Usenet block vs subscription accounts

innercitadel@lemmy.nz to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 23 points –

Why do most people seem to go with subscription accounts? I've used block accounts for a few years and only have to buy more every 1-2 years. Is there some kind of benefit I'm missing?

14

Block accounts can get expensive if you’re doing a lot of traffic.

The setup I recommend is one unlimited account and a block account on a different backbone. That way you can download as much as you like and the block account gives you extra coverage.

It depends on your usage. If you are downloading hundreds of GB per month or more, a block account does not make sense.

Personally I get almost everything off torrents, so I also have some Block accounts which last me many years for the occassional use.

If blocks work for your traffic patterns, then stick with it. im sure most download so much that blocks dont make sense to use when an unlimited acocunt is pretty cheap.

But then don't you end up having to subscribe two or more different providers? Or is there a particular monthly provider that has incredible availability? I have block accounts with three different providers.

What are block accounts?

I also wanted too know so I looked it up:

Usenet “Block Accounts” are accounts where Usenet access is purchased by the gigabyte (GB). For example, a 100 GB block account will allow you to download up to 100 GB of data from a Usenet feed. Most block accounts have no expiration date so you can use them for years. Many people use block accounts as backup accounts to fill in files missing from their main Usenet feed.

Really depends on your usage. I have a few Terrabytes of Usenet traffic every month so I'm glad I don't have to use block accounts for that

As someone interested/learning about Usenet (at this point mostly torrents for me), what would consume so much data per month(if that's appropriate to ask!)?

Just having a Jellyfin instance for family and friends. I have everything in h264 for maximum compatibility to avoid transcoding. All 12 seasons of Bones (2005) take up 800GB alone for example. A 1080P Remux movie takes 10-40GB

I have a near constant stream of currently airing TV shows and basically every semi popular movie coming through in both 1080p and 4K where available, with old files being upgraded as they come available, so I tend to average 100-200gb per day of Usenet traffic. My torrent traffic is tiny, maybe 50gb per month.