07. Download complete, what are these files?

More than likely they are WinRar files and a few Par files. If you installed Quickpar then you should be able to double click on one of the par files to open quickpar.


Quickpar will run through all the rar files to check their status. Green means its good and intact. Yellow means its missing parts. Red means a file is mission. When quickpar is done you will have the option to Repair if quickpar has enough blocks to fix the problem. If not, you could ask for a repost or just delete the files. I'll discuss posting to NG later.

If you had success in downloading (no repair needed) or repaired your download you are now ready to extract your movie.

If you have installed WinRar you should be able to right click on the rar file and choose EXTRACT HERE. This will go through each rar file associated with the download and join the movie file.

The movie file will appear in the folder you might have to scroll over to see it at the end of the list of files. If you have other files in this folder you will have to go to the very end to see the file. A simple refresh might fix that.

There you have a movie file ready to watch! You can now delete the RAR and Par files to save space. You already have what's in them so no need to keep them.

06. Getting your first movie download

If you got the news host, Forte Agent, WinRar, QuickPar all installed and ready to go we can now get our first movie (or whatever download you wish)


If you are using this for music, more than likely the post will not be in rar format but in mp3. This is because music files are small and do not need to be broken up for download.


Open Agent and select your alt.binaries.movies.divx newsgroup from the folder window.


If you haven't retrieved new headers for this group yet, right click on it and choose GET NEW HEADERS, this process might take a while as headers can range in the millions. Once the group has been populated with headers, if you check regularly (every day or 3 times a week) downloading headers will take less time.


Once headers are downloaded you will see them in the headers window. For better organization click the SUBJECT tab at the top. This will sort by subject title.




In the screen shot above you can see my layout. I double clicked on the par file at the top. This downloaded the file to a directory I specified in this case D:\Movies\_Parts\.

So how can we get all the headers under that to be saved into a folder we want? 2 ways:

1. Select all the messages at once by clicking the top header and while holding the buttond down dragging it down to the last message. Right click on one of the selected messages and choose SAVE ALL ATTACHMENTS...


This will bring up a SAVE TO: window... the rest is up to you.

OR

2. Tell Agent where to save all messages in this group to a folder. In Agent go to FOLDER > PROPERTIES. In the list on the left look for ATTACHMENT FOLDERS and select it.

On the right check the OVERRIDE DEFAULT SETTINGS box, change root folder to [Absolute Path], click the browse button and find the folder you want all the messages for this group to be saved in. Click ok to save the settings.

Back in the headers window (if you haven't selected all your messeages as directed above do it now). Right click on one of the selected messages and choose SAVE ALL ATTACHMENTS TO DEFAULT FOLDER.

Doing either step will start the download process. Go have a sandwich, Agent will get everything in good time.

05. The other tools to get your downloads.

WinRar: is a tools like winzip, except on steriods.
www.rarlabs.com/

QuickPar: is a tool verify your downloads integrity and repair corrupted posts or replace missing files if they weren't available to you.
www.quickpar.org.uk/

DIVX and XVID: common codecs used to create avi files at small file size which make downloading quick and easy.
www.divx.com/
www.xvid.org/Downloads.15.0.html

And my most favorite tool of all. http://www.binsearch.info/ this website is a simple search engine to find what has been posted in what group. It can also generate a NZB file for Forte Agent to open and collect all the parts posted for your results found in binsearch. A NZB file is a text file that has information that Agent reads and retrieves what the NZB file tells it to. Makes downloading headers almost obsolete (almost).

04. What newsgroups should I subscribe to?

There are a ton of groups out there but which ones are more "fruitful". Here are the basic few that have the most traffic.

In Agent go in TOOLS > NEWSGROUP DIRECTORY

Use the list below to search for what you want, in this example I used alt.binaries.movies.divx.

Click Begin Search

When the results come back double click alt.binaries.movies.divx and add them as a subscribed newsgroup. Double clicking will give you a pop up window where you can specify where store the group.

You can also create new "desks" to store it in. This way keeping your groups organize is easy.

Search for these groups as told above.

Movies: alt.binaries.movies.divx
Music: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 (will give an exensive list, choose your preference)
Programs: alt.binaries.cd.image (see also alt.binaries.warez)
TV Shows: alt.binaries.tv
Adult: alt.binaries.erotica

Those should be good for now. Once you have them in your folder window, right click and choose GET NEW HEADERS. At the bottom you will see a progress bar.


When all message are retrieved the headers will appear in the headers window.


If you double click on a header its contents will appear in the message window.


Once the message and attachment have been downloaded you can right click on it and launch it or save it to your computer where you like.

03. Forte Agent setup.

Ok so you got the 30 day trial from http://www.forteinc.com/ now you are ready to set it up.

As I recommended http://www.newshosting.com/ I am going to use this as my example. Your newshosting provider should have given you their news server address and that is all you need along with your username and password.

When you install Agent it will ask you for an email and a name, for now put whatever you like here. Real or Fake is up to you. When and if it asks for a NNTP server or news server put what your news hosting gave you, for newshosting.com its unlimited.newshosting.com. If it asks to connect and get newsgroups select YES or OK. If you get an error, continue and hopefully we'll fix that.

Once the program starts go into TOOLS > SERVERS AND ACCOUNTS.

In hostname make sure your news server is in here if not please add it.

Set Login Method to Username and Password and enter in your info. Check "Remember password..." if you want Agent to not ask you for this info each time you login into Agent.

Click OK at the bottom to make the settings final. If you had an error before go to TOOLS > NEWSGROUP DIRECTORY and choose UPDATE DIRECTORY and select DOWNLOAD COMPLETE LIST. This should have gotten us all to the same place now. If not contact your news server as they may have special instructions with Agent.

You should now have a list of newsgroups that are available to. Looks intimidating yes? Nah we'll only be focused on a few groups. Not to say the other groups have nothing, by all means explore! But for the purpose of this blog, I want you to get what you want and now.

02. I have a news provider, now what?

You'll need a news reader. Outlook has a built in news reader. I wouldn't recommend using this as NG posting has new encoding methods for faster downloads and Outlook doesn't have the encoder (yenc) built in to properly read these messages. If it does, I haven't gotten it to work so it doesn't work for me.

Forte Agent is one of the best PC news readers. You can get a free 30 trial from http://www.forteinc.com/. I have had nothing but good experiences for the past 6 years with Agent. Agent also has the encoder (yenc) built in so when posters post with yenc you'll never have to do any extra steps to view the file.

Agent is also set up like Outlook which makes using it easy to figure out. You have 3 windows, a folder window, a list of headers (subjects) window, and a message window.

The folder window
The folder window contains the newsgroup titles that are available from your news host. From here you can subscribe to a particular newsgroup that will be put in a subscribed folder for quick access. Also in this window you can tell Agent to retrieve new headers (subjects).

The headers window
The headers window contains all the headers that were retrieved from a newsgroup in the folders window. These headers get replaced by other headers if the selection in the folder window changes as each newsgroup will have its own headers. Headers are the posts that people upload. These posts can be simple messages or messages with attachments much like email. Just like the folder window you will need to download the header in order to see the attachment or message it contains.

The message window
The message window will only have something in it if the header that is currently selected has been retrieved. If its has been downloaded the message and attachment it contains will be visible here. You can right click to save or launch the attachment. You can also tell Agent to always save in a particular folder automatically for a group of posts or for a whole group. Example, if you had a newsgroup that was dedicated to movies you may want all those attachments to be saved to C:\Movies, you can do this in Agent.

There are other news readers out there, but Forte Agent has consistantly been reliable for me and its easy to use. The end.

01. Where to get a Newsgroup Provider?

Your ISP usually has a free newsgroup (NG) service. But keep in mind they really don't provide a great service or support because they aren't that popular and doesn't bring in the big bucks as much as the internet service they are providing you.

So where do you get a great provider? Look for unlimited news hosting like http://www.newsrazor.net/, http://www.giganews.com/ just to name a few. My current recommendation is http://www.newshosting.com/, they offer an unlimited download amount for $14.95 a month.

You are probably saying... 'Hey that's not free!' And you are right... but this one monthly payment is all that you need for a world of downloads. Sure you could pay Napster 9.95 a month for free music, but that's all you get, music.

With NG you'll get music, movies, programs the list is endless. So think of it as for the price of a newsgroup provider you'll get everything else for free. Also, if you are paying monthly for an 'adult' site... cancel it. NG has a rediculous amount of adult movies you'll never have enough time to watch it all.

If you are still not convinced, just give any of these newsgroups a try for one month. I'm sure you'll see how that $14.95 is such a bargain for the amount of downloads you'll have access to.