----------------------- Page 1----------------------Downloading from Usenet is as easy as torrents but a whole lot faster!

For you magicians and magic fans...you're going to need a big hard drive with a lot of space or a lot of blank DVD's...because there are about a thousand full magic DVD's available o n Usenet! Pros of Usenet: High Speed Downloads With many Usenet providers, your download speed is only lim ited by your ISP's (Internet Service Provider) bandwidth. That's right, you can download at ful l throttle! You're not at the mercy of other peoples upload speeds. No Sharing Required There is no requirement to share files you are downloading. Unlike torrents or other p2p networks, you won't have to worry about getting in trouble with your I SP for sharing. There's also no need to setup port forwarding on your router since you are not sharing f iles. Retention, is the length of time that files are available on Usenet. Many of the premium NSP's (Newsgroup Service Provider) are approaching four years of retention. Your upload speed is only limited by your ISP's bandwidth and you only have to upl oad your file one time and it's available for anyone to download for almost four years. No need to hang around seeding your file for days, weeks, or months. Just about everything you are looking for can be found on Usenet (TV shows, musi c, movies, games, ebooks and a lot more). Cons of Usenet: You will need a NSP account which can cost you as little as $8.00 per month. But when you figure that you could download five to ten gigabytes an hour more-or-less depending on your Internet speed, it's really not much of a con. Even if you could only download at about o ne gigabyte an hour, that still equals about 150 to 200 full magic DVDs per month...not bad for $8 bu cks a month. A Little Usenet History: Usenet is one of the oldest networks around. It was sta rted in 1980...about a decade before the Internet started. It's made up of thousands of servers from all over the world that sync to each other. When a file is uploaded to one server, it gets uploaded to t he other servers that are connected to it, and they upload to the servers that are connected to them, and so on, and so on, until the file is propagated to every Usenet server around the world. How To Download From Usenet Similar to torrents; where you download a .torrent fil

e to your torrent client (utorrent, Vuze, BitComet, etc.) and it starts downloading the fi le. Usenet is just as simple except you download a .nzb file to your NZB client and it starts downloadin g your file. Yes, it is just as simple as torrents but has a lot more benefits as mentioned above. All you'll need to take advantage of Usenet is... (1). A PC with an Internet connection. ----------------------- Page 2----------------------(2). A NSP. Visit: http://www.newsgroupreviews.com/ to find some of the best new sgroup providers, best deals, free trials, etc. This might help you narrow down your search. Out of over 2,400 votes on a nzb si te for favorite Usenet provider, here's the top seven and how they ranked: Astraweb Giganews UsenetServer Supernews Newshosting Newsdemon Easynews 44% 13% 8% 8% 7% 6% 2%

For you magic fans, I would choose one with the highest retention (1,400 days or more) and all the other bells and whistles (Unlimited Usenet access, No cap on download speed and SSL). You'll want that high retention so that you can get all the older magic DVD's first, before they disappear! (3). SABnzbd is a free NZB client that works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It ma kes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything it can. All you have to do is download a .nzb file. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downl oaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction. SABnzbd Quick Setup Guide (4). Optional You don't have to have a newsreader, but if you would like to make requests, read and post text messages to the alt.binaries.magic newsgroup, I highly recommend getti ng one (specially you magicians and magic fans). I personally recommend the free newsreader PAN. Besides being free and it works with Windows, Mac and linux, it keeps the text messages groupe d in threads for easy reading and posting of new text messages. Newsbin Pro and Newsleecher are a couple of the top commercial newsreaders and can be purchased for about $20 each (free 10 day trial). PAN Manual

(5). Optional I highly recommend subscribing to NZBMatrix (about $10 for ten y ears), everything is sorted by category which makes it very easy to narrow down your search and find what you are looking for. It's great for downloading most stuff and you can read comments fr om other users. Although magic DVDs are generally not posted on NZBMatrix it's still handy for a ll the other stuff. Free Internet NZB search sites: Each one is a little different, but they all bas ically do the same thing. They allow you to download the small .nzb file (usually only a few hundred KB) to your NZB client (Sabnzbd), which starts the whole file downloading. You may find searching some of the NZB index sites (listed below) a little confu sing if you don't use some advanced settings for your search. Example: Movies are generally going to b e at least 700 MB or bigger, so to narrow down your search you could put 650 MB in the size box an d the search will only return files that match your query that are 650 MB or bigger. Once you get used to searching using some of the advanced options you'll see it's very easy to find what you ar e looking for. ----------------------- Page 3----------------------If you can't find what you are looking for at one search site, try another one. The search results can very from site to site. With NZBClub you can search or browse back to almost fou r years ago in alt.binaries.magic. Some of the other search sites will only go back as far as 2 .4 years to 3.5 years ago. Also, there are thousands of newsgroups on Usenet and some search sites lik e Binsearch index a lot more newsgroups than the others. It's a good idea to bookmark all of them in case your favorite site goes down or is having technical difficulties...you've always got a backup. Binsearch.info or browse alt.binaries.magic NZBClub.com or browse alt.binaries.magic Mysterbin.com or browse alt.binaries.magic NZBIndex.nl or browse alt.binaries.magic NzbMovieSeeker.com You'll find this site very handy for movies. NzbTvSeeker.com You'll find this site very handy for TV shows. My Recommendations: If you're ready to jump in with both feet just go sign up fo r one of the annual plans (Astraweb, UseNetServer, or Newshosting, they've all got great retention). If you want to take a test drive check out some of the FREE trials. Either way you'll be amazed how fa st and easy Usenet

is! Once you've signed up for a NSP, you'll need to know their news servers addresse s, ports they use and the username and password you signed up with in order to configure Sabnzbd o r a newsreader (NewsBin Pro, PAN, etc.). They may send that info to you in an email when you si gn up or you'll need to login to their website and locate that information. It'll look something like this depending on your provider: General Servers: news.astraweb.com European Server: eu.news.astraweb.com US Server: us.news.astraweb.com Ports: 119, 23, 1818 or 8080 Maximum Connections: 20 connections Secure Servers: ssl.astraweb.com European Server: ssl-eu.astraweb.com US Server: ssl-us.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563 Maximum Connections: 20 connections

Twenty connections are great if you have blazing fast Internet speeds, but for t he average person you'll probably only need a couple of connections to max out your ISP's speed. ----------------------- Page 4----------------------Download, install and configure Sabnzbd (Quick Setup Guide). When you start Sabn zbd it opens up in your web browser and everything you need for monitoring downloads and configu ring Sabnzbd is right there in your web browser (don't close it). The first time you run Sabnzbd one of the screens will prompt you for your host information. That's the information we mentioned above that you should have gotten from your NSP. If you ever want to change or add servers Click Config Servers If you are using a SSL server make sure you use the proper port and click the SSL checkbox. Make sure you click the Enable checkbox to make that server active. Click the Save Changes button. Tip: You can setup and enable more than one server/host if you like (three server/hosts is a good number). The advantage is that if one server/host has problems it'll automatically download from the others. Connections: Depending on how many maximum

connections you have available from your NSP, you'll need to divide them up amongst every server/host, your newsreader and your upload client (if you use one). If your NSP gives you a maximum of 20 connections and you setup two server/hosts with 10 connections on each, you won't have any connections left to setup anything else. ----------------------- Page 5----------------------You can see in the image to the right that Sabnzbd will create a default directory (green box) to store your downloads. If you would like to change it to somewhere else just Click Config Folders and setup the paths to the folders you would like to use (three red boxes). The Watched Folder: is the folder you will download your .nzb files to and Sabnzbd will automatically detect them and start downloading them (Sabnzbd must be running). ----------------------- Page 6----------------------Now you're ready to download! Go to one of the search sites mentioned above, fin d something to download... Click the checkbox next to it. Click the Get or Create nzb button. Browse to your Sabnzbd Watched Folder and save it there. Within a few seconds Sabnzbd will detect the nzb file and start downloading it. You can click on the Queue tab at the top to see what is in your queue, approximate time that it will f inish downloading and the speed that it is downloading at. Or you can click on the Status tab at the top to see what is downloading. Keep in mind that the search sties create a NZB that tells your NZB client which files to download. You can click the checkbox on multiple files and create one NZB file to download all of them (not recommended for large files). Sometimes someone will post a .nzb file to a newsg roup, if you download it with a search site you will basically be creating a NZB to download a .nzb. Once the .nzb is downloaded you'll have to move it to your Sabnzbd Watched Folder in order to ac tually download the files associated with it.

Once you get comfortable with downloading from Usenet, try one of the newsreader s (NewsBin Pro, PAN, etc.) and come chat with us at alt.binaries.magic, we're very laid back and more than willing to help new people. You'll need to configure your newsreader with the host informat ion just like you did with Sabnzbd. Within your newsreader, you'll need to subscribe to alt.binaries.m agic and download the headers which can take a little while depending on your Internet speed. You can also download files with your newsreader, but I find using the NZB searc h sites with Sabnzbd is a quicker and easier solution for downloading. I find the newsreader more use ful for reading and posting text messages to the newsgroups. So I just sort the binary files from th e text files and delete all the binary files, which leaves me with all the text messages. If you ever want to learn how to upload to Usenet here's a guide that will teach you step-by-Step. How To Rip a DVD and Upload it to Usenet - The Guide. Hope to see you at alt.binaries.magic ;) Good luck and happy downloading (or uploading) :)