Unpopular opinion: sub to a plex/emby server. All your favorite shows on one platform, probably in 4k too, works on all devices, you never need to think ahead about torrenting something. Mine is 10$/month.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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What is the video bitrate of movies/shows in the share? Does it support transcoding or are they only doing direct stream?
I'm curious because OP wants higher quality and to save space I'm usually using similar bitrate as commercial streaming services for my media library.
Torrents indicate their resolution, and usually bitrate too.
But keep in mind, while it might say the resolution in the name, that doesn't mean it's not compressed to all hell. You'll want to also check the file size and runtime to estimate the quality.
Do you have a favorite torrenting site?
If you want better speeds and quality I recommend looking into TorrentLeech, FearNoPeer and similar private trackers.
Sometimes BluRay remuxes aren't available or well seeded on public trackers, while they aren't even counting against your upload/download ratio on the above trackers (On TL, FNP big torrents are freeleech).
1337x is my favorite. Look for efficient encodes like HEVC or AV1 for a better quality/size ratio (and ideally AAC or opus for audio). It's usually in the torrent name as well as the resolution, source, etc.
Thanks 👍
Second option
Streaming can provide decent quality, but not high quality. That's simply too costly on scale.
Bit rate alone doesn't necessarily tell you quality either.
I suggest you look for downloads and look for
- Release Groups that match your intentions (once you found favorites you may want to stick to them)
- Screenshots on releases/info pages
- Encoding information
To assess encoding information, you look at file type, video codec, and encoding bit-ness.
From high to low compatibility, and low to high compression ratio:
- mp4 file, AVC/x264/h.264
- mkv file, HEVC/x265/h.265
- mkv file, HEVC, 10-bit
- mkv file, AV1 [10-bit]
You can consider the triplets of the codec to be different names for the same thing.
You'll be able to play all file and codec types on a PC, but not necessarily on other devices. If you're streaming from PC to something else, that's fine too.
I'm usually looking for 10-bit HEVC releases because of their vastly superior size for quality. If that's not available, HEVC or AVC. In most cases, it doesn't matter too much to me.
A video with a lot of movement or visual detail will have bigger sizes.
If you compare an AVC release and bitrate with a HEVC 10-bit release and bitrate, they are vastly different. You can get the same quality for a fraction of file size and bitrate. More bitrate is often a waste of bandwidth and storage space.
If you are looking for a seamless streaming like experience you should look into Real Debrid + Stremio, it's 16-ish bucks/180 days