Live torrents for some old movies and pretty hard to find. I thought about somehow extracting .m3u8 but that didn't worked out. Those sits are getting better at hiding real stream URL. Any way to easy do it or something?

I have been surprised as to how many old movies or media in general exists on the Internet Archive, also Daily Motion is a good source for older TV shows

Look into joining private trackers.
It's a whole thing. A commitment. Real hurdles. But once done, I've never looked back.

Internet archive?

Between torrents, Usenet and the Internet Archive, most western media is findable. And for the really oddball stuff, try looking for a dvd and ripping it.

I've determined it's basically impossible to do that if you don't own a dedicated high-bandwidth seedbox. That costs a bunch of money, at which point you may just pay for another service (usenet) that has the stuff you want.

You have to maintain a certain ratio in all of them, but even though I've literally seeded everything I downloaded all the time, barely anyone ever connected to me, because their download need was already filled. Torrent clients prefer seeds with higher upload speeds. Thus I stayed at 0.0X ratio the whole time. Even when some of the files were designated as "free leech", so you can download and seed them to get your ratio up, that simply didn't work either.

Combine that with what you said with how hard it is to join them, they're just not worth it.

The whole concept is pretty stupid because of that. If there was a private tracker that simply looked at availability instead of ratio, sure. It's so weird to me how you would keep requiring ratio if all files are well-seeded.

Edit: the "dedicated" part was exaggerated, yes. However, "high bandwidth" means different things in different areas. Many areas in the world still have shitty 5 Mbit internet. Just because you personally are in the "lucky area" where you can do high-bandwidth seeding from home, does not mean other people do. If you can get much more than that at home, you're already in the "high bandwidth" group.

I've found some stuff just on YouTube.

I've determined it's basically impossible to do that if you don't own a dedicated high-bandwidth seedbox

Completely untrue. I don't have a seedbox, never had one, and I keep perfectly fine ratios on two different private trackers. One has a ratio of 56 I think, the other (the one I use the most) has a ratio of 4.5, both just have a minimum requirement ratio of 0.5 i think before you're kicked.

I just have a computer on my home network, which is also the media server.

Public libraries can be a good source.

Actually joining is the easy part.

Building ratio is the commitment and major hurdle. It's costs a bunch of money or time. A years long project. That can be shortened with money on a seedbox like you said. But it's a project you only need to do once. I did it a couple decades ago. Now I don't think of it. I can get almost anything at any time. It's absolutely worth it.

Massively depends on the private tracker. Some have a hard economy where you must seed every byte, but there are plenty of trackers that have bonus points based on seed time and torrent size which you can exchange for download allowances.

Some easy to get in trackers are torrentleech and seedpool, AFAIK both of them have open signups occasionally.

this is very much untrue. I've just got a home connection and manage fine.

sometimes Soulseek

A seedbox is cheaper than a single streaming subscription. A high end one isn't necessary. It's definitely worth it. Most private trackers allow you to make requests for content that isn't already on the site.

Being behind CGNAT and refusing to pay for a VPN with port forwarding make private trackers useless.

I usually seed a lot and for long time, but due to the issues above, never reach any criteria for private trackers.

What’s your upload bandwidth? Just asking because it is kinda relevant to the topic at hand.

I misread...

Sure, if you refuse to pay for things that have a cost, it severely limits your options in life. Good luck with that.

Technically I pay for symmetrical 1Gbit, functionally I only have around 100Mbit upload bandwidth

On one hand, that’s great news for uploaders!

On the other hand - oof! ISPs are bastards! You definitely deserve a bill credit! I was limited to about 100 Mbit when I moved in to my new apartment - turned out the fiber jack was bad. Have you been able to get a tech to check it out? Definitely a pain to get one out to check the physical line sometimes.

Ive got a Raspberry Pi (from back when they were cheap) and a USB HDD that chugs along just fine in the background. My upload speed is utter shit (rarely exceeds 1MB/s) but I've still uploaded terabytes of data. All you need is the ability to just leave the server running in the background.

That is not true. I have a home server on a mid level connection, and it works perfectly for maintaining ratio as long as your ports are forwarded correctly so you remain connectable.

What went wrong with the .m3u8 file? I've had lots of success ripping from websites using yt-dlp. For sites it doesn't have explicit support for, it can fail if it can't find the stream URL.

In those cases, I open the Network tab of Firefox's developer tools and try to find something that looks like a stream URL, and then copy it out of there and give it to yt-dlp. (Don't forget to surround the URL in double quotes if the URL contains an &)

If you provide the URL you're trying to download from, I can try to take a look.

I've been surprised at the old stuff my local library has.

On private trackers you can make a request for missing content.

I've determined it's basically impossible to do that if you don't own a dedicated high-bandwidth seedbox. That costs a bunch of money

I pay $6 or $7/mo for Ultra.CC and it's 1TB storage with 4TB monthly bandwidth. I never exceed the bandwidth, but the 1TB allows you to seed for quite some time. I set rules to keep stuff until a minimum 10:1 seed ratio, and some rare stuff for 50:1. Some stuff is so minimal/small, it's there indefinitely.

Dont forget about SoulSeek!

So much amazing stuff even easier than torrents in a way if you use Nicotine or something. The client is the search engine

I prefer scene releases as there's a decent quality version in whatever resolution for practically everything - and being properly tagged you can usually find the exact file on places like Usenet/IRC. One trick I use is to search in BiglyBT for the exact file size in bytes as per srrdb, and it often comes up with something (sometimes even several torrents with no seeds that can be swarm merged).

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, a usenet subscription costs less and you get everything you want without even having to seed anything.

I just have a computer on my home network, which is also the media server.

That, my dear friend, is a seedbox, that you had to pay for, and whose continued uptime you have to pay for. It also reduces all the other upload you can do, which is also payment. So okay, maybe my "dedicated" was wrong, but still.

Apart from that...

Think about this logically. If people join private trackers and only upload/download from each other, what happens if one person has a ratio of 56?

It means that 55 people have to have a ratio of 0 or 77 people of 0.25, etc. So, people with such high ratios can only exist if there are others who become leechers. And "becoming a leecher" just means you relatively invest less in seeding than others.

Private trackers work only if you are in the top x% of seeders. The more "super-seeders" there are, the more you have to invest yourself, essentially artificially increasing the barrier of entry more and more.

It's just a very stupid system.

That is indeed essentially a seedbox that you have. You use your home server, that you use for other stuff, as a seedbox. The cost of that is not only the server itself, but all the configuration you have to do, and continued payment is also the reduced bandwidth you constantly have. And your home internet has to actually fit the "high bandwidth" category in the first place.

Yes, you have a seedbox, that's exactly what I was saying, if you have that, you're probably fine.

That's only under the assumption that everyone downloads everything or only the same things...

I have not talked about a streaming subscription, but usenet, which is even cheaper than a seedbox.

Individually, yes, by correct selection of torrents you can "game" the system to your advantage. But you are wrong in the sense that the whole system in total still works like I say, if you're good at selecting the right torrent, then another person has to not be good at it, which then in turn will be the one without the good ratio.

You're home connection is then probably in the top% of available home connections. If you're in the countryside in certain countries you can be lucky if you get 1Mbit up/down

But that's kind of my point, if it is so hard to find a private tracker without that system and then also joining them is hard again, why would you bother? 95% of stuff you can find on public trackers and for the rest you can go on usenet once in a while.

Oh absolutely. If you already did the hard part, then it's worth continuing to use it.

What I'm saying is that if the hard part is in front of you, then why not be fine with 95% of stuff being available and once in a while paying for usenet for the rest? Usenet is ~1€ per month, and you don't have to be subscribed all the time, only when you want to get stuff you can't find on public trackers.