks on this site (both fiction and non fiction). If you are a musician, you’ll find a lot of music tutorials, sheet music and so on. And if you are a fan of comics or graphic novels, you’ll find those here as well.

With over 18000 registered users, My Anonamouse is a pretty large niche tracker (is as big as BitMe or BitSpyder in terms of user base). The torrent index is not so small either – there are over 14000 uploaded torrents. There seems to be a lot of focus on community which is composed of friendly members and staff. I think it would be correct to say that My Anonamouse is a family friendly site. Based on TBDev tracker script, this tracker has a very simple look and feel. You won’t find the features of Gazelle here but all the essential functions (including a bonus system) are there.

Content is where My Anonamouse really excels at. As we said before the site indexes a wide range of torrents ranging from electronic books to concert DVDs. Following explanation about available torrent categories is quoted from the invite application:

If you are a musician, you will find: Lick libraries, sheet music, instructional media as well as Concert DVDs.
For book lovers, we have an amazing selection of both audio and ebooks, ranging from current 'blockbuster' releases to those rare gems.
Our recently added Comic/Graphic Novel section is growing daily.

And if the above didn’t give you a pretty clear idea, have a look at some of the category icons available (and be awed):

Like most private communities, My Anonamouse is currently invite only. However, obtaining an invite is pretty easy as they have an online invite application. It doesn't have high entry requirements and almost all the questions are about site rules (you need to read rules and FAQ to get in – these pages are visible to non members). Once you are comfortable with the questions, you need to log into their main IRC channel and say the magic word (read invite application). Staff are friendly and most of you shouldn’t have any problems getting in.

Site Name: My Anonamouse (http://www.myanonamouse.net)

Invite Application URL: http://www.myanonamouse.net/inviteapp.php

Link to Rules Page: http://www.myanonamouse.net/rules.php

Link to FAQ Page: http://www.myanonamouse.net/faq.php

Direct Link to Main IRC Channel: (Read invite application first and then login)

If you liked this tracker you might also like:

• Bibliotik – BitTorrent tracker for magazines, ebooks, novels, audiobooks & more
• MakeGreatMusic tracker – Audiobooks, guitar/bass tabs, sheet music, ebooks & more

Read the rest of this article...

My Anonamouse – Great Private Tracker For E-Books, Audiobooks and Music Tutorials

Console version of Resident Evil 5 was released back in March and it’s been quite a long wait for PC gamers. However the PC version has finally arrived. I’ve had the opportunity to play the game for some time and I found it pretty enjoyable actually. Camera movement and Mouse+Keyboard controls can be minor annoyances but in general the game looks and plays without major issues. Anyway here is out routine troubleshooting article – this time for RE 5. We hope to discuss possible solutions to bugs you might encounter with the game, including language issues, crashes and cutscenes appearing in black.

Note that what’s mentioned in this post are possible fixes. There is no guarantee that they’ll work for everyone. But I believe trying them out is well worth it. Also, this article is a work in progress – it will be refined as we get more information.

How to change Resident Evil 5 language - installer and in game

One of the most common issues with the game seem to be the installer defaulting to a non English (Japanese?) language, even if your regional settings are set to English. There are two possible ways you can force English in game. One is pretty simple and the other requires some work – I suggest you try the first method and proceed to second workaround only if it doesn’t work.

Method 1

Although the installer language is set to Japanese (or whatever it is), you can easily switch in game menu and voice languages to English via the launcher.

1. Run the Resident Evil 5 installer. Complete setup even if the installer runs in a non English language.
2. Once the game is installed, run Resident Evil 5 launcher. From the top left drop down menu, choose English as game language and run the game.

Method 2

Method 2 involves editing the setup configuration file to force it default to English.

1. Download a utility that can edit ISO images. An example would be Magic ISO (you’ll need the registered version as trial builds cannot save files larger than 300mb).
2. Open your Resident Evil 5 image with Magic ISO. (If you have a physical copy, i suggest you burn an image with a tool such as ImgBurn)
3. Browse for the file setup.ini. Open it with a text editor.
4. Now look for the text below [Languages] String. It should look something similar to:
   [Languages]
   count=9
   default=411
5. Change the default value to 409. Altered [Languages] String should now look like:
   [Languages]
   count=9
   default=409
6. Save the ISO image with MagicISO (or whatever utility you used). Mount and install the game using modified image.

In game cutscenes appear in black or display blank screens

Some users have reported issues with in game cutscenes (you can hear the sound playing in background but nothing is visible except a black screen). I haven’t been able to figure out why this is happening but I think it’s mostly related to DirectX10 mode of the game. Here are a few things you can try:

1. If you have enabled anti aliasing (AA) with DX10, try disabling it and running the game.
2. Try running the game in DirectX9 mode. If you are running XP game will run in DX9 anyway. If you are using Vista, choose DX9 mode from Resident Evil 5 launcher and run the game.

Note: Please update your DX9 to the latest monthly runtime (regardless of using Vista, XP or Windows 7). It can be downloaded from here.

Game doesn't start, crashes at startup or has display issues

Again, these are probably related to DirectX 10 mode of the game. If you are getting random crashes to desktop (CTD) in DX10, try forcing DX9 from the launcher. Some of you with ATI hardware might also get 'init cpr xxxxxxxx failed’ errors upon startup. If you are getting similar errors, try running the game in Windowed mode. Forcing DX9 can be a cure to this issue as well.

In addition, you might also do the following to ensure optimal, crash free performance of Resident Evil 5:

• Updated version of DirectX – If you are using Windows XP (or thinking of forcing the game in DX9 mode under Vista), please update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime. This will get rid of all the ‘missing dll file’ errors and will reduce the possibility of in game crashes. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
• Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.
  ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
  NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
  For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/. If you are having video issues with official drivers, do not hesitate to give beta drivers a go. They are not always evil as the sound like.
• Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP/7 – This program will automatically detect your hardware and search for updated drivers for them.

How to save progress in Resident Evil 5

This has been answered many times in previous articles as well but here’s the solution if you still don’t know how. This game is based on GFWL (games for windows live) and if you do not have an internet connection save progress might not be recorded. In this case, create an offline account and you should be fine. (offline account creation menu can be accessed by pressing the ‘Home’ key while in game ).

If you liked this article do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow us on Twitter. We bring you the latest BitTorrent news, private torrent tracker updates, leaks, downloads and more.

Read the rest of this article...

How to fix Resident Evil 5 language problems, black cutscenes and crashes

Over the past couple of months, quite a few untouched DVD/Blu-Ray trackers have joined the BitTorrent scene. Their growth was definitely fuelled by the shut down of SweDVDR, which gave life to spinoffs such as Sparvar, SceneDVDR, DVDRSource and CareStreet. onlyDVDs is one such new untouched DVD tracker that was recently launched (it was initially known as Dreamzonept). We first posted about this site back in June – since then a lot has happened. onlyDVDs recorded some steady progress over the last few weeks and now they have come up with a major change; the launch of onlyDVDs v2.0

Site content has not changed with the launch of v2.0– onlyDVDs remains as an untouched DVD5/DVD9 tracker with movies, TV shows, anime, etc. They have however moved to a different tracker script (namely TBDEV) and there are huge changes in site features as well as in the visual theme. IMHO the new layout looks better than the previous – it has some nice category icons, etc. In addition, onlyDVDs seems to have some interesting off-site projects currently in the works such as an IRC tracer chan and a pre channel.

 
Image: Screenshot of onlyDVDs v2.0 torrent index

Transition to v2.0 is not without issues though – torrent index and the user databases seem to have reset (along with ratio stats). Even older members are required to sign up again. During sign up, some users have reported about not being able to receive confirmation E-mail.

However it’s not as bad as it seems. Torrent index is being re built and lots of older torrents are being re-uploaded as we speak. We are told by onlyDVDs admins that old ratio stats will be restored as well (all new members get a nice 20GB upload bonus anyway). A forum post on the site says:

please request for the old ratio that you have with the other script - refer your nick (if possible it should be the same as now).
you can also send an email to noreply@mail.onlydvds.org

Additionally, if you are having issues with confirmation E-mail not being received, send a E-mail to noreply[at]mail[dot]onlydvds[dot]org specifying your username to get it manually confirmed (or you can join their IRC irc://irc.ptnet.org/onlydvds and ask for confirmation). Try logging in with your account after a while to see if it worked.

You don’t have to be an old member to sign up at onlyDVDs though – registrations are open and anyone is free to join. All new members get 20GB upload, 200 bonus credits and 1 invite upon signup.

Site Name: onlyDVDs (http://www.onlydvds.org)

Signup URL: http://www.onlydvds.org/signup.php

Read the rest of this article...

onlyDVDs v2.0 launched – Untouched DVD torrent tracker

If you’ve been downloading scene and p2p releases, you should be no stranger to .NFO files. NFO files contain vital release information such as instructions, serial keys, release group info, release description, etc and are almost always included with any software, game or other releases. You might have noticed that most NFOs contain a lot of ASCII artwork – specially for the group logo. Sometimes, this can be annoying. Don’t get me wrong, ASCII art, cracktros and chipmusic is part of what makes the scene cool. But what if you only needed the information in the NFO file, sans the artwork? This is where Hexagon’s Advanced NFO Stripper comes in.

Advanced NFO Stripper is a free online service that’ll automatically remove all artwork from a given NFO file. You can either upload your file to the service or just give the URL if it’s hosted online. NFO Stripper homepage features up to date usage statistics which suggest that it’s a quite popular service:

All Time Stats:

Stripped NFOs: 73,476
Lines Removed: 6,567,910
Characters Stripped: 474,251,334
Time Used Stripping (Seconds): 3438.52535224
Average Reduction: 68.35%

-stats as of 13/10/2009

I don’t exactly know how the stripping engine works (whether it searches for lines composed with non English chars and removes them or if it uses algorithms to match character patterns commonly used in scene artwork). Either way it worked perfectly fine with the 4-5 NFO files I used to test the service. Artwork was removed and information was retained. Pretty cool stuff indeed.

[Click Here] to visit HeXagon’s Advanced NFO Stripper

Read the rest of this article...

Remove artwork and cleanup NFO files with Advanced NFO Stripper

First of all let us tell you that we’re posting this info with permission from CN staff – no need to panic. CN, an elusive private tracker known only by a handful people, has just opened recruitment via IRC. This should be excellent news for those who genuinely wanted to get into this promising BitTorrent site. You no longer need to hunt for invites – all you need to do is to prove that you are a good torrenter during the interview. Note that CN has tough rules regarding publicity. You won’t find any detailed site info or screenshots in this post (as opposed to our usual reviews) - we will only make the interview channel details public. Just know that it is a specialized movie tracker that is composed of very active members.

Following news item is quoted from the site homepage:

2009-09-10 12:33:36 - We are expanding ... Ok everyone we are expanding the site and we have decided to get more people in here. We have now interview channel on IRC, Feel free to let people know about it, if they want to join us. We will interview them and decide to invite them or not. Remember never break our code of silence. Don't post our full url, or any info other than interview channel outside. Server Address : cosanostra.killr.org Channel : #CN.interview Reminder : New users who are invited from the channel must show their activity in any field they prefer in the site, otherwise they will be disabled ... we don't need account-collectors.

It’s the last part of the above announcement that potential new members should care about. If you are thinking of ‘collecting’ this tracker, don’t even bother with the interview. Traders, cheaters, collectors and other scammers are of course not welcome and will not survive on CN for long – all new members will be monitored by staff.

Coming back to the interview, you will be required to give profile links from several trackers you are already a member of. Bottom line is that you’ll need to prove that you can be an active user on CN (Buffered accounts with many TB's upload and almost no download will not count as proof of activity). Also we have been informed by CN staff that all interviewees will be required to speak properly in English (as interviews will be conducted in this language).

Invite Channel Details are as follows:

Details removed - This offer has now concluded.

We don’t know till when this channel will remain open.

Important: When you join the interview channel, please wait for tracker staff to contact you. Do not spam the channel or PM anyone (do any of it and you will be kicked out of the channel). It might take long since there will definitely be a queue. Wait patiently - once it’s your turn you will be notified. We And if you do manage to get in, please read the Rules and FAQ first – CN has some tight regulations compared to other sites, specially when it comes to publicity. They also have a lot of interesting site features that are uncommon.

If you are commenting to this article, please do not post full tracker URL and do not ask what CN means – any comment that violates tracker rules will be deleted. In the past, we have seen folks trash trackers just because could not get in. Do not be drama queens – staff run the tracker and they have the right to decide who joins. If you couldn’t get in, move on to another site – there are plenty of them.

Read the rest of this article...

CN tracker opens IRC recruitment

As we have previously mentioned, Sparvar is perhaps the most successful untouched DVD//Blu-Ray tracker to be launched in 2009. Not only has it managed index close to 5000 movie torrents in a couple of months but it has also managed to recruit over 3000 extremely active members, ensuring greater download speeds and extended torrent lifetimes. Sparvar is very selective when it comes to recruiting new members – all users are required to submit an invite application and let’s face it – it has some pretty high entry requirements. You might be a veteran BitTorrent user but any experience might not be enough as Sparvar only accepts proof from a limited number of sites.

Good news is that Sparvar’s ‘supported trackers’ list has expanded. This is the second time in the past month this has happened. Earlier they added support for SCC, SCL and SceneSound and now they have just added  PassThePopcorn, RevolutionTT, FTN and GFT to the list. PTP and RevTT users need to have a minimum of 500GB uploaded in order to apply but the only requirement for FTN and GFT users is to be a member (of either one of these sites) for at least 16 weeks. This is due to the fact that both these sites are ratio free trackers.

Anyways invite applications are still open and you can still try your luck – if you are a fan of untouched DVD or Blu Ray, you won’t be disappointed. For complete review of Sparvar and instructions on submitting invite applications (including translation), please read this article.

Site Name: Sparvar (http://www.sparvar.org)

Invite Application URL: http://www.sparvar.org/invitationform.php

Speaking of Invite Applications, PTN external apps are also open right now and will stay open for two full days since time of this post. If you don’t know, it’s a ratio free movie tracker. Full review can be found here.

Read the rest of this article...

Sparvar – More trackers now supported in invite application

Here is some important news for gamers (or for anyone who’s using software that makes use of Microsoft’s DirectX API) – the latest monthly DX runtime is here and it’s strongly recommended that you update to this version ASAP. DirectX 9 August 2009 runtime (v9.27.1734) is the first monthly update after March 2009 edition which was released about 6 months ago. This will of course be a must have update for Windows XP users as the operating system does not support DX10 and all games will run on DX9 mode by default.

Although many people are unaware, the all too common missing dll errors when trying to launch new games (ex- missing d3dx9d.dll , d3dx9_25.dll, missing d3dx9_27.dll, etc) are mostly caused by an outdated DirectX version. Installing the latest DX runtime update should easily rectify such problems as well.

Download

As mentioned in the title, this post features the full standalone, redistributable version of DX9 August 2009 runtime – this is not a web setup. You can download the file directly from Microsoft’s official servers.

[Click Here] to download DirectX 9 v9.27.1734 Runtime

Read the rest of this article...

DirectX 9 August 2009 Runtime - Standalone, Offline, Redistributable Installer

The much awaited PC version of Red Faction : Guerilla has finally arrived. So far the game has received mainly positive reviews and it has managed to get an aggregate score of 82% on GameRankings which is a rarity these days. Anyways the purpose of this article is to provide troubleshooting information for the most common problems associated with the game. At a glance, there does not seem to be any showstopper bugs (thankfully) apart from several minor annoyances. Anyways note that this article is a work in progress – a very incomplete one at that. More issues/fixes will be added as they are discovered.

PhysX and performance

Like all modern games, Red Faction : Guerilla has plenty of physics effects. However, unlike most recent titles, it does not make use of a hardware based physics acceleration engine such as NVIDIA PhysX. Red Faction’s physics handling seems to be entirely done by the CPU, as opposed to the GPU like in Batman Arkham Asylum. While this will benefit players who own video cards without hardware physics acceleration, the CPU will be tasked with additional processing making the game highly processor intensive. This is probably why the game sometimes slows down when destructions, explosions and particle effects (smoke, dust) occur. All I can say in this case is that having a Quad core processor will really help. Some players have reported lags even with high end Core 2 Duo processors as well – over clocking does not seem help either. ( this is not always the case so it might work for you just fine even if you have a C2D).
EDIT: If you want some performance boost, try turning off ambient occlusion. This should remove some lag. You might also try disabling sun shafts.

Sound issues - cackling, stuttering, noise, etc

Another seemingly common issue but I haven’t found a clear solution for this as well. Some players have reported having stuttering, noisy and cackling issues with in game audio. If it helps, try dumbing it down it 2 speakers if you are using a surround setup (from in game menu and probably from your audio card’s control panels as well).

EDIT: Detailed steps for a possible fix:

1. Open Control Panel—> Sound
2. On the ‘Playback’ tab, select ‘Speakers’ and hit ‘Configure’ button below.
3. In the dialog box that pops up, choose ‘Stereo’. Hit next. Do not tick anything in the next step. Hit next again and hit finish.

Hopefully this will resolve the noisy or windy sound issue. You might want to restore the original speakers settings when playing other games though.

DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10

According to the developers, this game supports both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. If you are running Windows XP, the game will always start in DX9. However if you are running in Vista, theoretically it should be possible to switch between DX9 and DX10 (DX9 mode delivers superior performance over DX10 in most cases, with a slight loss in graphics quality). But the problem with this game is that you cannot seem switch between these modes in Vista. There are two command line parameters you can try. But neither of these worked for me.

1. -nod3d9 – Disable DirectX 9
   
2. -nod3d10 – Disable DirectX 10 (and force DX9? )

Speaking of DirectX, please download the latest DirectX monthly update from here to ensure optimal performance and avoid missing .dll file errors.

Saving problems

This is a question that has been asked (and answered) many times before. This game is based on GFWL (games for windows live) and if you do not have an internet connection save progress might not be recorded. In this case, create an offline account and you should be fine. (offline account creation menu can be accessed by pressing the ‘Home’ key while in game ).

The game runs too fast

Some people have noticed the game running too fast. That means, car handling becomes sh1t and enemies become super fast. this does not seem to be happening for all though. We haven’t found a direct solution for this and if we do find one, this space will be updated.

Game doesn't start

Sometimes, you may notice that executing either rfg_launcher.exe or rfg.exe will have no effect. The game will not launch (not even a black screen) but the processes will be visible in task manager. If you have any ZoneAlarm products running on background, try disabling them – this includes ZoneAlarm FireWall. In fact, you can try disabling any of the security products you are running before launching the game.

As mentioned at the start of this article, this is a work in progress. More fixes/solutions will be added as soon as they are confirmed.

If you liked this article do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also follow us on Twitter. We bring you the latest BitTorrent news, private torrent tracker updates, leaks, downloads and more.

Read the rest of this article...

How to fix Red Faction : Guerilla sound issues, crashes and improve performance

We’ve covered DigitalHive tracker in the past but that was before DH v2.0 was rolled out. Now is the best time for another update as Digital Hive is currently having it’s first extended open signup since the launch of new version. Over 3 three years old, DH is a veteran general/0day tracker that is well respected in the BitTorrent scene. As some of you might be aware, Digital Hive went through a major site overhaul last July. DH v2.0 introduced a completely new user interface (not Gazelle, but heavily modified TBDEV/TorrentStrike) as well as an auto uploader bot leading to better pre times and more torrents.

If you were an old member of this tracker, you’ll immediately notice the visual enhancements the site has gone through. A sleek user interface combined with search clouds, clean category icons, drop down menus will pretty much make you instantly like the new look (if you don’t , there are about 7 other themes to choose from). However, DH 2.0 is not all about looks – they now have a fully functional autouploader bot that can upload scene releases to the tracker in a matter of seconds. Naturally, this has significantly increased the number of torrents uploaded per day.

Speaking of scene releases, Digital Hive is not a scene-only tracker such as SCC or ScT – you can find both scene and p2p content here. Something I noticed is that DH has a large number of torrent packs compared to other general trackers. At last check, there were over 275 packs (TV, Movie, etc) available for download - their uploaders have certainly been busy.

At the time this article was written, Digital Hive tracked over 3800 active torrents and had a registered user base of over 11000 members. As we mentioned earlier, the site is currently open for signup:

As most of you are aware we are now Open Signups, this is for a limited time only, tell your friends or family to join up!
DO NOT SIGNUP MORE THEN ONE ACCOUNT FROM THE SAME IP ADDRESS!
Inactive Pruning:
The site will automatically prune users who haven't logged in > 90 days. If you want to keep your account please make sure you stay active!

The current open signup period should further boost DH’s user base and increase the activity on indexed torrents. This is the first extended open signup since the launch of DH 2.0 (other than random pruning) – don’t expect it to last forever so get in while you can.

Site Name: Digital Hive (http://www.digitalhive.org)

Signup URL: http://www.digitalhive.org/signup.php

Special thanks to ACID and rest of DH staff for the information provided.

Read the rest of this article...

Digital Hive v2.0 Signups Open – General Tracker

We know for a fact that a lot of you were looking forward to join CHDBits. Without a doubt, this is one of the most sought after private trackers based in China (yeah, China does host private torrent sites – HDChina, HDStar, CCFBits to name a few). As the title says, CHDBits is a specialized HD tracker with movies, TV shows, documentaries and even anime content. Non Chinese users – there is no need to worry. There is a lot of English content here. Compared to the likes of CCFBits and HDStar, CHDBits is considered harder to get into – they don't often have open signups. However the good news is that public registrations at CHDBits will open on the 10th of September and will remain open throughout the day.

With over 10000 active members and over 7500 active torrents, CHDBits is a well established tracker in the BitTorrent scene. If this was not referred to as a ‘Chinese tracker’, I’m sure CHDBits’s popularity would have been a lot higher. Most English speaking users tend to turn away from a tracker the moment they see a Chinese character on the signup page. This is clearly a mistake – in almost all China based trackers, there is an option to change site language to English. And when you actually sign up and log in, you’ll see that these trackers are full of English content. This applies to CHDBits as well.

CHDBits seem to have good scene connections judging by the amount of scene releases available on site. In addition, there is a good number of p2p (non scene) encodes online. For example there are some untouched Blu-Ray releases by group CHD, which looks a lot like an internal release group exclusive to this tracker. Some of the torrent categories, codecs and video standards used in indexed content can be seen in the screenshot below:

Every torrent name has its title spelt out in Chinese (in addition to English) – note that this does not mean the movie is dubbed in Chinese.

Like most other private trackers CHDBits has a bonus system. You can exchange bonus points (usually gained by seeding) for upload credit, custom titles and even invites (10000 bonus points will get you 1 invite). CHDBIts might not look spectacular but it’s design is not bad at all. If you don’t like the default theme, there are several other styles to choose from and even category icons can be changed.

As we mentioned earlier, sign ups for this tracker will open on the 10th of September. A notice posted on site reads:

CHDbits will open sign-up system on Sep.10th,2009(CST China Standard Time UT+8:00 ). Invite exchange-system and invite-system will be closed during that day.

CHD STAFF
Sep 7th 2009

If signups are not open right now, check back from time to time. They will definitely open today (please consider differences in time zone as well).

Site Name: CHDBits (http://chdbits.org)

Signup URL: http://chdbits.org/signup.php

Note: Non Chinese users –  first thing you should do is to change the site language to English. This can be done from the menu in top right corner of signup page or via your profile page (once logged in).

Special thanks to Jimmy who provided a lot of info and screens on CHDBits.

If you liked this tracker you might also like:

• HDStar – Decent HD & Blu-Ray Torrent Tracker Open For Signup
• CCFBits – Chinese HD torrent tracker with English releases

Meanwhile, if you have been watching our Twitter, TorrentVault is also open for signup.

Read the rest of this article...

CHDBits – High Definition Private Tracker Open For Registration

It was only a couple of years ago when TinyURL was everyone’s favorite URL shortener. Things have changed rapidly over the past couple of months and now there are tons of these services – some a lot better than TinyURL (this growth was no doubt fuelled by Twitter and it’s 140 character limit). The likes of bit.ly and is.gd have revamped the URL shortener segment and now almost everyone on the net probably uses one of these services. But have you noticed that every time you want a URL shortened, you have to visit the service’s web page? For the lazy asses who don’t want to do this, here is a desktop application that’ll shorten the URL for you, with no browser involvement :)

MURLS (short for Multiple Uniform Resource Locator Shortener) is a windows desktop application that can generate shortened versions of any given URL. It supports not only one but 26 different URL shorteners. You get to choose which services to use and if you tick 20 different services from the settings dialog the application will generate 20 links (see above screenshot) in a matter of seconds (although I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would want more than one short link for any given URL).

A downside of using this app would be the unavailability of web based features offered by various such services. For example, you won’t be able to use Bit.ly’s click tracking features with this utility.

Download

MURLS is free, portable and easily downloadable (only 300KB in size).

[Click Here] to visit MURLS download page on Google code

There is also a link to a command line version which I didn’t try.

Read the rest of this article...

Shorten URLs From Windows Desktop Using MURL

It was only yesterday we talked about Libble, a ratio free music tracker. Here is more good news for fans of similar trackers – TorrentHR (THR) is the latest private torrent site to join the ‘ratio free’ club. If you haven’t heard about it before, THR is a Croatian private BitTorrent tracker that’s been around for some time. Majority of our readers, English speaking users that is, must be wondering if this tracker will be of any use to them. Well site language and some of the releases  are in Croatian language but most indexed movies and TV series have English audio. If you are looking for a ratio free General/0day tracker, you might want to give this a try.

For some reason, THR reminds me of the now defunct iTN. Well it doesn’t have as that many English releases or a cool bonus exchange as iTN but THR still looks like a decent general tracker. This tracker has over 7200 members and tracks over 5600 torrents, as of 06/10/2009.

Up until the 14th of August, TorrentHR was a ratio based site – users had to maintain a minimum global ratio in order to survive. This has now changed – you no longer need to worry about overall ratio. However users are required to seed each downloaded torrent for a total of 72 hours within 14 days (the actual amount you upload does not matter and the seeding does not need to be continuous).

As mentioned earlier THR has both English and Croatian content indexed. You will most likely be able to spot the non English content based on torrent title. In addition to local, p2p and scene releases, this tracker is home to some good packs (their ‘Packs’ category has over 125 torrents):

The cool part about being a member of foreign trackers is that you can simply turn to them when/if popular trackers at home are shut down. For example, notorious anti piracy outfit BREIN cannot touch a site hosted in Croatia as it is out of their jurisdiction (local anti piracy agencies can cause some trouble, but these are often less aggressive than the likes of BREIN, IFPI, etc).

Anyways for those interested, THR signups are open and is likely to remain open till they hit max user limit (20k).

Site Name: TorrentHR (http://www.torrenthr.org)

Signup URL: http://www.torrenthr.org/signup.php

Special thanks to folks on THR IRC for the information provided.

Read the rest of this article...

TorrentHR goes ratio free, signups open – Croatian BitTorrent tracker

Folks over at IPTorrents (IPT) have been up to some interesting stuff lately. Earlier we told our readers about their new public pre channel and now we bring you news of an another interesting move by this underrated general tracker. IPT have partnered with FLAWL3SS, one of the best p2p oriented (non scene) movie release groups that are around. On the announcement posted on homepage, it is mentioned that “Team FLAWL3SS will become IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team”. Whatever this means, one thing is certain;users of IPT can look forward to a flurry of good quality untouched Blu Ray movies and BRRips – this is FLAWL3SS’s specialty.

The full announcement is quoted below:

We are pleased to announce that IPT and The FLAWL3SS Release Group have come to an agreement that Team FLAWL3SS will become IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team. We have added a new sub category Movies/FLAWL3SS for all of their releases making searching a simple one click task.

In addition:

All FLAWL3SS Movie Packs will be FreeLeech.
All FLAWL3SS HD releases will be FreeLeech.
A minimum of 50% of all remaining FLAWL3SS releases will also be FreeLeech.
All FLAWL3SS releases will continue to be Non-RAR and single file so you can download, play and seed without taking up twice the hdd space.

We wish to thank all the members of IPT for your continued support.

The new category (Movies/FLAWL3SS) already has an impressive 315+ releases listed under it.

Before they partnered with IPT, FLAWL3SS releases used to be readily available on various other private torrent sites (on those that track non scene content) on the net. Since it is announced that FLAWL3SS became ‘IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team’, it remains to be seen whether their releases will continue to be available on other trackers, specially from now on.

IPTorrents is currently closed for signup and please do not request invites here. This tracker was mentioned several times on this blog when it was open for signup so hopefully, most of our readers are already members there.

Read the rest of this article...

IPTorrents teams up with P2P release group FLAWL3SS

We’ve come across several no-ratio music torrent trackers such as CE, SQN (reviews coming soon), TSCN, etc. Although overlooked by many, Libble.com is one of the first ratio free music trackers to hit the BitTorrent scene. In my opinion this is a very underrated tracker –it has a great set of usability features (runs on Gazelle codebase), a content rich torrent index and a decent user base. Keep in mind that Libble is a private community and public registrations are currently closed. However there is some good news for those who are itching to get in - free invites are available on the official IRC channel.

Some of you might not have heard about this site but it has been around for several years. Libble has over 5600 registered members and tracks over 12000 music torrents – respectable stats for any private torrent site, not just for a specialized music tracker. However, note that Libble did not start out as a Gazelle tracker – they only migrated to the script in 2008. Same goes for being ratio free. Initially, this site was based on a ratio system just like most other private trackers. However Libble recently introduced an interesting concept called ‘Share Rank’ that effectively replaced the ratio system.

So what exactly is this Share Rank system? Following paragraph (quoted from their Knowledge Base) should give you an idea:

Share ranks are a system we've implemented to replace ratios. It is a measure of your contribution to the site based on several factors:
Ratio - If your ratio is between 0 and 3 you will get a positive or negative bonus based on how good (or bad) your ratio is.
Torrents Uploaded - The more torrents you upload, the higher bonus you get.
Data transferred - The more data you transfer on torrents (up or down) you higher bonus you get.
Torrents Snatched - The more torrents you snatch the higher your bonus.
Torrents seeding - The more torrents you're seeding the higher your bonus.
Hit and runs - Your total hit and runs in the last month is subtracted from your score.
These factors are combined (with different weightings) to give you a final score. This will determine your user class and whether you are put on Share rank watch or not. In general you should keep your share rank positive.

If you need more information about Share Rank or Share Rank Watch, I suggest you read this article on Libble.com.

Image: Screenshot of Libble, showing some of the torrent categories, tags and search features of the tracker 

As for the content available, Libble tracks a lot of English music releases spanning across a number of different genres. This includes popular album releases by p2p and scene groups. In addition, they have a series of exclusive mixtape releases you won’t find on any other tracker (look in the ‘Libble Mixtapes’ category). Most of the audio files are either in MP3 or FLAC formats.

Signups for Libble are currently closed. Although open signups do occur from time to time, there is an alternative way you can join without having to wait for one – IRC. Yes, you can ask for an invitation on Libble’s official IRC channel. Note that you might be asked to provide ratio proof/speedtest depending on staff who handles your invite request.

Site Name: Libble (http://libble.com)

IRC Details:

• Server: irc.rizon.net (port 6667)
• Channel: #libble.com
• Direct Link: irc://irc.rizon.net:6667/libble.com
  IRC noob? Read this article.

Please don’t spam the chat room – wait patiently for your requests to be handled.

Special thanks to flugger and rest of Libble staff for the support given.

Read the rest of this article...

Libble : No Ratio Music Tracker - Invites On IRC

It’s a well known fact that movies leak on BitTorrent all the time. There are hundreds of movie release groups both scene and non scene that specializes in such releases. Sometimes, the same movie may be leaked by various groups with differences in video quality. When this happens it can be quite confusing to find which release has the best video quality – even pirates would like to get their hands on the best that’s available. This is where Screenshot Comparison comes in. It’s an online service that allows users to compare screenshots of different movie releases.

The idea behind ScreenshotComparision is pretty simple. Two screenshots (depicting the same scene) taken from two different movie releases are placed on top of each other, on a canvas. When the user hovers mouse cursor over the canvas, screenshot from the first release is shown. On mouse out, screen cap from second image replaces the first [See sample here]. In fact, even the slightest differences in image quality can easily be identified through this method.

Like all services, Screenshot Comparison is not perfect. For example there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to compare between every movie release out there. SC does not automatically pull it’s data as scene and p2p releases are pre’d – the service is entirely user driven. All screen captures and comparisons are submitted by users so what you can compare is limited by this factor. Also, I noticed some caparisons where images did not load or kept displaying the ‘loading’ message forever.

Either way it’s a pretty interesting service. Note that the service’s homepage takes you to the ‘submit’ page where you can submit your own screens and new comparisons. To find what users have already submitted, use the ‘Search’ feature or ‘See all’ from the top toolbar.

[Click Here] to visit Screenshot Comparison homepage

Read the rest of this article...

Compare video quality of movie torrents with ‘Screenshot Comparison’

Of all the types of private torrent trackers that are out there, magic trackers are probably the hardest to get into. There are so few of them online and even if you manage to get in, you either need to upload stuff and be very active in order to survive. Magic Warrior (MW) is another lesser known magic tracker that’s insanely hard to get into – not because it’s a level 999 secret tracker but because you need to actually know magic in order to pass the IRC interview. Yep, you need to have an advanced knowledge of magic if you are to get into this site.

Although a fairly unknown site, Magic Warrior has one of the biggest torrent indexes among specialized magic trackers – there are over 2700 active torrents indexed. However this tracker is very selective when it comes to recruiting new members. Only those with advanced knowledge of magic are able to get in and even folks who do get in need to upload a minimum of 2 new torrents each month in order to survive. This should probably explain the low member count of 220 users.

As you can see from the above screenshot, this tracker can be an excellent resource if you are actually into magic. Content spans across several categories including Card Magic, Close-Up Magic, Comedy Magic, Ebooks, Fire Magic, Flourish/XCM, Gambling Magic, Instructables, Kids/Balloon/Ju, Magic music, Mentalism, Misc Magic , Money Magic, Shows/Documenta, Stage Magic and Street Magic.

As you might have guessed, registrations for Magic Warrior are closed. The only way in is by completing the IRC interview. Let us reiterate that the entry requirements are very high – this is not a tracker you can get in by showing 2-3 ratio proofs from other sites. You need an advanced knowledge of magic even to be considered for the interview. And if you don’t, please don’t try to ‘collect’ this tracker and flood the IRC with requests – it’ll be a waste of both your and tracker admin’s time.

Site Name: Magic Warrior (http://www.magicwarrior.net)

IRC Details:

• Server: irc.p2p-network.net
• Channel: #MagicWarrior
• Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/MagicWarrior
  IRC noob? Read this article.

Read the rest of this article...

Magic Warrior – Magic Torrent Tracker for Serious Magicians

With the widespread use of movies and TV shows in high definition formats, specialized HD torrent trackers have become immensely popular. We have reported about quite a few of these sites and here comes another. You might not have heard about this site before but HDpre is a veteran HD tracker that’s more than two years old. It was previously accessible via hdpre.ath.cx however the site has now moved to more secure domain and is hosted at hdpre.com. Signups for HDpre are usually closed but there is some good news - Registrations will be open on 5 September 2009.

As the title says HDpre is a tracker with Hungarian origins. Yep, it’s from the same country where many great private trackers such as nCore, Pretorians, BH, etc were born. However HDpre being a ‘Hungarian tracker’ doesn’t mean it has no English releases. In fact, majority of the indexed content is English. But if you see a torrent which contains ‘HUN’ tag in title, that is most likely dubbed in Hungarian language.

HDpre contains both scene and non scene releases. I saw releases by several groups I had never seen before (EiMi, FSK, BW) – these are probably internal encoders ( or p2p groups that I wasn’t familiar with). Most of these releases contained an English audio stream. Anyways there is an impressive collection of close to 4000 torrents at HDpre. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, music videos and even lossless music albums are tracked. The screenshot below captures some of the indexed torrents:

Although HDpre has a strong user base of 16000+ members they could definitely do with more activity. This is where the open signup should come in handy. If you register on this tracker, make sure you comply with ratio requirements as leechers will be deleted by 10th of September (thanks devil666 for help with translation). Almost forgot to say it, you can switch between English and Hungarian languages (for site interface) using the EN/HU links located above the top toolbar (next to logout).

Site Name: HDpre (http://hdpre.com)

Signup URL: http://hdpre.com/signup.php

Note: After you fill he signup form, the login link generated by the system might not work (it still points to their old domain). You can login by visiting http://hdpre.com/login.php instead.

Read the rest of this article...

HDpre – Hungarian HD Torrent Tracker With English Releases

I bet you’ve all heard about BitMeTV, Tv.Torrents.Ro and TVTorrents.com but have you ever heard of TvTorrentZ? TvTorrentZ (TVTZ) is another specialized TV Tracker that focuses a lot of active members and community. It has a relatively small user base compared to the likes of BMTV, TVT.COM, etc but TVTZ also has a unique ‘adoption’ system that extends lifetime of indexed torrents and promotes activity of all registered members. As you might have guessed, TVTZ is a private tracker and is usually closed for signup. They do not have an invites system and there is no IRC invites channel. So what’s the good news? At the time of this posting, there are over 125 free open signup slots waiting to be filled.

Before you signup for this tracker, there are several things you should know. First and foremost, how TVTZ functions is a lot different that your average torrent site. Their goal is to create a huge virtual hard disk shared among dedicated members. To support this concept, a unique system known as ‘adoptions’ has been introduced. All users are required to (as a bare minimum) adopt at least 2 children (season packs) and 2 pets (single episodes). Adopting a torrent is easy – however you need to first download it completely to your hard disk (since all new users start with a whopping 50GB free credit, this shouldn’t be a problem). To keep your adoptions alive you have to seed them for at least 8 hours per every 24 hours (in average). Adoptions are a good way to earn additional credits for your account. Speaking of Credits, they are TVTZ’s alternative to a ratio system - You need credits to download content from the tracker. So how will adopted torrents earn you credits? Read the following, (selected phrases quoted from the FAQ):

For every hour you seed your pet or child you will be given one seeding hour (SH), regardless of whether someone downloads your stuff or not.
Once you earn enough seeding hours, you can then exchange them for more credits!

To keep your adoptions you have to nurse them (seed them) for an average of 8 hours per day. If you nurse them more than the required 8 SH per day average, the extra SH goes into a buffer that will nurse the adoption during periods when you aren't seeding.

• If you fulfill the minimum adoption requirements you will not be charged any Adoption fee.
• If you don't fulfill the minimum adoption requirements you will each night be charged a 1 GB credits Adoption fee
• New members have a 7 day grace period before the Adoption fee kicks in, so adopt as soon as possible!

It might be a little confusing at first and will need a little getting used to. But judging by the activity on some torrents, you have to admit that this is a system that works. For more information on how adoption, credits and seed hours work, we strongly recommend you read the Introduction and information given on signup page.

It might have a small user base but when it comes to content TVTZ is not so small. There are over 4000 active torrents and a lot of them are season packs. Almost all popular US TV Shows can be found on this site.

Like we said earlier this site is currently open for signup. There are just around 125 free spots remaining (at time of this post) and you might want to hurry if you want to join. Correct answers will need to be given for all questions on signup page – if you read the info that’s given above the signup form, this shouldn’t be a problem (also, be careful when ticking checkboxes). 

Site Name: TVTorrentz (http://www.tvtorrentz.org)

Signup:http://www.tvtorrentz.org/signup.php

Support IRC: irc://irc.freequest.net/tvtorrentz

Announce IRC: irc://irc.freequest.net/tvtorrentz-announce

If you couldn’t make it during the current open signup, don’t worry - according to site admins there will be several more open registrations (each with around 200 free slots) in the next couple of weeks. Keep checking back (or follow us on Twitter - we’ll let you know when it opens up again).

Special thanks to TVTZ admins/sysops and staff.

Read the rest of this article...

TvTorrentz – A TV Torrent Tracker With Unique Features

You’ll probably have trouble reading the name of this tracker as there are several words jammed together :) Anyway it’s ‘Over Top Rope Torrents’ – a specialized Wrestling torrent site. Although not exactly a brand new tracker, OverTopRopeTorrents has never been featured here on FILEnetworks Blog before. Content related to popular Wrestling events and competitions such as ECW, WCW, WWF, WWE and TNA can be found here. In addition to Wrestling, this tracker indexes a limited number of MMA torrents as well. You may have never heard about this site before but OverTopRopeTorrents is by no means a tiny torrent site.

You’d be surprised if we said this tracker was launched back in January 2009. This is true and OTRT’s progress during the past ten or so months has been quite impressive. The site currently tracks over 1250 torrents and has a registered user base of 6350+ members. For a rather unknown niche tracker, amount of activity seen here is pretty good.

You can find a lot of Wrestling related content on OverTopRopeTorrents. From regular TV shows to specials, torrents related to ECW, WCW, WWF, WWE, TNA and lots of other federations are available for download. It’s not only the events that are tracked – even some movies related to Wrestling are indexed.

Talking about the interface, OTRT is built on TS Tracker special edition. In short, there is nothing revolutionary here in terms of looks. Standard set of features found in most torrent trackers can also be found on OTRT. This includes forums, search, bonus system, requests, bookmarks, etc. In addition there is a betting system (/betting.php) where users can place bets on the outcome of select Wrestling events. This feature however is only available to power users and above.

As the title says, OverTopRopeRorrents is currently open for public registration. If you are a fan of Wrestling/MMA, check this site out.

Site Name: OverTopRopeTorrents (http://overtopropetorrents.com)

Signup URL: http://overtopropetorrents.com/signup.php

Related Articles

• Extreme Wrestling Torrents (XWT) signups open
• XWT-Classics signups open - For classic wrestling torrents
• Full Contact Zone – Wrestling, MMA, Rugby Torrent Tracker Now Open For Signup

Read the rest of this article...

OverTopRopeTorrents – Wrestling Torrent Tracker Open For Registration

We’ve been posting regular updates on official scene standards and here’s another article on the vary same topic. Scene standards for untouched DVD-R releases have changed and revised rules were made public via a SceneNotice on the 2nd of September 2009. At a glance, it doesn’t seem that many drastic changes were introduced but then again I could be wrong since my knowledge on the previous rule set is very limited. Release size, one of the factors many would consider to be important, remains at 4.30-4.37 GB per release (for non DVD5 sources).

A detailed version of rules categorized by audio/video encoding, source, authoring, subtitles, menus, extras, DVD protections and limitations, packaging, samples, re-encoding, etc can be found in the full NFO release titled THE.2009.DVDR.RELEASING.STANDARDS-TDRS2K9. You can download or read the full NFO file using the links below.

[Click Here] to download the NFO from MegaShare

[Click Here] to read it online on PasteBin

Want to view .NFO files with ease along with maximum readability? Download and install DAMN NFO Viewer.

Most of our readers probably wouldn’t care about scene standards but if you are downloading scene released DVDR torrents from trackers such as SceneDVDR, TDC, DVDRSource, CareStreet, etc, be aware that what you download from now on will be based on these revised regulations.

Related Articles

• Scene XviD Release Standards 2009 (TXD2K9)
• Scene MP3 release rules 2.0 (2009)

Read the rest of this article...

Scene DVDR Releasing Standards 2009 (TDRS2K9)

Back in 2008, private torrent trackers based on the Gazelle codebase were a rarity. But now the situation has changed. While sites based on TBDEV and TS Special Edition are still plentiful, Gazelle script has become hugely popular among SysOps/coders– new sites based on it are being launched every month and even some well established, older sites have migrated to this template (if you need more info about Gazelle, scroll towards the end of this article). Anyways we noticed that a lot of Gazelle trackers are open for public signup right now – although most of these sites have been covered before on this blog, here is a summarized list so that you may easily discover and join the sites you like.

We have linked to the full site review beneath the description of each tracker. This is done for a reason – without blindingly registering on all sites that you see, read the review and get an idea if it really has content that appeals to you.

SceneRace
 
Site Name: SceneRace (https://scenerace.net)
Signup URL: https://scenerace.net/register.php
Stats: 4800+ users and 5150+ torrents
Description: SceneRace is a general tracker that is usually closed. 5GB upload + 500 credit bonus will be given to all new signups until the site hits a user cap of 5000.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Torrent Core
 
Site Name: Torrent Core (http://www.torrentcore.com)
Signup URL: http://www.torrentcore.com/register.php
Stats: 4700+ users and 640+ torrents
Description: Torrent Core started out as a General/0Day tracker. But this will soon change. A news post on the site reads “we have decided to concentrate solely on BRRip and High Quality Encode Packs.”. If this happens, TC will be the first specialized BRRip tracker that’s online. A detailed review will be posted on FILEnetworks Blog once the transformation is complete.
Full Review : [Click Here] – based on old version of site

MetalBits
 
Site Name: MetalBits (http://www.metalbits.org)
Signup URL: http://www.metalbits.org/register.php
Stats: 3000+ users and 3800+ torrents
Description: MetalBits is a specialized music tracker that focuses on metal music genre.
Full Review: [Click Here]

GloryBits
 
Site Name: GloryBits (http://glorybits.org)
Signup URL: http://glorybits.org/register.php
Stats: 500+ users and 6 torrents
Description: If I remember correctly, GloryBits initially surfaced as a sports tracker. Then it went HD only and was subsequently shut down. The site has re-launched on the Gazelle codebase, again as a specialized HD tracker.
Full Review: Not Available

ToxicJ
 
Site Name: ToxicJ (http://toxicj.net/)
Signup URL: http://toxicj.net/register.php
Stats: ~2000 users and 1650+ torrents
Description: ToxicJ is a music tracker that specializes in Asian (Japanese, Korean, etc) music.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HDAhoy
 
Site Name: HDAhoy (http://www.hdahoy.org)
Signup URL: http://www.hdahoy.org/register.php
Stats: 275+ torrents and 4850+ users
Description: HDAhoy is a new gazelle based HD tracker. Back when the site just started, several of our readers as well as some of our editors got a mass mail inviting them to join HDAhoy (email addresses were possibly obtained from another tracker’s user database). In most cases this would have counted as ‘spam’ – not the most ethical way to get new members as we see it.
Full Review: Not Available

TV-Vault 
  
Site Name: TV Vault (http://tv-vault.org)
Signup URL: http://tv-vault.org/register.php
Stats: 13000+ users and 3100+ active torrents
Description: TV-Vault is a tracker with some of the rarest torrents around. It’s specialty is old/retro TV series. TVV is the sister site of popular movie tracker Cinemageddon.
Full Review: [Click Here]

SweNinjaz
  
Site Name: Sweninjaz (http://sweninjaz.org)
Signup URL: http://sweninjaz.org/register.php
Stats:
Description: A very young Swedish general tracker with an  interesting design. Use /login.php to visit the login page – otherwise it’ll just show the Swedish Google. Once inside, click on ‘Inställningar’ to visit profile page/change the skin.
Full Review: Not Available

700MBz
 
Site Name: 700M.Bz (http://www.700m.bz/)
Signup URL: http://www.700m.bz/register.php
Stats: 5000+ users and 710 torrents
Description: This is an excellent movie torrent tracker if you love 700MB and 1.4GB XViD rips.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Comic-Releech
 
Site Name: Comic-Releech (http://comic-relee.ch)
Signup URL: http://comic-relee.ch/register.php
Stats: 1150+ users and 265+ torrents
Description: Comic Releech is a comedy torrent tracker. Standups, Comedy movies, TV Shows – you can find them all.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AnonTrack
 
Site Name: AnonTrack (http://anontrack.org)
Signup URL: http://anontrack.org/register.php
Stats: 1250+ users and 1300 torrents
Description: AnonTrack (formerly 7Track) is a General/0Day tracker closely connected to 7chan image board. Interesting site.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TorrentTiT
 
Site Name: TorrenTiT (http://www.torrentit.eu)
Signup URL: http://www.torrentit.eu/register.php
Stats: 1000+ torrents and 9200 users
Description: TorrentTiT is an old school private tracker that rebounded in September 2008 after being shut down back in 2004.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AnimeBytes
 
Site Name: AnimeBytes (http://animebyt.es)
Signup URL: http://animebyt.es/register
Stats: ~2000 users and 2140+ torrents
Description: AnimeBytes is a specialized site for Anime, J-Music and Live Action series. Promising new site that’s had an impressive torrent collection.
Full Review: [Click Here]

MViDBits
 
Site Name: MViDBits (http://www.mvidbits.org)
Signup URL: http://www.mvidbits.org/register.php
Stats: 2000+ users and 340+ torrents
Description: MvidBits is a new music video tracker.
Full Review: [Click Here]

BakedBits
 
Site Name: BakedBits (http://bakedbits.org)
Signup URL: http://bakedbits.org/register.php
Stats: 550+ users and 45+ torrents
Description: You know what this is. We just reviewed it today.
Full Review: [Click Here]

What is Gazelle Codebase and what is a ‘Gazelle tracker’?

If you are a member of several private torrent trackers, you may notice that a lot of them have the same standard layout (with some amount of customization of course). This is because they are based on a common template such as TS Special Edition or TBSource. Gazelle is a similar tracker script (pioneered by the crew at What.cd) which has some advanced features as well as security, reliability and performance enhancements.

For example, the hardware resource usage of a Gazelle based tracker is significantly lower than that of a tracker using TBSource. This results in the site’s ability to cater for a larger user base with less server costs. Gazelle also offers more customization options for site administrators with it’s CSS based layout. Gazelle’s benefits are not just for SysOps. Users will immediately benefit from it’s fast navigation and user friendly interface. Tons of other features such as tagging, wikis, knowledgebase, categorization by artist, title, album, etc which will add more value to the site, are available with Gazelle. If you want to know more, just sign up for one of the trackers above and see for yourself. The official page of Gazelle Codebase can be found at http://projectgazelle.org/.

Note: Some of the new ‘beta’ trackers based on Gazelle were not included in this post. Also, only torrent sites with open registration were included (does not include trackers open with IRC recruitment). Think we missed a site? Let us know via E-mail or as comments to this article.

Follow @filenetworks on Twitter for quick open signups updates, tech news, latest leaks and more.

Read the rest of this article...

Open Private Torrent Trackers – Gazelle Edition (September 2009)

If you didn’t know already, a copy of the upcoming PC game Batman : Arkham Asylum leaked on a well known private torrent tracker several hours ago. Usually this should be hot news among gamers as the leak happened two full weeks before the game’s official release date – however this does not seem to be the case. The leaked version (what appears to be a cracked Direct2Drive build) is apparently buggy, unstable and has some features missing. There seem to be a lot of hidden triggers embedded into the game, just to pwn pirates who try to play using illegitimate copies.

These are not minor issues we are talking about. There are some nasty showstopper bugs that’ll fuk up the entire game experience for good. For example, anyone using the initial leaked version would lose all save progress once the game was restarted. You either have to finish the game in one go or keep it minimized till you are done. And can you imagine a batman game without gliding? Well in this version you can’t glide (or perform any of the actions that are associated with gliding such as the glide kick). This will sometimes make progressing across certain areas near impossible. Another major restriction in the leaked Arkham Asylum build is that you can’t seem to turn on PhysX effects – yes, even on PhysX enabled video hardware you won’t be able to see any of these effects. As we have mentioned before, this game looks like sh1t without PhysX. In addition to all these bugs, some gamers have reported random crashes, crashes to desktop (CTD) and so on.

In short – don’t bother with this. Buy the game or wait.

Update: How to enable PhysX

If the option to turn on PhysX is missing from the in game menu, try the following.

1. Browse to directory  C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Eidos\Batman Arkham Asylum\BmGame\Config
2. Open UserEngine.ini file with a text editor such as Notepad.
3. Change the line PhysXLevel=0 so that it reads PhysXLevel=1
4. Save and close the file. Run the game

Note: Forcing PhysX on a non-PhysX supported video card is not recommended. Also please make sure you have the latest PhysX system software installed on your machine.

EDIT: Some users on several gaming forums have reported crashes after enabling PhysX. We don’t know if this was due to forcing PhysX on an unsupported card, not having the latest system software installed, or is caused by a glitch in the release. If you notice lots of crashes after enabling PhysX, turn it off by setting PhysXLevel=0 using the same method above.

How to solve ‘Not Enough Free Space’ error during Batman setup

Some users have got the following error when trying to run setup: “There is not enough free disk space to install this product, please choose another drive with sufficient space”. Surprising fact is that this error sometimes pops up even if you have more than the required disk space free on your hard drives. If you aren’t willing to free up several dozen GBs on your drives, there is an alternative solution you can try.

1. Download and install Universal Extractor as specified in this article.
2. Manually extract Batman setup file with Universal Extractor.

Note that the above tool can be used to manually extract many types of installer packages, not just Batman : Arkham Asylum.

UPDATE 2 : Folks have managed to solve most problems but here is another new one – quoted from TL comments section:

"well another problem. (i think) when you get to the point at arkham north at the point where you need to batclaw the upper access point and enter the mansion, there is no mark for the grapple. i found that the mark is misplaced. it's marked towards the entrance to the island, and when you press it, it just grapple you all the way to the other side and thru the the walls and than you just falls off the map and come back at the other side of the island. and it's always like this. either it's me (i doubt it) or it's another hidden protection trigger."

Note: Please do not ask for or post download links to pirated or leaked copies here. This post is for informational purposes only.

Follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/filenetworks
Read the next post: Open Private Torrent Trackers – Gazelle Edition (September 2009)

Read the rest of this article...

Leaked ‘Batman : Arkham Asylum’ has issues – can’t save, can’t glide and no PhysX

Back in last December, we reported about the launch of BakedBits, a General/0Day torrent tracker. BakedBits was a reincarnation of BitNation, another popular general tracker that had to shut down. Although BakedBits started out with a user base of 20000 members (BitNation’s old user DB) the launch was not that promising. Constant downtimes plagued the tracker and it was subject to many controversies (they even had a plan to become a Pay-To-Leech FTP service). There wasn’t much talk of this tracker in the BT community until now – the site has returned and BakedBits v2 is now live. New version of BakedBits is based on Gazelle, the popular new BitTorrent tracker script.

As opposed to last time, BakedBits’s old user database and torrent index have not been migrated to the new Gazelle implementation –everything is seemingly built from scratch. As a result, they currently only have around 50 torrents and around 425 active members. Speaking of the interface, it’s pretty much and out of the box Gazelle template with only minor customizations.

BakedBit used to be a General/0Day tracker and this has not changed with the re-launch. It tracks scene and non scene content – there are no exclusive torrents available other than usual releases you can find on other general trackers (not yet, at least). Anyway it’s only been 6 days since BakedBits v2 was launched so nothing much can be predicted about the site’s future at this stage.

Registrations are currently open. New members will get 5GB free upload credit and 2 invites each. Signups will remain open till the user count reaches 1000.

Site Name: BakedBits (http://bakedbits.org)

Signup URL: http://bakedbits.org/register.php

Read the rest of this article...

BakedBits (formerly BitNation) returns – This time on Gazelle

ADM or Alien Download Manager is a new download manager that supports several one click hosting services including Hotfile, Netload, Rapidshare, Storage.to, Depositfiles and Megaupload. It’s a lightweight tool that does not even require installing – all you need to do is to extract the zip archive and run adm.exe. This means you can even carry it around it your USB flash drive. Currently the software is at version 0.1 – which looks like the first public build. There aren’t many extra features built into ADM other than the basics just yet but IMHO this is a software worth checking out.

So far I only used this app to download a file from RapidShare and it worked quite well. It detected the wait times on a free account and automatically started the download after the specified time. Currently only 6 one click hosting services are supported but this should soon expand in the next few releases, according to the developer.

[Click Here] to download Alien Download Manager 0.1 from RapidShare (~550kb)

Read the rest of this article...

ADM – Download Manager for RapidShare, Netload, MegaUpload, Depositfiles & More

Here is a tracker we’ve been watching since its early beta stages. However by the time it went public, MVidBits only had 3 indexed torrents. Since no one would have bothered to sign up for a tracker with so few torrents, we decided to postpone publishing its review (we Twittered about it a long time back though). Well the wait has been worthwhile – MVidBits has quickly expanded its torrent index, recruited some members and is now showing signs of becoming a promising new specialized music video tracker. There aren’t many music-video-only torrent sites online and it’s not that easy to get into the ones that are around. In this sense, MVidBits’s launch seems to be a timely requirement.

Like several new recently launched private trackers we’ve come across, MvidBits runs on the Gazelle codebase. Since most of you should now be familiar with the feature set Gazelle has to offer, we wouldn’t go through it again. As of right now MVidBits’s Gazelle implementation does not have that many customizations over default version (other than stylesheets – there are 7 of these).

As we mentioned earlier MVidBits has recorded some rapid growth over the past few weeks. The site now tracks close to 275 music video torrents and has a user base in excess of 1600. Downtime issues that plagued the site during its first few days now seem to be resolved as well.

Coming back to the content on MVidBits, it’s full of music videos – you won’t find any movies or games here. There are both scene released content as well as p2p uploaded stuff. If you look at the pre times on some torrents, you’ll see that some are uploaded days after a scene release – a huge delay when it comes to private trackers. However I don’t think one should even care about pre times on this tracker – MVidBit’s aim seems to become a large repository of music videos – not just another racer site.

Public registrations for Mvidbits is currently enabled. All new users will be rewarded with 2 invites. Better yet, the entire site will be on free leech till the user count reaches 3000.

Site Name: MViDBits (http://www.mvidbits.org)

Signup URL: http://www.mvidbits.org/register.php

Read the rest of this article...

MViDBits – Music Video Torrent Tracker

If I was told to choose between Norton AntiVirus and an actual virus, I’d rather have the virus infect my PC. Norton Antivirus used to be a decent security product several years back but now it’s just another piece of bloatware that slows your PC down just like most malware infections out there (it does have good detection capabilities though). Same goes for Norton Systemworks, Norton Utilities, etc – resource consumption of all of these products have increased with each new release, with no notable new features being added. For those looking forward to get rid of Norton products from their systems for good, there is a removal tool which will make things a lot easier.

Uninstallers that come with Norton products will remove the installations just fine in most cases. However these might fail when it comes to removing partially installed copies and damaged/corrupted Norton installations. Such cases can be very annoying with you being prompted to restart the computer repeatedly, setup of new versions not being able to proceed, etc. This is where the Norton Removal Tool comes in. It can completely remove damaged copies or partial installs of not only Norton AntiVirus but of SystemWorks, Norton 360, etc as well.

[Click Here] to visit the download page for Norton Removal Tool on Symantect web

Symantec is usually good at creating removal tools for most in-the-wild viruses. Think of this as another such utility – only this time the threat that needs removing would be the Norton app itself :)

Read the rest of this article...

Remove and uninstall all Norton products with Norton Removal Tool

It’s awesome news for anime lovers – AnimeByt.es will have it’s first ever open registration on the 1st of September, 2009. Up until now those who wanted to join this tracker had to go through an IRC interview or apply via recruitment threads on BitTorrent forums such as TPS. If you haven’t heard about it, AnimeByt.es (AB) is a private torrent tracker that specializes in anime, manga, Japanese music (J-music), games, live action series and even official soundtracks (OST). Running on What’cd’s Gazelle BitTorrent tracker script, AB is without a doubt one of the best looking Anime trackers currently around.

AnimeByt.es currently tracks over 2000 active torrents (there is a lot more content here than it meets to the eye – see below) . The site’s registered user base hovers around 900 at the time this post is written (this will soon go up with open signups btw). These statistics are excellent for a specialty tracker that’s only three months old and was closed to the public since launch.

As for the content – AB is a heaven for Anime lovers. There are hundreds of Anime TV series indexed along with TV specials, movies, OVAs, ONAs, manga series, artbooks, music collections and even hentai torrents. To view an overview of the content available on AB, check out the ‘Series’ tab in top toolbar. Note that some of the torrents available on this tracker are tagged ‘Exclusive!!’ – these are releases unique to AB and you won’t find them anywhere else.

Apart from the excellent content, AB has quite a few ‘value added’ features incorporated to the site. Collages, Projects, Requests, Bonus Points Store (though which you can get personal free leech and even double upload), advanced search, custom style sheets are just some of them.

As stated in the title of this article, AnimeBytes will have open registrations from the 1st of September, 2009. Signups are likely to remain open for about 1 week. All new members will get 3GB free upload credit and 2 invites upon signup. Check it out – a must have site if you are into Anime, manga or J-music.

Site Name: AnimeBytes (http://animebyt.es)

Signup URL:http://animebyt.es/register

Note: If the signups are closed, keep checking – site will definitely open on the 1st of September (that’s in a couple of hours in most time zones).

Special thanks to Mio, Takkun, Megatomte and rest of AB staff.

Read the rest of this article...

AnimeBytes anime torrent tracker – First ever open signup

How many times have you lost the progress you made in games due to accidental formatting, hard disk failures and even windows reinstallations? Well I’ve been an unfortunate victim of several such incidents and let me tell you that it’s not fun when that happens. You can of course back up saved game files and game settings manually but I doubt a lot gamers would spend time doing that. Besides, some PC games store settings and saves in all sorts of fuked up locations and you have to browse through entire drives to find them – not cool. What if there was an application that could automatically detect installed games and back up their settings and saves with the click of a button? MASAGAU is a nice little app which does just that.

All you have to do is to install the app and run it – MASGAU will detect installed games on your PC and present options to back up/restore game settings or saved games for detected titles. This is a very easy, one click procedure (see screenshot above – that’s taken after running the app on my PC). Note that it’ll only detect INSTALLED games – it will not detect any standalone PC game rips by Skullptura, etc. MASGAU even comes with a tool that runs in the background & watches for newly created saved games (this is an optional install).

Download

[Click Here] to download MASGAU from SourceForge (You can safely skip the 7-zip installer that gets started halfway through setup)

Read the rest of this article...

MASGAU – Backup and restore savegames & other PC game settings