Real-Debrid, a popular streaming and download service, has started returning copyright-infringement errors on many cached torrents. The renewed crackdown began days after a corporate restructuring. A third-party source says that long-time subscribers have lost 50 to 70 percent of their libraries overnight, with the filter targeting popular keywords such as WEB-DL, AMZN, and [RARBG].

Which Real-Debrid alternative has the most cached content?

No clue. I use newsgroups myself but I know there's a big debrid fanbase here so I thought I'd post the article.

did they just 'restructure' themselves into irrelevance and unsustainable subscriber loss?

What do they think people pay them for?

Not really what you're asking but if you google "free media heck ya" the top link should be a .net website. I use this to find what I'm looking for.

Yeah, noticed that a few days ago, most of the stuff I watched on streamio was gone.

Luckily, my subscription runs out in like 45 days anyways, so I just switched to Torbox. Works pretty well and is at a similar price. Too bad for the 4€ I wasted, but what can you do I guess

I have been using to box for almost a year. It can be slow to load on stremio and sometimes disappear for a day or so.

I actually preferred real debrid historically, until they started to get all moralistic.

Since I left last time Real Debrid threw pirates under the bus:

I used https://alldebrid.com/ but wasn't quite as good at the time. Maybe it's gotten better since RD 1st exodus.

Premiumize is what I switched to and use now. Has as much cached as Real Debrid did during their peak as far as I can tell over the past year or however long it's been. But it's more expensive since it's a combo service not just Debrid and it's a lengthy feature list that includes cloud storage with many ways to access it, VPN, and Usenet amongst other stuff: https://www.premiumize.me/features

My main need is a drop-in replacement for Real-Debrid for Stremio for relatives to use; compared to other options, it's one of closest options to Netflix levels of usability on a smart TV.

FMHY recommends Torbox, which also seemed to be the consensus of a Reddit thread I checked. It probably doesn't have quite as big of a library of cached content as Real-Debrid, but I've noticed specific shows and movies getting removed from the service already, so a switch is probably needed soon.

Premiumize is also commonly recommended, though its higher cost in exchange for also having Usenet functionality doesn't seem to be worth it when Usenet providers like Eweka have better retention.

I've use Premiumize for what must be going on a decade now, usually get 2 years on the Black Friday sale. It's been flawless. Buy credits to test it out until that sale and then see if you want to lock in.

Maybe I'll put up with Real-Debrid until Black Friday and switch to Premiumize at the better price then; I don't use Usenet that often, but having it as an option would be useful (at a reasonable price point).

Are most things usually cached by Premiumize?

It has to be pretty old or weird to not be cached. And if it isn't cached, you can paste a magnet link and the site will pull it down to your cloud storage so you can stream it either off the site or through your preferred client. But I can count on the thumbs of one hand how often I need to do that in a year.

DM cody_premiumize on Reddit for a trial code: https://www.reddit.com/r/Addons4Kodi/comments/1tbltsm/premiumize_trial_codes/

I selfhost Plex and the *arr's with out much complaint. Symmetrical 1Gbps and 48TB space. Aside from some old content I've been able to get anything my family requests.

Back in the day I had a satellite dish that auto downloaded the encryption keys every couple months and I had full access to a lot of TV.... I REALLY want to set something like this up again, and I did some research. It seems the keys roll every 7 seconds now and you need someone with an active subscription who has a low latency server for you to poll. I haven't looked into it much beyond that. I know IPTV is the big thing now but I've never really got Into it.

Excuse the ignorance, what is the point of this service?

Update: Real-Debrid’s parent company, XT Network, responded shortly after we published this article. The company explained that the current situation is unrelated to the corporate restructuring. At the same time, it confirms that it indeed uses filters to block content. [...]

The filtering actions it has taken are a response to keyword lists provided by trusted flaggers, which is in accordance with Article 16 of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Nah it looks like they just caved to the copyright mafia.

The main reason in this case, is because I live in Germany, so I'll be fucking executed, if I get caught pirating.

I already payed a thousand euros a few years ago when I was caught seedimg "Her" (I forgot to turn on my VPN). That's when I decided to never do anything risky again, so I got a debrid service. That's fine, because no actual seeding is now happening through my ip.

I just have qbitorrent set to only use the VPN adapter in the settings, so if I open it and the VPN isn’t connected it just doesn’t work.

Truly mind boggling, it is the equivalent of a book shop deciding to stop selling books. That is literally their whole business.

Newsgroups surpass debrid in every way, unfortunately it is old technology and requires a little bit of technical knowledge. To use Usenet effectively you would need to create a server, and automate everything using arrs. It is worth it though cheaper than debrid and better than most torrent sites.

Why not just torrent?

Because Torrentio is more reliable with a debrid service.

The debrid services do the torrenting, you only download from cache. So debrid services are safe in Germany. I'd still look into Usenet though. It costs more but is super fast and very safe.

I guess I'm just old, I dunno. What's wrong with just opening a magnet link and downloading a video?

My relatives exclusively watch TV on their smart TV, so something as close as possible to Netflix-levels of usability (search for content and watch it within a similar user interface) was necessary for it to work for them at all.

I wish Stremio had a better new content recommendation system, as running out of things to watch without knowing of new things means they often end up watching AI slop on YouTube instead.

Corporate restructuring

The act of selling out

It just makes things more streamlined and 'streaming-like' with a debrid service. Fewer mental steps in the way.