newsgroup/usenet access

[J1mbo]

Just posted similar in the Virgin t'interweb section, but how do you configure/what programs can you use for newsgroup access on a mac?

There's a couple of HD movie clip groups I'd love to take a peek at but have no concept of how to do this without resorting to paying for a third-party browser. Virgin claims to have newsgroup access as part of it's package but I have no idea how to set this up...any advice gratefully received. Ta.

[OutKa5t]

Unison is your newsgroup friend as far as Macs are concerned.

[py6km]

iGrabNews is the best I've found

[owain_thomas]

Originally Posted by J1mbo

Just posted similar in the Virgin t'interweb section, but how do you configure/what programs can you use for newsgroup access on a mac?

There's a couple of HD movie clip groups I'd love to take a peek at but have no concept of how to do this without resorting to paying for a third-party browser. Virgin claims to have newsgroup access as part of it's package but I have no idea how to set this up...any advice gratefully received. Ta.

Hi,

If you want to get access to those sort of groups you'll need a few things. the first being a subscription to a newgroup supplier. virgin will certainly carry a fair few free ones but not likely the ones which you want. I use www.newshosting.com for about £8 a month you get unlimited downloads (you need this if you're downloading a lot of HD material).

You'll also need a bit of software to browse the groups. by far the best I've used is www.newsleecher.com - this does a lot of the things you need automatically and includes a great search facility which allows you to trawl through all the groups out there without having to subscribe to them and manually go through them. one of its main benefits is that it will automatically repair and extract your downloads for you, without this feature you're looking at another 30 minutes or so of messing around when the files have downloaded (for a typical feature length movie). The one caveat with this is that it is windows only - the reason I've included it on this mac forum is that it runs perfectly under parallels (I max out my 10mb connection with virgin with it) so is well worth looking at, AFAIK there is not an equivalent mac program (though I'd love to be corrected).

HTH,
owain

[SeedyR]

Another vote for the app Unison and the servers of Newshosting.

[gomez1]

yet another vote for unison and newshosting

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by owain_thomas

Hi,

If you want to get access to those sort of groups you'll need a few things. the first being a subscription to a newgroup supplier. virgin will certainly carry a fair few free ones but not likely the ones which you want. I use www.newshosting.com for about £8 a month you get unlimited downloads (you need this if you're downloading a lot of HD material).

You'll also need a bit of software to browse the groups. by far the best I've used is www.newsleecher.com - this does a lot of the things you need automatically and includes a great search facility which allows you to trawl through all the groups out there without having to subscribe to them and manually go through them. one of its main benefits is that it will automatically repair and extract your downloads for you, without this feature you're looking at another 30 minutes or so of messing around when the files have downloaded (for a typical feature length movie). The one caveat with this is that it is windows only - the reason I've included it on this mac forum is that it runs perfectly under parallels (I max out my 10mb connection with virgin with it) so is well worth looking at, AFAIK there is not an equivalent mac program (though I'd love to be corrected).

HTH,
owain

You omitted to mention that you have to pay extra for the supersearch functionality! It is an annual supscription if I remember correctly. Newleecher is very good indeed, but Unison is very close but indeed for singular newsgroups only...

And yes I also use Unison and Newshosting

[rob_finch]

I'm a Unison user too, but am checking out iGrabNews so thanks for the heads up on it.

I use Newzbin to list group contents, so I can download a file (with a .nzb extension) that contains only the headers for the files I want. I've created custom Grouplists which means I can tailor it to the content I am specifically interested in. Works great. Costs £2 for (I think) 60 days.

One thing I am really looking for is scheduled downloading. Virgin Media cap me between 4pm and midnight, so I'd love to find an app that will start the queued downloads at 12:01 am. Any thoughts??

[owain_thomas]

Originally Posted by dejongj

You omitted to mention that you have to pay extra for the supersearch functionality!

Sorry, forgot that bit. cost is about £15 per year so not really a great deal and the extra functionality (for me) makes it money well spent.

[danbl]

Is there anyway of getting a trial on Newshosting? What sort of content can you get on there? Sorry if it sounds daft, but I've never used newsgroups before.

[owain_thomas]

have a look on their website, I think they do a one month 10GB trial.

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by danbl

Is there anyway of getting a trial on Newshosting? What sort of content can you get on there? Sorry if it sounds daft, but I've never used newsgroups before.

Your internet provider should have a newsgroup server as well. What you pay for with others is highspeed and high retention rates (ie. messages that date back longer)....All you'll find is messages, and some have attachments. I suggest you check out newsleecher since its super search makes things a bit more user friendly...

[cwick]

Originally Posted by rob_finch

One thing I am really looking for is scheduled downloading. Virgin Media cap me between 4pm and midnight, so I'd love to find an app that will start the queued downloads at 12:01 am. Any thoughts??

I use easyNews & SpeedDownload to achieve that. Easynews have a fantastic "auto-unrar" feature, so instead of downloading rars, pars etc, they do that server-side, and you just pull down the completed file. All done through a web-browser, so you can just drop the url of the auto-unrar'd file onto SpeedDownload, which will actually do the download as and when.

I think SpeedDownload has a 2 week trial, and easynews is only £5 a month for 20Gb (remainder is carried over at the end of the month), so it's a cheap alternative to try out.

I don't bother with News readers any more since subscribing to easy news, despite having bought Unison. I don't seem to need one anymore.

[geot]

Try sabnzbd http://www.br41n.com/ I've tried unison,etc and found this solution to be the best, auto unpack's and you can link it to amazon.com through greasemonkey scripts in firefox http://www.greasespot.net/ and http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8232. For this solution you also need newzbin access. Worth every penny. I also use newshosting, no complaints been with them over a year now.

[breadbun]

Tried them all! Good, bad and ugly. At the moment using NZBDrop from Asar (http://www.asar.com). I used to use their text-only newsreader "Hogwasher". Unison was never stable for me, plus it annoyed me how it would give no indication of the speed you were downloading at, or the time remaining. If I have large files to grab I still use Newsleecher on my PC though.