Download Files with Newsgroups
If like me you’re a bit fed up of poor speeds from peer to peer networks you might want to try out a subscription to a premium News Group provider. As News Groups are not peer to peer based you nearly always hit the maximum download speed for your internet connection. I used to use Bit Torrent regularly, however since signing up to a Premium News Group provider I haven’t looked back.
This guide covers how to use NZB files with your News Group provider to download binary files.
Sign up to a News Provider
The first thing you’ll need is an account with a News Group provider, I use GigaNews, they offer a free trial which will let you try out the system first. You can sign up for a Giga News Trial Here.
Once you’ve signed up, make a note of the following details:
- Username and password (Should be emailed to you after sign up)
- News group server either news.giganews.com or news-europe.giganews.com
Install a News Reader
In order to download a binary files from the News Servers you’ll need to download NZB files, these files tell your news reader which posts to download, and how to put it all back together again at the end.
There are some readers you can pay for, however as a basic reader I would suggest GrabIt, you can download GrabIt here.
Once you’ve installed GrabIt it will handle any .nzb files you download.
You need to set up GrabIt to use your premium news group server. In order to do this run GrabIt and right click on “My GrabIt” then choose “Add Server”.
Give the Server a Profile name if you wish and enter the server you noted previously under “hostname” and your GigaNews username and password in the appropriate boxes. All other settings can be pretty much left as default. You might want to change the number of connections later depending on your internet connection and the package yuo venetually sign up for from GigaNews.
Finding and Downloading NZB Files
Just like Torrents you have to download a small file called an NZB, you can find NZBs files on various NZB indexing sites such as http://www.binsearch.info/
Once you’ve searched on once of these sites and located the NZB you want you need to download it, GrabIt should be set to handle any files with the .nzb file extension and should therefore open it.
If not, save the .nzb and then import it into GrabIt. When the “Import Batch File” window appears click “Grab” and the download will start.
You’ll now see all the posts that make up the batch and you can see the progress as GrabIt downloads them.
Once they’re all downloaded GrabIt willl most likely take care of any extracting or repairing. By default any files downloaded will be saved to a folder called “GrabIt Downloads” in your “My Documents” folder.
