MYmystraline·May 15, 2025
Nah, I've been doing piracy since the '80s. I've always been on the edge of 'interesting' stuff.
Getting a machine with lots of storage is first step. Make sure you also get an Intel graphics card. A380 I think. They're amazing at transcoding and color mapping (10bit->8bit). Transcode is very important to support with hardware, since it allows realtime resolution change, colorspace conversion, and pretty much every video file format to mp4. Can be done in CPU but not recommended.
I'd recommend Linux, but Jellyfin works with damn near everything. Use whatever youre comfortable with.
Getting content? First, use Firefox with Ublock Origin. Turn on all filters. Pirate websites are VERY hostile.
Get a VPN that can port forward. PIA and Proton can both do so, and are reasonable priced. VPN keeps simple copyright scanners from attacking your net
Read the rest
work, legally speaking.
Sites to look for goods: thepiratebay.org still exists. /r/piracy reddit has loads of links. Yandex search of "show torrent" has all completely relevant links. If you have a Usenet subscription to alt.binaries then you can use that method to grab stuff.
I also grab DVDs and Blurays and rip myself. Doing this is great since you may be able to find shows, but special features are almost never included. I use this tool to quickly rip: https://github.com/xenomachina/dvdrip/blob/master/dvdrip.py
https://www.bfloeser.de/posts/bluray/ covers Linux Bluray ripping, including where to download the AACS keys.