Some reading for you: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/389304 and http://www.slyck.com/ng.php You'll need a NewsReader, lots of free ones but NewsLeecher is an excellent payware. Also a good News server like PowerUseNet or Giganews (a bit more). You'll need QuickPar (free) and a good search site like http://nzbmatrix.com/nzb.php and there are many more. Not very expensive when compared to buying one DVD or a night at the theatre. Pay attention to the retention rate, all sounds complicated but it's not.
http://www.napasoftware.com/news_server_lookup.php or from a guide: "To find out if your ISP has a news server and to find the IP address go to the customer support section of their website and search for "news server" or "nntp". If their website doesn't help, give them a call and ask whether they have a news server and what the address is. Bargain ISP's (such as Netzero and Juno) generally do not maintain news servers. Keep an eye on retention rate and cap, my ISP has a 3 day retention and 2 G cap making it pretty well useless. In that case, check out some of the servers available.
The problem with usenet, is most of the time, you never get all those 100+ files that you need to combine to make a download. Also, because they do a 8-bit to 6-bit conversion, the amount you need to download is actually MORE data than a regular 8bit (byte) download...
No offense but if Usenet's the past, what's the future. There have only been a couple of times in over a year of using it that files were missing. There also were a couple of times that files were posted without the pars needed to repair them but they are usually posted later seperately. Files are larger than a regular download but really only noticeable on larger downloads, dvd-r is where I notice it most but because you're not uploading, that and the speed more than make up for it.
