Here’s more news from the BitTorrent front – this time related to two popular private torrent trackers PTN and MMA-Tracker (MMA-T). PTN, the ratio free movie tracker, has opened external invite applications to the public after about three months – interested members can now apply and join this community, provided their applications gain approval from tracker staff. In other news, MMA-Tracker, one of the best dedicated torrent sites for mixed martial arts and other action sports content, has opened signups for a brief period of time. This should be good news for potential new members as both PTN and MMA-T are known be two decent niche trackers that are usually closed to the public. For a detailed version of the stories, continue reading.

PTN External Applications Open

There aren’t many ratio free movie trackers in the BT community and PTN is one of the few that’s around. This private tracker has been online for some time and has been building a good community of its own. Sites statistics have improved a lot since our last mention of it and as of 30/10/2010 PTN tracks 9600 torrents. It’s active user base has grown to 2750+ members. PTN is a secretive site that’s always closed to public signups but they usually recruit fresh blood via external invite applications. To read more information about PTN site, it’s ratio free system and not to mention the invite applications, we suggest you read this article. Invite applications are currently open and will continue to be open for two more days. On a side note, PTN recently upgraded to a new server and site navigation speeds have seen drastic improvements since then – slowness issues that plagued this site for the last couple of weeks now seem to be resolved.

Site Name: PTN

Invite Application URL: http://*********.***/comeandplay.php (do not use ‘www’ in the address)

MMA Tracker Is Open

This should be good news if you are a fan of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), UFC, Boxing and other related action sports content. MMA-Tracker is easily one of the best places on the net to find videos, instructional, Audio and other media related to BJJ, Boxing, Fitness, Grappling, Judo, Kickboxing, MMA, etc. This is again a usually invite only, closed community that does not have regular open signups. MMA-T does not prefer much publicity either – there are rules in place that prohibit members from posting tracker address in public forums. If you need more info, one of our previous reviews of the site may be found via this link. However, it’s worth mentioning that MMA-Trecently overhauled the user interface and the site now sports a brand new look than the one our review was based on. As of 30/10/2010 there were 13600+ registered users and ~7250 indexed on the tracker.

Site Name: MMA-Tracker

Signup URL: http://***********.***/signup240809.php (or visit the homepage and click signup link)

Note: Please do not post full tracker URLs in public. Both sites featured in this article prohibit this practice and we request our readers to comment without breaching the rules.

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Back in November 2008, we ran an article on SilverSeed torrent tracker. SilverSeed (SS) was a private community that focused primarily on music video releases. Unfortunately, the site did not gain much popularity back then and eventually died due to lack of user activity. Now, nearly one and a half years later, SilverSeed has returned. This time around the site has a much better outlook and looks like it’s here to stay – there’s plenty of activity going on, lots of torrents are being uploaded daily and the staff seem to be armed with all the extra tools necessary to add value to a BitTorrent tracker (scene access, auto uploader bots, etc). For those wishing to join a growing new music video tracker, SS signups are currently open.

Before we say anything about SilverSeed, here’s a brief description sent to us by one of their staff members, Silver Glass:

Hello, world. We're relaunching SilverSeed - tracker dedicated to music videos. Previous version didn't last long because of certain reasons which won't happen this time. So what's new, you ask? We have strong enthusiasm and a lot of content to offer! We already have almost 1500 torrents up and seeded (and site officially opened its doors on the 25th of January!). We have seeding bot with 300mbit speed. Also, in nearest days we will start autouploading of scene releases (announce channel will be open soon as well).

That's it, peoplez! Welcome to new Silverseed:

http://silverseed.net/signup.php

Oh, and starting from today (25th) and for two weeks in a row, freeleech and double-upload is enabled. Hurry up!

One thing is for certain – they sure aren’t lying about the content. It hasn’t even been two weeks since SilverSeed’s return (site was on beta since 15h of January 2009) and already the active torrent count has shot past 2000 (over 60 videos were added yesterday alone).  Torrents indexed on this site are pretty fast, with even torrents with 1-2 seeders having reasonable download speeds. Site navigation speeds have also improved and the slowness

Speaking about the content available on SS, it’s all about music videos. You can find and download hundreds of music videos from the US and UK, both scene and non scene releases including several large packs. Currently, videos related to 21 different music genres are indexed. Available video formats include DivX, XViD and x264 encodes. There will also be a lot of VOB (Video Object) container based files uploaded in the future. A screenshot of SS interface which shows some of the releases can be found below:

SilverSeed is based on a customized version of popular TBDEV codebase. In terms of features, they have already added support for category based RSS feeds and more new components such as a requests system and IRC downloader & announce bot are in the pipeline. There will also be a lot of VOB releases

Signups for SS are currently open. Current user limit of the site is set to 5000 and there are 2000 users registered as at 30/1/2010. Provided the signups remain open till the site reaches user capacity, there are around 3000 free slots available for the taking. If you are interested in music videos, check it out. SS is a tracker with a promising start.

Site Name: SilverSeed (http://silverseed.net)

Signup URL: http://silverseed.net/signup.php

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DLC or Downloadable Content Packs are one of the hot topics when it comes to PC gaming these days. Almost all major games developers now release additional game content in the form of DLCs, as we have seen with Dragon Age : Origins, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 1 and now Mass Effect 2. Such packs are released with several goals in mind including generating more revenue, adding more value to an existing product and of course, discouraging pirates. I don’t know if the first two goals are met but most of the time, pirates sure as hell don’t become discouraged by the availability of DLCs. Although developers try to make such content available only to legitimately purchased copies, these too leak online thus allowing pirates to enjoy the complete gaming experience. When it comes to online leaks, BioWare’s latest hit Mass Effect 2 hasn’t been an exception.

A number of Downloadable Content Packs for Mass Effect 2 have been released by BioWare since the game’s initial release and almost all of them have leaked online. Source of the leaks seems to be a non scene, p2p source and leaked content appear to be compatible with pirated copies of Mass Effect 2. Below is a full list of DLC packs that have so far been released by BioWare and made their way to the masses. You won’t find any download links or cracking instructions here – this list is purely for informational purposes.

• Collectors' Weapon and Armour (ME2_Collectors.exe)
  The Collectors' weapon uses the same principles as a human assault rifle, but its organic components clearly set it apart. Its ammunition resembles pellets of metallic enamel that strip shields off enemies with deadly efficiency. The Collectors' armor is flexible and even tougher than ballistic fibers. Its organic construction allows it to be self-healing. Regeneration Bonus +10%. Storm Speed +10%. Health +20%.
• Terminus Weapon and Armour (ME2_Terminus.exe)
  The M-490 Blackstorm Singularity gun encases particles of matter within a high-powered mass-increasing field. This creates a gravitational singularity that draws enemies inward for a short time before exploding. Terminus armor is environmentally sealed with an independent air supply for use in space and extreme planetary conditions. Increases storm speed by 10%. Increase shields by 15%. Increases all weapon's reserve ammo by 10%.
• Inferno Armour (ME2_Inferno.exe)
  The Inferno armor has a VI dedicated to recognizing signs of stress and medical trauma. This application helps assess soldiers, but can be useful in any high-risk situations. The Inferno's microframe computer also manages biotic amp and omni-tool power, and microservos help the wearer's movements to counteract the armor's weight. Negotiation Bonus +10% Tech and Biotic Power Damage +10% Storm Speed +10%
• Sentry Interface (ME2_Sentry.exe)
  This visor works with the Sentry system, a software application that optimizes an armor suit's microframe computer. When the Sentry system is running, more power can be devoted to shield management. Increases shield strength by 5%
• Umbra Visor (ME2_UmbraVisor.exe)
  A next-generation night-vision device that assists targeting. By detecting the focal point of the wearer's eyes and enhancing the image at that location, the visor helps direct a biotic power or a shot from an omni-tool exactly where the wearer is looking. Increases power damage by 5%.
• M-29 Incisor Sniper Rifle (ME2_Incisor.exe)
  The M-29 Incisor rifle is one of a new wave of military and police sniper rifles designed to overload active defenses such as shields. Firing three shots with each pull of the trigger, the Incisor's burst is so fast that all three rounds will be in the target by the time the barrel has moved a millimeter, increasing its stopping power without sacrificing accuracy.
• Blood Dragon Armour (ME2_BloodDragon.exe)
  Created for Earth's Urban Combat Championship league, this set of armor has undergone more field testing than those of modern militaries. The chest and shoulder piece bears the logo of the Edmonton Blood Dragons, and the inside of the armor bears the signatures of the entire team. When and how the Illusive Man got his hands on the armor is unknown. Increases power damage by 15%. Increases shield strength by 10%.
• Recon Hood (ME2_ReconHood.exe)
  A hood issued to covert action teams. Ballistic-mesh fabric and composite ceramic plating provide necessary armor, and the integral air filter helps in hostile environments. Weapon damage + 5%
• Normandy Crash Site (ME2_NormandyCrash.exe)
  Shepard discovers the location of the Normandy Crash Site, an emotionally charged and reflective moment for Shepard as he is on a mission of salvage and recovery.
• Zaeed Massani (ME2_Zaeed.exe)
  Zaeed served in the Alliance military before building a reputation as one of the deadliest bounty hunters in the Terminus Systems. For 20 years he wage  war for profit, but now he wishes to step away from his life of bloodshed and mercenary work. Lacking any real conscience, Zaeed is a well experienced soldier who has battled his way across galaxy. He offers his services to Commander Shepard, but they come at a price.

Note: Please do not post any download/torrent links to any of the above listed content and do not ask for instructions on how to install the DLC on pirated copies of ME2.

Related Articles

• How To Fix Mass Effect 2 Crashes, Import Savegames, Avoid Freezes & More

Read the rest of this article...

If you find the continuous posts about General/0Day torrent trackers monotonous, here’s a specialized tracker for a change. TC-Boxing aka Boxing Torrents is a sports torrent tracker that focuses on Boxing. If you are a fan of this awesome sport (like I am), this tracker could be what you are looking for. Fact that there aren’t many specialized Boxing trackers around (apart from a handful sites such as World Boxing Video Archive, etc) makes it even more useful. TC Boxing tracks match videos of both amateur and professional versions of the sport, DVD Documentaries and even some high definition content related to Boxing.

According to the official description of the site, TC Boxing is a “community created to discuss boxing and share videos of boxing matches from all over the world”. And that’s exactly what they do. This may be the first time you are hearing about the tracker but it’s not a brand new site at all. With over 2600 registered users and 1500+ torrents, TC-Boxing is a pretty well established niche tracker.

As you may have figured out, most of the torrents indexed on TC-Boxing are videos. This includes footage of matches (including foreign content and classics), TV documentaries, DVD releases and even radio shows. Categories listed include Amateur – Full, Career Set, Clip, DVD, Foreign – Excellent, Foreign – Fair, Foreign – Good, Foreign – Poor, Full – Excellent, Full – Fair, Full – Good, Full – Poor, HD and Misc. A screenshot of the torrent index may be found below:

TC Boxing is not merely a tracker –it’s a community. They have a pretty active discussion forum and other community options such as a Hall of Fame, ScoreCard and so on. Signups for Boxing Torrents is currently open. It says on the homepage “2010-01-28 - Sign ups are now open, Bring a Friend!”. If you are a fan of Boxing this site may be well worth checking out.

Site Name: TC Boxing (http://tc-boxing.com)

Signup URL: http://tc-boxing.com/signup.php

Related Articles

• World Boxing Video Archive – Download Boxing Torrents

Read the rest of this article...

About three months ago we posted an article about CatTorrent, a specialized private torrent tracker that focused primarily on audio books. However back when the article was posted, the site was experiencing uptime issues and our readers were having a really hard time signup up for the site (check the comments here). It wasn’t only new users who were experiencing difficulties but existing members of CatTorrent were also finding it hard to navigate its pages. Good news is that these stability issues which plagued CatTorrent for days seem to have finally been resolved – site loading times are now noticeably faster. For new members who couldn’t sign up last time, signups are also open but we do not know till when these would continue.

An official notice posted on site homepage acknowledges the changes and improvements recently made:

Jan-17-10 - Sorry!
Hi guys and Girls!
Sorry about the recent page load issues with the site.
I have tweaked and stuff and all should now be sorted!
Any issues please report to us.
Enjoy your faster site!
Anyone wanting upload rights please email either staff[at]cattorrent[dot]net or coda[at]cattorrent[dot]net and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Regards
The CT Admin Team

If you haven’t heard about this site earlier, CatTorrent is a great resource for audiobook fans. There are close to 3000 audiobook torrents indexed, along with ~200 more E-books. It’s tracker in the same league as My Anonamouse and MakeGreatMusic (now defunct), and you can find here content that is not available on most other general trackers. To read more about CatTorrent (and see screenshots of it), refer to our  previous article accessible from this link.

At the time this post is being made, CatTorrent signups are open to new members. However, we cannot predict how long they will remain open (there used to be a user limit of 3000 members) so get in while you can. If you had ditched this tracker earlier due to it’s slow loading times, give it another go – as said above most of the problems now seem to be fixed.

Site Name: CatTorrent (http://www.cattorrent.net)

Signup URL: http://www.cattorrent.net/signup.php

Related Articles

• MyAnonamouse Invites On IRC – Excellent E-Book & AudioBook Torrent Tracker
• CatTorrent – E-Book and Audiobook Torrent Tracker
• MakeGreatMusic tracker – Audiobooks, guitar/bass tabs, sheet music, ebooks & more

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Chances are high that all of us have used an online image hosting service at least once in our lives (if you are a private tracker hunter you definitely would have used one to store ratio proofs :p). Right now there are thousands of Image hosts online, ranging from popular sites such as as ImageShack to lesser known sites such as the one we’re going to tell you about today. Most of the ‘free’ image hosting solutions usually come with some form of limitation such as bandwidth/storage restrictions. However, LeetLeech, a new service that launched just few weeks ago, offers its users unlimited bandwidth and storage absolutely for free. It can be termed as pirate-friendly image host and in fact, its backed by some veteran members in the BitTorrent community as well.

Although LeetLeech does not impose any restrictions on bandwidth limit or the allocated storage space, it does have a restriction on the file size; the size of an individual file uploaded to the service cannot exceed 2MB. You can either upload files on your computer or your can upload files using URLs. The screenshot below highlights features associated with each of those options:

Uploaded images automatically generate the following; Direct Link, Thumbnail for Website and Thumbnail for Forum. Note that in order to upload, you need to be a registered member of the site. Registration is free and LeetLeech is currently accepting new members. If you are looking for a free yet unrestricted image host, check this site out.

Site Name: LeetLeech (http://leetleech.org)

Signup URL: http://leetleech.org/users.php?act=register

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Back in November 2009, we conducted a free invitation giveaway for the popular TV Torrent tracker Tv.Torrents.Ro (Freshon.TV). Although more than two months have passed since that giveaway concluded, we’re still getting invite requests for the article from our readers, almost on a daily basis (this should give you a hint about TVT/Ro’s popularity). Anyways if you are one of those souls willing to get into TVT.RO, today could be your lucky day. We are again giving away 100 free invites and all you need to do is to send us an E-mail to the address defined at the end of this article. Invites will be served on a first come, first served basis – you will be required to provide at least two ratio proofs from other private torrent sites that you are already a member of.

As we have highlighted many times in the past, Tv.Torrents.Ro is without a doubt one of the top 3 specialized TV trackers that are around (other sites being TvTorrents.Com and BitMeTV). TvT.Ro is a true veteran in the BitTorrent scene and has been online for nearly 4 years. However it has improved over time and it now sports one of the cleanest interfaces found on a BitTorrent tracker. This was implemented in a recent overhaul of the tracker - mostly every aspect of TVT.Ro was re-coded and this resulted in optimized navigation, a more accessible user interface, faster loading times and a whole lot of other features that improved the site’s usability.

However, Tv.Torrents.Ro is not all about the looks. It excels when it comes to content and member activity. With close to 9000 active torrents and nearly 20000 registered members this is one of the largest specialized TV trackers around. You can pretty much download all of the world’s popular TV series (English) here, both weekly episodes as well as tons of season packs.

As you can see from the above screenshot – there is a new ‘HD Only’ filter in the browse torrents page. This is a welcome addition to the tracker and makes it easy to discover High Definition content including high def versions of weekly episodes.

Earlier, TVT.Ro used to have random open signups several times a month but ever since their invite system came back online this has stopped happening. However TVT.Ro administrators have once again agreed to provide FILEnetworks readers with 100 more invites. You’ll have to provide at least two ratio proofs from two private torrent sites that you are already a member of. Screenshots must adhere to the following standards (screens and images you send will never be made public):

• Sites don’t have to be l33t but images should be un-cropped and un-edited. They should clearly show your upload:download ratio on the tracker.
• All screenshots need to have the text ‘filenetworks’ on the browser address bar.
• Please do not send attachments. Upload the screenshots to an image hosting service and send the direct link. Some free image hosts - ImageShack, PwnMyPic, etc.

E-mail your requests to invites.filenetworks@gmail.com and be sure to set the subject as “Tv.Torrents.Ro 02”. Note that invite requests you made in the first giveaway are not valid for the current offering. Also please keep in mind we have a limited number of invites at our disposal – if you couldn’t get one, don’t feel bad because there’s always a next time. Please allowe 2-3 days for your invite to arrive as we have to send them out manually.

Special thanks to Tv.Torrents.Ro administration and staff.

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I know for a fact that a lot of you are waiting for this issue so here goes. TGSC or ‘The Game Scene Charts’ is a coded magazine for pirates, made by pirates. It’s a publication that comes directly from the warez scene and TGSC’s main purpose is to rank PC game release groups in the scene based on the number of pirated games they release in a particular period of time, usually a month. Groups gain points based on the type of protection they have to crack, number of non nuked releases they pre and so on. This month’s issue covers games pre’d on December 2009 – the magazine itself was released about a week ago, on on the 20th January 2009.

Unlike most publications you see out there, TGSC is not a simple PDF document. It’s a coded magazine that has background music, interactive menus, changeable skins and even an animated intro that resembles old school scene cracktros. Everything you need to run the mag is self contained within the executable (it has its own engine).

Speaking of this month’s rankings, SKIDROW again leads the pack followed by FASiSO and Bamboocha. Popular group RELOADED who held the second spot last month have dropped to the fifth position. It’s also interesting to see BreWeRs, a group that focuses primarily on DOX (trainers, fixes etc) gaining the 4th position in monthly rankings.

Download

You can download and read the full magazine from the link below. Please report broken links in the comments section.

[Click Here] to download from multiple one click hosting services (links created using MirrorCreator :p)

Related Articles

• The Game Scene Charts (TGSC) : Issue 37 - November 2009

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We’re now living in an era when file hosting services have peaked in popularity. One click hosting sites like RapidShare and Megaupload are increasingly being used to transfer large files such as movies, music, games and other content (both copyrighted and copyright free). Uploading a file to a one click hosting service is a relatively straightforward task. But what if you want to upload the same file, to multiple hosters without wasting precious bandwidth? This is where file spreader services come in. File spreaders are capable of automatically distributing a user upload across multiple one click hosters simultaneously. MirrorCreator is one such utility which boasts some impressive features.

You don’t need to know rocket science to figure out how MirrorCreator works. The whole process can be broken down into three simple steps:

1. You upload a file to MirrorCreator, ticking the one-click hosting service you need it distributed to.
2. Once your upload finishes, MirroCreator begins to upload the file to selected hosting services
3. MirrorCreator displays a page with download links to your file, now hosted on the services you selected at step 1.

You will also get a mirrorcreator link that points to the page with individual download links for different one click hosting service. By sharing this link on forums, direct download link sites and blogs, you’ll ensure the maximum availability of your files and others will be able to download from a service of their choice (even if the file gets deleted from one host, the copy uploaded to others will still be available). MirrorCreator currently supports 24 different one click hosting services – a file can be uploaded to a maximum of 8 hosts at once. If you are uploading a large file, you can specify your E-mail address and MirrorCreator will send you the links once upload is finished on their end.

This service however does have some rules. If your link does not receive visitors over X period of time, you risk getting your files deleted from the hosting sites. For more information about rules and guidelines on how to use this service, check out the FAQ.

[Click Here] to visit MirrorCreator homepage.

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Mass Effect 2 (PC) has still not even been released and we’re already getting bombarded with questions from avid followers of the game. We’ve already made a post highlighting some of the common problems people seem to be having with ME2 but here’s another popular question that was directed to our E-mail inbox; How do you change the in game language in Mass Effect 2? Usually, you should be able to do this during the installation process. In case you missed it, you can still change the language without having to reinstall the entire game (which is a good thing because ME2 installer takes a lot of time too).

This is done by editing a game configuration file which is a pretty straightforward task.

1. Browse to your Mass Effect 2 installation directory and look in the ‘data’ folder.
2. Open sku.ini file with a text editor such as Notepad. Make a backup of this file before you alter it – this way you can revert to original if anything goes wrong.
3. Edit the [SKU] section of the  file so that it looks like the text below:
   [SKU]
   SKU=
   VOLanguage=INT
   TextLanguage=INT
4. Save and close the configuration editor.

VOLanguage parameter controls the voice language in Mass Effect 2 while TextLanguage controls which language in-game text are displayed. In the above example both are set to INT which is the language String in ME2 for English. If you want to switch to another language simply alter the sku.ini file, replacing the INT parameter with a language of your choice. Here are some language strings that are compatible with ME2:

• FR - French
• IT - Italian
• DE - German
• SP - Spanish
• INT – English

Note that above are languages that are bundled with MULTI5 version of the game. There may be additional languages in other versions (feel free to post working lang strings in comments). Obviously, this method will only work in Multilanguage versions of Mass Effect 2. If your copy is localized and does not include additional languages, this will not work.

Related Articles

• How To Fix Mass Effect 2 Crashes, Import Savegames, Avoid Freezes & More

Read the rest of this article...

BitTorrent community has many specialized TV torrent trackers including veteran sites such as BitMeTV as well as promising new trackers such as ShareTheRemote. There are however not many ratio free TV trackers around - BzEe.TV is a site that aims to fill this gap. BzEe is a brand new ratioless tracker which indexes international Television series (mostly from United States) and tracks both individual weekly episodes as well as complete season packs. You may have not heard about this site before but it’s not an uber secret elite tracker that’s impossible to get into – BzEe.TV is currently open for signup and anyone is free to register an check it out (they have plans to close registrations once user limit hits 1000).

We wouldn’t categorize BzEe as the first ratio free TV tracker as there are several  other similar sites that are ‘close’ to being ratio free. TVTorrents.com for example is based on credits system (which still closely resembles a ratio system) and TVTorrentZ employs a unique system which combines seeding hours, adoption, etc. BzEe on the other hand does not enforce any minimum global ratio rules on its members – only requirements is to seed for at least 72 hours within the first 7 days since download completion. The actual amount of data you upload does not matter as long as the seeding time requirements are met – should be good news for those with low bandwidth internet connections.

However, keep in mind that  BzEe is a brand new tracker. The site  opened signups to the public just two days ago so don’t expect to find the same level of activity of BitMeTV on this tracker. Torrent index is also small but new releases seem to be added at a decent pace – as of 23/10/2009 there were over 500 active torrents. Both XViD releases as well as HD x264 encodes are available for download. Speaking of the UI, if you are used to somewhat modern tracker scripts such as Gazelle you might find BzEe’s layout (which is based on TorrentTrader) to be slightly dated. However it has all the basic functions usually found on  a private tracker so this shouldn’t be a serious problem.

Signups for BzEe are currently open. According to a post on their forums, registrations will close once the user limit reaches ~1000. If you are looking to be part of a new ratio free TV tracker, go ahead and check the site out.

Site Name: BzEe (http://bzee.tv)

Signup URL: http://bzee.tv/account-signup.php

Related Articles

• TvTorrentz – A TV Torrent Tracker With Unique Features
• ShareTheRemote TV Tracker Open Again – Now With More Torrents And New Features
• BitMeTV Warns Against Ratio Cheating and Account Theft

Read the rest of this article...

There’s been a lot happening in the BitTorrent community today – EuReka, an internal encoder and a founder of the high definition torrent tracker Awesome-HD, has left AHD to join HD-Torrents, another popular HD tracker. It was a move filled with drama as EuRekA took the Awesome-HD domain along with him, leaving close to 9000 AHD members stranded and not being able to use the tracker. While this definitely is a blow to AHD, we learn that this definitely will not be the end of the tracker. At the same time, EuReKa’s addition will boost the value and popularity of HD-Torrents, which is already considered by many as an equally good HD torrent site. If you are looking forward to join HDT, signups have been opened for 4 days apparently to celebrate ‘the joining’.

Before we bore you with the Mass PMs and forum posts that explain the drama behind this move, let us first talk about the tracker in focus – HD-Torrents (as we do in any other tracker review).  This is not the first time HDT is featured on this blog – we posted about it in April 2009, back when they had another open signup. Since then, HD-Torrents have recorded some impressive growth and is now in league with other similar torrent sites such as HD-Bits.Ro.

With over 7500 torrents and an active seeder/leecher community (most popular torrent on this tracker has over 600 seeds), HD-Torrents is a good place to be if you love HD content. It tracks lots of 720p and 1080p releases (in x264 container) ranging from movies, TV shows, documentaries, anime to even some high quality lossless music. There are a lot of p2p releases indexed (in addition to scene releases) including some uploads by internal encoder groups which now include EuReKa.

By now you may have figured out that HD-Torrents does not open registrations that often. However, HDT will be open for public signups in the next 4 days – this is of course in celebration of EuRekA’s joining as an internal encoder. If you are looking for a decent tracker to fill your HD needs, check this site out.

Site Name: HD-Torrents (http://hd-torrents.org)

Signup URL: http://hd-torrents.org/account.php

What really happened?

And now for the behind the scenes stuff. There are two sides to every story and we present both sides below. Read and judge for yourself :)

Quoted below is a news post on HD-Torrents:

Dear Members,
We are happy to announce that as of today EuReKA has joined our team of internal encoders. EuReKA has been known for their quality releases and fits our quality policy perfectly. We hope that with this step we will make the community more stronger and this site the best!  
PS: We are opening the site for registrations for 4.5 days. The reason for it is to celebrate the recruitment of EuReKA as internal encoder.

Some answers:

Rabomil wrote:
Lately several things have happened within the staff of Awesome-HD which made me decide to leave Awesome-HD.
Today I told the staff of Awesome-HD that I would leave Awesome-HD for HD-Torrents. I also asked them to change their domain before the beginning of next month.
Not long after my announcement to leave AHD my account there got disabled. This made me decide to link the domain awesome-hd.com to HD-Torrents. I'm not proud of this move, but the staff of AHD went too far by disabling my account.

Regards,
HDT Team

The following is quoted from an announcement on Awesome-HD:

As of today Rabomil has announced that he is leaving Awesome-HD and taking his EuReKa brand to HD Torrents as an internal encoder. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours and we look forward to providing you, the members, with a continued quality site and community.
We will provide further details as they come available. We are not censoring you from your opinions but please keep them civil THERE IS TO BE NO FLAMING OF RABOMIL IN THE FORUMS.
Thank you
Tmockingbird & Staff

The fate of Awesome-HD?

As mentioned earlier Awesome-HD is unlikely to die from the events that took place today. While the absence of EuReKa (and the domain) will be a loss, the site will continue its operations with the rest of its uploaders and encoders. Below is a message we received from staff at AHD:

Rabomil has taken the awesome-hd.com domain away from the site after a disagreement with the rest of the staff of AHD. We are currently working on getting the site back under a different domain. The site is accessible via the hostname: http://vs0123.flosoft-servers.net

Existing members of AHD should be able to access the tracker with their old usernames and passwords via the above address. However we learn that AHD will move to a separate domain possibly www.awesome-hd.net and continue its operations from there. As of this moment, HAD signups remain closed.

Special thanks to our readers who sent us information including Orlin, Hubert, Rohit, Napster and to AHD staff for letting us know of the current status of site.

Related Articles

• HD Torrents – Excellent private tracker for HD movies and TV shows
• New & Improved Awesome-HD – Now Open For Signup
• Awesome-HD Invites – Tracker to download EuReKA, ESiR, CtrlHD & other HD releases

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Back when Mass Effect 1 was released, it was a busy time for us. The game was filled with bugs (most of these were triggered by the game’s copy protection mechanism, on pirated copies) and we had to post several troubleshooting articles to answer all the questions that were directed by our readers. Thankfully, Mass Effect 2 (ME2) release has been a lot ‘cleaner’. It does not seem to carry an insanely paranoid DRM system and at the same time seems to be very well optimized. I’ve played a few hours into the game and it’s been good so far – there aren’t as many RPG elements as there were in the first game but they’ve definitely ramped up the pace of action. Anyways this article tries to address some of the common issues with ME2, as pointed out by our readers.

Note that this is a work in progress. More issues/solutions will be added as they are discovered.

How do i import Mass Effect 1 saved games into Mass Effect 2?

As revealed by the developers, the choices you made in Mass Effect 1 can affect your story progress in Mass Effect 2. If you have at least one complete playthrough on ME1, you can import the saves to ME2 and continue from where you left off (not having saved games does not mean you’ll miss out on anything in ME2 though).

1. Open the Mass Effect 2 launcher.
2. Select ‘Configure’
3. Open the Savegames tab to the left
4. Select Copy Mass Effect 1 save games button and browse for the location of your old ME1 saves. If i remember correctly the default location is /My Documents/Bioware/Mass Effect/Saves
5. Save the configuration and exit the launcher.

Note that even after importing saves, you character won’t start our as a leveled up mofo. You will start from level 1 but you will be given certain bonuses as you progress through the story, based on your actions in ME1.

Also note that some people seem to have experienced an error after importing ME1 saves; the game either crashes or freezes at the loading screen. This has only happened to some readers and not for all. At the moment we do not know of a specific solution for this problem.

How do i change game settings?

Game settings can easily be changed from the game launcher. Note that if you want to enable Anti Aliasing (AA), the launcher does not have an option for it. It seems the game does not support AA (as it didn’t seem to work when forced from video card control panel either). Whatever changes you make, they won’t take effect unless you save the configuration file.

How to avoid errors at loading screen, skip intro movies and improve loading times?

Let’s face it – intro movies are cool the first or second time you watch them. After that it becomes annoying. If you want to disable the imntro movies and save up some time during loading, you can easily do that. Some readers have reported that disabling intro movies got rid of their crashes at game startup so it could be a possible solution for such problems as well.

1. Go to Mass Effect 2 installation directory and browse to Mass Effect 2\BioGame\Movies.
2. Delete or rename the following files:
   ME_EAsig_720p_v2_raw.bik
   BWLogo.bik

I get a “failed to initialize the physics system. Please ensure you have an updated version" error.

Sometimes, you may end up with this message even if you have PhysX system software installed on your system (seems to have only with some NVIDIA cards). The only possible solution we have found so far is to uninstall the existing PhysX version and installing from the setup that came with the Mass Effect 2 DVD disk.

Tips to avoid Mass Effect 2 random crashes to desktop (CTD, black screen and more)

Mass Effect 2 does not seem to have any showstopper bugs such as the galaxy map problem in ME1. However, below are some guidelines you can follow to avoid crashes and gain optimal performance not only with ME2 but with any PC game. These probably won’t fix all of your problems but they sure as hell will help in one way or the other.

1. Install the latest DirectX runtime – Latest DirectX should be available in your Steam directory but if it’s not (or if you didn’t buy the game from Steam), you can download the latest monthly runtime from here. This is a standalone installer that will work in offline mode as well.
2. Install Microsoft Visual C++ runtime libraries – I’m not sure if this is an absolute necessity for this game but it’s required for most games nowadays (as demonstrated by the case with Dragon Age : Origins). You can download the required files from this link.
3. Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.
   ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
   NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
   For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/. If you are having video issues with official drivers, do not hesitate to give beta drivers a go. They are not always evil as the sound like.
4. Update sound card and motherboard drivers – Overlooked by many but an essential step to playing games crash free. Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP/7 – This program will automatically detect your hardware and search for updated drivers for them.

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Read our Private Trackers section for latest BitTorrent news.

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A while ago we featured a service titled 0DayMusic, a service that let you download English music albums via direct download links. Here’s another similar service – musiCORE. musiCORE indexes download links to scene released music albums and has great pre times as well as better availability of files (since they use a file spreader service to upload each release to multiple hosts) than most other similar sites out there. A SceneNotice was recently pre’d which labeled this site as a ‘0sec HTTP Site Mirroring to Public’. It seems the source of files uploaded to one click hosting sites is an FTP server, possibility affiliated with over 25 release groups from the warez scene (if the information in SceneNotice is correct, that is). Either way if you are a fan of music, this is a site worth having a look at - musiCORE looks like a promising project.

When it comes to adding new albums at a rapid pace, musiCORE seems to do an excellent job. Pre times seem to be very good (pre is not listed on site itself, but when you compare release names with new uploads added on scene music trackers, you’ll see) and the general availability of a download is high. musicCORE seems to use the file spreader service Load2.me and each album usually comes with several different download links from multiple one click hosting sites such as RapidShare, MegaUpload, Hotfile etc. It is currently unknown the total number of albums indexed on this service but we know for a fact that over 2600 albums have been added in January 2010 alone (and that’s only 20 days as of today).

Note that clicking on a release name on the main index of musiCORE will take you to a forum link – and you are likely to need an invitation to register for this forum. However, if you click on the .rar/.zip etc link in the ‘Download’ column, you will directly be taken to the download page which will have several links pointing to the album hosted at different file hosting services. Note that some downloads may be password protected:

Some releases are password protected:
password 1: musicore.net
password 2: depends on the filename, if 20028 - pass is 20028, if 9064 - password is 9064 and so on.

As an unregistered user, you are allowed to download a maximum of 50 albums per day – if you register on the forums this limit is eliminated (forum is open for registration but new accounts will not get access to internal threads unless accepted by administrator -an invite may be obtained via ‘Get Invited’ link on top toolbar).

[Click Here] to visit musiCORE release index

And just for the hell of it, according to the SceneNotice we mentioned above, musicCORE’s FTP is affiliated with scene groups including 1KING ATRium BPM BSiDE CBR D2H gnvr H5N1 HB HFT iHF mbs OMA ONe NRG PTC RHYTHMIC SiBERiA SiRE UKHx UME VOiCE WUS wWs DYNAMiCS and MONO (that’s a lot of them).

Related Articles

• 0DayMusic – Direct Download Music Albums

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A couple of years ago, OiNK.CD was a web page that attracted over 180000 users daily. It wasn’t just any other web page – it hosted OiNK’s Pink Palace music BitTorrent tracker, a celebrity among private torrent sites. However all of this changed when Operation Ark Royal, a coordinated raid by IFPI, BPI and Interpol, shut down the tracker and arrested its owner Allan Ellis back in 2007. OiNK’s homepage went dormant after the raid and its activity was limited to displaying a few about legal proceedings and donations. After a three year long legal battle, Allan Ellis finally won and walked free. With the release of Allan, OiNK’s homepage has again been updated, possibly for one last time.

The site now displays the following message:

On 15 January 2010, Alan Ellis was unanimously declared not guilty.
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can do so here: contact@alanellis.co.uk.
The solicitors representing me in the case were Morgan Rose with Alex Stein as the barrister.
I'd like to express my thanks to all those who have been in touch offering their support over the years, and the huge amount of congratulations I've received over the past few days.
There were three main questions arising from the emails:

1. Will the site be returning? Absolutely not.
2. Will I be available for interview? No, sorry, I would like to get on with my life in peace now.
3. Where did I buy my coat? Wait, what!? Well, I'm almost ashamed to say, but it's from New Look, and judging by the fact that when I checked yesterday my local shop had more than 10 of them in stock for £30, it's not very popular!

Finally, a huge thank you to my excellent legal team, without which I wouldn't be here writing this right now.

“Will the site be returning? Absolutely not” – sadly, if any of you were waiting for the return of OiNK, the above confirms it ain’t going to happen. You cannot blame Allan though – he finally has a chance to resume his normal life after 3 painful years and I’m sure he’d want to forget about the whole ordeal and move on. However OiNK didn’t just die – two of it’s piglets (which it gave birth to when the site was raided) are still going strong today; What.CD and Waffles.FM are two prime examples of how the BitTorrent community adapts to a shut down of a major tracker.

Site Name: OiNK (http://oink.cd/)

R.I.P. OiNK and good luck to Allan Ellis with his life. Thanks for the good times.

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Although there’ve been a lot of BitTorrent trackers popping up in the past couple of years, specialized mobile content trackers have always been a rarity. Out of the few such such that exist, Pimp Your Mobile (PyM) is one of the oldest trackers catering this niche. We first mentioned about PyM back in 2008 and the site has come a long way since then.They now have a better interface, have gone ratio free and more importantly, have better content. You can download applications, games, themes, ringtones, mobile optimized media and other stuff for your Symbian, Nokia S40, Java, Windows Mobile or Android powered mobile device or even for the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry devices and PDAs.

Over the past few years, PyM has gradually improved both its user base and torrent index. The site tracks over 3200 torrents (as of 20/1/2010) and has a user base of 2300+ registered members. Visually, this tracker has improved a lot since our last mention of PyM here – It’s nothing too fancy and runs on a TS special edition script but the layout is better organized, cleaner and has less clutter.

As for the content it’s all about downloads for various mobile platforms that exist. From cracked applications to latest movies in mobile compatible formats, you’ll find them all here. For example, PyM tracks a lot of re-encoded movies in .3GP format. This is useful for Nokia phone owners who have RealPlayer installed as their default media player. Most versions of RealPlayer do not come with XViD/DivX support; if you are to play XViD files on your phone, conversion to compatible format is always needed beforehand (which can sometimes take up a lot of time). 3GP or .Mp4 files are mobile friendly and will play on most modern devices just fine. It’s not only movies you’ll find on PyM – there are lots of applications, games, themes and other goodies than can be used to jazz up your mobile.  Most of the torrents seem to be P2P uploads. There are a lot of packs indexed as well:

As we mentioned in the first paragraph this is a ratio free tracker. It’s probably the first specialized mobile tracker to go no-ratio. A notice visible on the top toolbar says:

PimpYourMobile has no ratio! Grab what you like and seed for 72 hours!

There is also a bonus system present on site, through which you can exchange bonus points (mostly obtained by seeding) for invites and upload credit.

Although Pimp Your Mobile is a private tracker, it’s signups are currently open – that is, you do not need an invitation code to register on this site. If you are interested in mobile content, go ahead and check it out:

Site Name: PimpYourMobile (http://torrent.pimpyourmobile.info)

Signup URL: http://torrent.pimpyourmobile.info/signup.php

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Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the most popular file formats today and it’s used in many office automation related tasks all over the world. Although there are many PDF reader applications around, Adobe Reader is perhaps the most popular viewer of them all. However, it has been subject to heavy criticism by computer power users for being a ‘piece of bloatware’. This was true to some extent – one example would be the Adobe updater which came bundled with Adobe Reader. Getting rid of this piece of crap was so hard that it required a registry hack. If you hated Adobe Reader for it’s unnecessary blot, check our Adobe Reader Lite – a hacked version of the same released by a third party.

If you haven't heard about this software before, it’s interface and functionality is almost identical to that of Adobe Reader (I’m pretty sure it uses Adobe’s code too, which might actually raise copyright concerns). However some components and functionality that are rarely used have been removed, thus improving performance and reducing resource consumption. Following is a list of ‘hacks’ featured as of Reader Lite 9.1:

• Removed autorun and desktop shortcuts
• Start menu shortcut converted to non-advertised
• Removed several features and plugins that the average user has no need for
• Removed Beyond Adobe and Lic. Agreement popups
• Removed all (auto)update® features
• Removed AcroRd32Info.exe with no errors in the event log
• Form filling allowed
• Disabled the dialog asking to help make Adobe Reader better and "Create PDF using Acrobat.com" from the toolbar (v9.1)
• Removed more unneeded stuff (v9.1)
• Some cosmetic changes (v9.1)

Download

Adobe Reader Lite 9.3 has just been released and you may download it from FileForum mirror.

[Click Here] to download Adobe Reader Lite 9.3

Note: It’s recommended that you uninstall any previously installed versions of both Adobe Reader and Adobe Reader Lite before installing version 9.3.

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After 850+ posts dedicated to private torrent trackers, on would imagine we have covered most of the torrent sites out there. However, this is far from the truth; new sites are launched every day and we stumble across large, lesser known torrent trackers ever so often. Vibes.CC is another private tracker that has a relatively large user base and a rich torrent index filled with lots of releases. It’s a General/0Day torrent site with movies, music, games, TV shows, application and over 500 torrent packs. Anyways it’s not everyday we review a torrent site from Greece; Vibes seems to have Greek origins but most of the indexed releases are English.

By private tracker standards, Vibes is pretty big. There are over 15000 registered members and nearly 20000 indexed torrents. I haven’t been a member of this site for that long but it looks like a community oriented tracker. The PM you get immediately after you join the site gives a little clue ‘We are a community based Tracker, and we hope that you will get involved in our forums, not just the torrents’.

As mentioned earlier Vibes is a general tracker that indexes a lot of torrents spanning across a number of different categories. This includes scene releases as well as P2P uploads. There are some torrents that are local to Greece and (and some with optional Greek subtitles) but most of the stuff here is English. Vibes has a lot more categories than the usual 0Day trackers (39 to be exact) and it’s easy to avoid Greek releases if you are an English speaking user. Before we forget to mention, there are a lot of torrent packs here – TV-Packs and Movie-Packs categories alone index more than 500 torrent collections.

Vibes runs on a TBDEV tracker script and has the standard set of features found on most other similar sites. A seed bonus system is present to reward those who keep the torrents seeding (and thus, alive).

Signups for Vibes are currently open. Site’s user limit is set to 16000 which leaves around 700 free slots at time of this post – if you are interested, go check it out.

Site Name: Vibes (http://vibes.cc)

Signup URL: http://vibes.cc/signup.php

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It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the easiest way of getting into private BitTorrent trackers is via open signups. However, there’s a growing trend in the BT community which is proving to be increasingly popular – IRC recruitment & invite applications. It works like this: private trackers set up their own official invites channels on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers or make invite applications available to the public. Usually after a short interview process ort a questionnaire (in some cases a simple request is all that’s needed), qualifying members are invited into the tracker. This is actually a very safe way of obtaining invitations with no risk of trading, scamming or other malpractices as tracker staff themselves are involved. It may sound like a complex process but those who’ve gotten into their favorite sites through IRC invites would disagree. We have on numerous occasions posted about torrent trackers with IRC recruitment – this post is a summary of 12 such sites we discussed during the past 2-3 months.

Before you log into any IRC channel, please take a moment to read the following points:

• Sometimes you will have to idle on IRC channels for a long time as tracker staff may not always be online. Time zone differences can also get in the way. In addition, things may get delayed if there are a lot of people in invite request queue. Have patience and eventually you’ll get in.
• Always read the IRC channel topic/invite application instructions before doing anything. Breaking channel rules, spamming channel and Private Messaging (PM) staff without prior permission can often lead to you getting kicked out and in some cases getting banned from IRC servers.
• Entry requirements will vary depending on the tracker. Some sites may require you to provide ratio proofs and profile links from other torrent trackers you are already a member of. Some may also require you to provide SpeedTests.
• It is recommend that you read the full review of a site before requesting an invite.
• If you are new to IRC, take a moment to read this brief tutorial. Really, it’s not as complex as it sounds. 

This is only the first part of a series of similar articles; there are lots of other trackers that offer invites on IRC channels and they will all be featured here in the coming days (unless it’s a secret tracker that doesn't prefer publicity) .

CoExist (CE)
 
Site Name: CoExist (http://coexist.biz)
Invite Channel URL: irc://pirateyour.info/ce.invites
Stats: 4500+ torrents and 1425+ users
Description: CoExist is a ratio free music torrent with English music albums. Runs on a heavily customized TBDEV codebase – a promising tracker.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

torrentsRmine (tRm)
 
Site Name: torrentsRmine (http://www.torrentsrmine.org)
Invite Channel URL: irc://irc.torrentsrmine.org/torrentsrmine?
Stats: 2650+ torrents and 700+ users
Description: torrentsRmine is a private tracker for TV talk shows, are series and documentaries. Content on tRm is sometimes not even found on leading TV trackers such as BitMeTV or TVT.com.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

HeavenTracker (HT)
 
Site Name: HeavenTracker (http://heaventracker.org)
Invite Channel URL: irc://irc.vaultnet.org/ht-invite
Stats: 10000+ members and 16000+ torrents
Description: HT is a general private tracker that usually has excellent pre times. Lots of members and lots of torrents. Decent download speeds.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

My Anonamouse
 
Site Name: My Anonamouse (http://www.myanonamouse.net)
Invite Application URL: http://www.myanonamouse.net/inviteapp.php
Stats: 27000+ users and ~25000 torrents
Description: My Anonamouse is simply one of the best online resources to download audio books. In addition to audiobooks it tracks a lot of E-books as well. Friendly staff and nice community.  
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

Sparvar
 
Site Name: Sparvar (http://www.sparvar.org)
Invite Application URL: http://www.sparvar.org/invitationform.php
Translated Version of Invite Application: http://bit.ly/JKJ93
Description:  Sparvar is an excellent untouched DVDR and Blu Ray torrent tracker that saw phenomenal growth in 2009. While the site is pretty good, getting in could be difficult specially for users who are new to private trackers.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

PackMe.In (PiN)
 
Site Name: PackMe.In (https://packme.in)
Invite Application URL: https://packme.in/inviteapp.php
Stats: 600+ packs
Description: PackMe.In is a ratio free packs only torrent tracker – movie packs, music packs, ebooks packs, packs and more packs :p
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

Jambands.Fm
 
Site Name: Jambands (http://jambands.fm)
Invite request Email: invites[at]jambands[dot]fm (Read this for more information)
Stats: 85 users and 475+ torrents
Description: Jambands is a new torrent site that focuses on media related to live music and concerts. Runs on Gazelle codebase.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

ACiD (AL)
 
Site Name: ACiD
Invite Channel URL: irc://irc.pron.org.uk/acid-invites (see this post on how to apply via email)
Stats: 19000 users and 8000+ torrents
Description: ACiD is a closed private tracker forGeneral/0day releases. Has an excellent community and good  content.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

SqN
 
Site Name: sQn
Invite Channel URL: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/sqn-invites
Stats: 6300+ users and 960+ users
Description: SqN is another ratio free music torrent tracker. This tracker has never opened signups and the only way in is via IRC invites (unless you know existing members with invites).
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

PTFiles (PTF)
 
Site Name: PTFiles (http://ptfiles.net)
Invite Application URL: http://ptfiles.net/questionnaire.php
Stats: 4300+ users and 2600+ torrents
Description: PTF is a community based general/0day tracker with a very detailed site interface. Good community.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

AnimeBytes (AB)
 
Site Name: AnimeBytes (http://animebyt.es)
Invite Channel URL: irc://irc.animebyt.es/invites
Stats: 5600+ users and ~5900 torrents
Description: AnimeBytes is a specialized anime torrent tracker. Runs of a customized version of Gazelle codebase and has some really nice site features apart from the decently sized torrent index.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

CN

Site Name: CN
Invite Request E-Mail: cn.interview.channel[at]gmail.com (read this)
Stats: Withheld
Description: CN is an excellent movie torrent tracker. Site rules prohibit us from revealing any more information about this concealed torrent site. However, everything you need to know to make a request including the format of the E-mail is available here.
Full review + More Information: [Click Here]

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