Out of the thousands of private torrent trackers that exist today, not many can boast about being online for 6+ years. PolishTracker is one site that can. PT turns 6 today and in celebration, they are giving away free invites on the official IRC channel. Getting into this site is considered quite hard – it hasn’t had an open registration in the recent history and there are no alternate recruitment campaigns going on in other sites including invite forums or blogs. For those of you who haven’t heard about this site, PolishTracker is a General/0day torrent tracker indexing both international as well as Polish scene/ P2P releases. While being a good source for Polish releases, PT also acts as a excellent General/0Day tracker for those seeking to download latest English releases including movies, games, music, TV shows and more.

With nearly 14000 registered members and 18600+ torrents, PolishTracker falls under the ‘large’ private trackers category. This site has a well established footprint in the BitTorrent scene and is still one of the most sought after trackers even after 6 years of being online. According to FSF, PolishTracker invites are among the top 50 most requested tracker invites of 2010.

As mentioned earlier PolishTracker is a General tracker, meaning you can pretty much find all sorts of content here. There are both English and Polish releases, including scene and P2P uploads as well as exclusive packs. At the time this article was being written, PT tracked over 750 exclusive packs, a great feat for any general torrent site. Screenshot below shows part of this sites torrent index, including some packs uploaded in celebration of the 6th birthday:

PolishTracker is built on the TBDEV codebase. However, according to BloodMan, one of PT’s coders, it only just looks like TBDEV right now. We are told that around 90% of the codebase is re-written to facilitate the site’s own requirements. PT comes with several different skins and category icon sets which you can use to change the look and feel of the site. It also supports 3 languages including English, Polish and Deutsch - you can easily change language using flag icons located on top right corner of any internal page.

As mentioned in the title of this post, PT staff are giving away free invites on their IRC channel. To obtain an invite, follow the instructions below:

1. Take a screenshot of the profile page of a private tracker that you already use. This page must have your E-mail mentioned in it (this is where the invite will be sent to). Note that some sites do not include your E-mail info in the profile page – you’ll need to use a tracker that does, such as TL. Upload this screen to an image hosting service such as ImageShack and obtain the URL.
2. Log into the PT IRC invites channel using the details below:
   Server: irc.polishtracker.org
   Channel: #6th
   Direct Link: irc://irc.polishtracker.org/6th
3. Paste the link to your screenshot on the channel and wait patiently for staff to respond.

Note that this invite giveaway will not last for long – it will only be done during today so you might want to hurry.

Once logged into PT, you must read the FAQ, Rules and any news information on Homepage and hit the ‘Read and understood’ button in each page to proceed to the main torrent index.

Special thanks to Bugatti for the heads up and BloodMan (PT Coder) for the support given.

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P2P release groups teaming up with private trackers or groups maintaining their own torrent sites is nothing new. Some of the popular, currently active P2P release groups actually started out as internal releasers in certain trackers. Today’s post is about another similar tracker-group relationship, namely about BitTurk, a Turkish torrent tracker that is home to D-Z0N3. D-Z0N3 is a veteran movie release group who are best known for their BRRip, BDRip and untouched Blu Ray uploads. Their releases are usually available on torrent sites other than BitTurk but this folks is their official home. While BitTurk is not necessarily a specialized movie tracker (it’s a general tracker), expect to find a lot of BRRip, BDRip and other movie release here (both English and Turkish). Signups are currently open to the public and new members are allowed in.

While BitTurk may not be so popular amongst the English speaking user base, it’s a veteran torrent site that has been around for several years. It’s also got a very high reputation amongst Turkish trackers. However, don’t be mistaken – those who don’t speak a word of Turkish can still have plenty of uses from BitTurk. While releases local to Turkey and movies dubbed in Turkish are indexed on this site, international scene and P2P releases are also readily available here. For example, majority of D-Z0N3 movie uploads are in English language.

Contrary to popular belief, BitTurk is a not a movie tracker – it’s a General/0Day torrent site. However, the main attraction are the BRRip, BDRip and Blu Ray movie releases. D-Z0N3’s presence as an internal group certainly adds a lot of value to this tracker. ButTurk currently tracks over 300 D-Z0N3 releases, some of which can be seen in the screenshot below (total number of BRRip/BDRip releases surpasses 1500):

Signups for BitTurk are currently open. If you are interested in creating a free account, go ahead and check it out.

Site Name: BiTTuRK Tracker (http://www.bitturk.net)

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

Note: The entire site interface is in Turkish and as far as I know there is no way to convert it to English (there used to be an option in a previous version of the site but this no longer seems to be there. If you have difficulty locating the torrent browse page, access it directly via http://www.bitturk.net/browse.php )

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A couple of days ago, there was this whole hype about SeedNation, a new Seedbox provider. Apart from offering the usual services, Seednation was providing some 600 odd boxes absolutely for free. The offer was very attractive and it immediately got publicity from several BitTorrent forums and blogs, driving a lot of traffic which was a very important factor for any new online service. We too got several E-mails requesting us to post an article about Seednation - these mails appeared to be from fans of the service, but we believe at least one of them was sent by a Seednation staff member. Either way we postponed publishing about it until we verified the service was legit. For us, this simply seemed to be too good to be true, and apparently, it wasn't just us who had similar thoughts. Several private trackers soon issued warnings about Seed Nation, raising security and privacy concerns. Quoted below is one such Mass PM sent by BitMe’s administration (BitMe is a well respected E-Learning tracker that is over 5 years old).

A site, http://www.seednation.net/ has come up and they are offering something that is literally too good to be true. A free seedbox. Here is the bad news boys and girls, with such things, if it sounds too good to be true, it generally is.
So far, I have seen reports of stolen passkeys, stolen accounts, stolen invites and the like. I can’t tell you what to do or don’t do, however, if you find your passkey or the like is stolen you will receive zero sympathy from staff for this.
So what is the point of this mass PM. Simply this, you use this exceptionally dodgy site at your own risk, and if you have been found to have been compromised, after you have received this warning (25/10/2010 at 20:15 GMT) you will have lost your account here. There will be no exceptions, there will be no.. “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t know.” Use this site at your own peril, but be aware that if your passkey or otherwise is found to have been compromised your account WILL be disabled, and any other private trackers you are on will probably toss you as well.
You have been warned.

BitMe wasn’t the only site to issue such warnings – a similar message was also seen on BitMeTV and a few other trackers. Either way, in a rather unsurprising turn of events, SeedNation soon shut down. For a brief period of time, their homepage displayed the following message:

SeedNation is closed. SLDKluster / Dhruv are the same person. He also was behind the scam of Leechbox. Seednation is now closed. If you where a member of SeedNation or had a seedbox, please join the IRC server to get your seedbox. The host / sponsor of seednation is now the owner of the domain, and has opened a case agaianst him. The old staff members foxhound, p, and d4rk have started #seedmasters, which will provide seedboxs on gigabit boxs legit. But not for free. It will be for people who purchase VIP.
or IRC: irc.digitalrebels.org #seedmasters
Come Hangout, and get your seedbox today! or come join and find out how you can get yours free!
Know linux? Know seedboxs? Become staff & get paid! Join IRC!

Seednation homepage, http://www.seednation.net/ appears to be down right now. While the new service may actually be legit, the whole SeedNation fiasco will no doubt be a public relations disaster for its owners. In the meantime, if you were a user of SeedNation’s free seedbox service, you might want to change your tracker passwords and reset passkeys just to be on the safe side.

Read the rest of this article...

Over the years, we’ve come across many different release blogs which announce scene and P2P releases to the public. However, I don’t think we’ve ever featured a release blog dedicated to announcing new magazine releases. StoreMags is a site which does exactly that – it indexes latest issues of popular international magazines. These are freely downloadable and are in true PDF format, allowing them to be read either on your personal computer or on a portable device such as the iPad. Unlike some magazine download sites that we have come across, StoreMags is not full of obsolete crap. The collection here is pretty impressive, with some world renowned issues such as PC World, Macworld, Hello!, PC Magazine, etc being actively indexed.

At a glance, StoreMags looks like your average release blog – a separate post is made for each magazine , along with a brief description, a screenshot and of course, download links for the full PDF version. You can customize the view to a grid based layout instead of the default individual post structure. This is excellent for browsing through new releases quickly and we highly recommend you switch to this view. To change the view, locate the ‘Select View’ drop down in top right corner of the page, and set the value to ‘Grid’. Some of the indexed magazine covers, as shown in the Grid view are seen below:

There are all sorts of magazines indexed on StoreMags, ranging from Computer mags to Cooking, Fitness and even History related titles  – official statement is there are over 39000 files indexed (which we can’t verify). Uploads are categorized based on type of content and you can easily browse through these categories from the right sidebar. Note that some adult themed magazines are also indexed here.

As you might have guessed, StoreMags does not host any of the PDF files on their own servers. What it offers instead is a verified, reliable download link pointing to a file that’s usually hosted on a one click hosting service. So far, I have not come across any broken links on this site.

Storemags is a freely accessible site that is open to the public. Registration is not required to download any content.

Site Name & URL: StoreMags (http://storemags.com)

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Here are two more private trackers that are open for signup; ExDesi (ExD) and The Horror Charnel (THC). Despite being open at the same time, there’s no similarity between these two sites at least in terms of the content they track. The Horror Charnel is a specialized tracker for English Horror, Cult, Sleaze Movie & TV Torrents while ExDesi is a private torrent site for Indian (Bollywood) movies, music and TV series. Both these trackers are well respected in their own niches and are not regularly open to the public. For example, The Horror Charnel is having their third public open signup in the last 4 years. Similarly, ExD has not had an open registration for at least 6 months (if memory servers correct). Either way both are currently open for registration and you are welcome to create an account if you already aren’t a member. Full details after the jump.

The Horror Charnel (THC)

With 6800+ users and 4000+ torrents, THC is one of the largest (and with 5th birthday approaching soon, one of the oldest) specialized Horror trackers out there. This site indexes both TV shows and movies related to the cult genre. Amongst the torrents tracked are some very rare horror movies, older horror themed TV shows, shorts, TV documentaries and more. There are some great packs online as well. For a complete list of torrent categories, check the ‘genre selector’ on torrent browse page. THC sports a unique theme which has Horror themed category icons, bonus indicators and a matching color scheme. A screenshot of part of the torrent index can be found below:
  
If you are a fan of horror and cult movies, you’ll feel right at home here. Signups will be open till the 1st of November so there’s still plenty of spots left - get in while you can.
Site Name: The Horror Charnel (http://horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org/)
Signup URL: http://horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org/signup.php

ExDesi

ExDesi or ExtremeDesi is a private torrent tracker and a forum which has lots of Hindi movie torrents. It however is not a dedicated movies tracker - you can find Indian/Pakistani music, TV shows, documentaries, stage shows (live performances) and even sports torrents on ExDesi. This tracker is home to some unique and exclusive releases by Indian P2P groups such as DDR, BrG, DUS and xDR. Apart from torrents, ExDesi has an online streaming links section and a direct download links/one click hosting links section in its forums. The screenshot below shows some of the torrent categories available on ExD:

Although there aren’t any English movies here on ExD, this tracker will no doubt be loved by fans of BollyWood (Indian) content. Signups are currently open and if you still aren’t a member, check this out.
Site Name: ExDesi (http://exdesi.com)
Signup URL: http://exdesi.com/register.php

Special thanks to Bugatti for the heads up.

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Here’s yet another chapter in the ongoing war (or shall I say E-drama) between the warez scene and torrent sites. Earlier, we saw a SceneNotice revealing names of SysOps and server IP addresses of the popular scene tracker SCC (if you don’t know what a SceneNotice is, read this post). Today, two more sites have been ‘targeted’ by the scene, namely the hugely popular General/0day torrent tracker TorrentLeech and specialized TV torrent site BTN. The notices, titled TORRENTLEECH.ORG.P2P.TORRENT-SCENENOTICE and BTN.P2P.TORRENT-SCENENOTICE again reveal nothing more than site and IRC server IP addresses (which are not so secret, by the way) and a list of IRC nicknames of tracker staff. These newer notices also contain instructions on how to ‘submit’ these trackers to the FBI for investigation. Quoted below is the SceneNotice pre’d against TL, with personal information and IP addresses removed:

BE SMART YOUR BEST SITE CAN BE A TORRENT SITE PASS THIS IPS FORWARD
Just another tracker making dumps from scene using falow ips for this shits
www.torrentleech.org IP (XX.XX.XX.XX) - they use like master for dumps (can be a site or just a dump
www.torrentleech.org has two IP numbers (XX.XX.XX.XX, XX.XX.XX.XX). Both are on the same IP network
irc.torrentleech.org:7011 or 7021 ssl IP (XX.XX.XX.XX
FBI INVESTIGATION OPEN i put alot of ips ther :D all %
Ok on http://www.fbi.gov/ in report internet crime on page http://www.ic3.gov
I already report OWNERS and SITE IPS on FBI page and the ticket ID are open
i will keep secret the details here, but i have all informations agains this sites, i info hosts too
but i target woot the site leader with ther email too, and thks to site uploaders for give me alot of infos
ofc i report your paypal privated and site paypal too :D now fbi will hunt you sucker
DELUPURGE this nicks on sites all torrenters
[LIST OF STAFF NICKS]
by torrent hunters
on the last nfo us forget to put fbi report on SCC, but is already done now your tracker will be the next

As you can see, the content and writing style on these notices speak volumes of the maturity of whoever pre’d them. And submitting site IPs to the FBI is surely a sign of desperation (and you don’t even need to be a l33t scene haxx0r to do this). Either way, it would now be interesting to see if DDOS attacks will be launched against TL and BTN, just like it happened with SCC a few days ago. Although the DDOS interrupted SCC services for about a day, it was ineffective in the long run as the site came back online, fully operational and without data loss.

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It’s awesome news if you are a fan of comic books. ComicBT, a specialized private tracker for downloadable comics, has opened public registrations for three days only. ComicBT is one of those trackers that hasn’t received much publicity or hype from numerous BitTorrent forums and blogs out there. The site started out its operations silently back in last May and within a short span of time it’s become one of the largest dedicated comic book trackers online today. ComicBT now features over 2500 torrents of high quality downloadable comic books (old & new, including scanned versions), a brand new, polished looking skin as well as a small but active community of comic book readers, collectors and enthusiasts. If you are a comics lover you might want to check this site out (and this includes everyone who left invite requests in our last CBT review) – signups will only remain open this weekend, and will close by early Monday (25th).

From it’s humble beginnings, CBT has managed to improve its operations in almost all aspects during the last couple of months. The site now features a shiny new skin, category icons and a logo which gives it a highly polished look and feel. But it isn’t just the looks that have improved – CBT uploaders have been adding a ton of new content too. As of 23/10/2010, ComicBT tracked over 2850 torrents (up from 42 when we last featured this tracker), making it probably the largest specialized comics tracker currently online.

As for the type of content CBT tracks, it’s pretty much straightforward. You can find both new and old issues of almost all major comic book series on this tracker. These usually come in CBR, CBZ or PDF file formats - they are all viewable on the PC and probably even on portable devices such as iPad, provided that you have the required software (for a list of software you can use to view Comic Book Archive files on the PC, look here). In addition to comic books, CBT indexes movies, animation and TV series based on comic book characters as well. A screenshot showing part of its torrent index can be seen below:

Aside from the customized theme that resembles the look and feel of a comic book, ComicBT has a bonus system in place and comes with all other standard features TBDEV 2009 codebase has to offer. Note that there are wait times for this tracker.

As mentioned in the title of this post, CBT is currently open for signup. The official notice on site reads:

Open Sign up
Due to me not getting any sleep sign up's are open!  Fri, Sat, Sun
Ends early Monday 25th...

To put it shortly, if you have any interest in comics, comic book characters, superheroes, etc. this is a must have tracker for you. Get in while it’s open.

Site Name: ComicBT (http://comicbt.com)

Signup URL: http://comicbt.com/signup.php

Special thanks to Glen for the heads up.

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It’s always good to hear about the return of a BitTorrent tracker, and this article features two private torrent sites that have come back online after extended downtime. Biggest news is about PackMe.In (aka PiN aka The Donkey). This ratio free, packs only torrent community which shut down it’s services due to the constant crashing of their private tracker last month, has returned from the dead. Right now, all major site functions of PiN appear to be fully working. In the meantime, TinBoxTorrent (TBT), a promising startup tracker that focuses on BRRip and BDRip torrents has also resurfaced after having its hosting services suspended a few days ago. Both these sites are currently open for registration and even completely new users who are hearing about these trackers for the first time are free to sign up. Full details after the jump.

PackMe.In (PiN)

While many of PiN’s former members would be thrilled to hear about the sites return, it’s not as if the downtime has caused any damage to the tracker. PiN has been rebuilt from scratch, meaning it’s torrent and user databases were reset. Old user accounts (along with stats, points, etc) are no longer available and everyone has to start fresh on the new tracker. The 1200+ packs torrents PiN had at the time it went offline too are lost – however, rebuilding of torrent index has already started and nearly 50 packs have already been uploaded on the first day itself. Apart from this minor setback, everything its members loved about PiN has returned. This time around the site is powered by the Gazelle codebase but the conversion has been done without altering the old look and feel. A news post on PiN homepage is quoted below:

Welcome to the new PackMeIn. We've worked hard to bring back the site, hopefully better than ever. We were unable to save the stats from the old PiN, so please help any way you can in uploading (special surprise if we hit 500 torrents), forum posting, and all around using the site. In order to try to get the site rolling again we will keep signups open until we get around 5000 users.
If you find any bugs, please do not hesitate to contact staff.
Also, bringing back the site put us into somewhat of a red area financially, so if you can find it in your heart to donate, please consider it. Please do not donate unless you are financially able. Don't go hungry to feed a torrent site.

For a detailed description of PiN including info about its ‘pack points’ based bonus system, please refer to our recent review located here. As mentioned in the quoted message above, this tracker is currently open for signup.

Site Name: PackMe.In (http://packme.in)
Signup URL: http://packme.in/register.php
Note: If you can’t get the login page to work the usual way, change page style to ‘No Style’ in Firefox  to get it working (View->Page Style-> No Style)

TinBoxTorrent (TBT)

Although not as popular as PiN, TinBoxTorrent (TBT) is a new BRRip, BDRip and XViD movie and TV tracker that’s been receiving a lot of positive responses from our readership lately. The site is probably the first ever private tracker to focus mainly on BDRip and BRRip releases and apparently many people seem to ‘dig’ this type of content (read full review along with screenshots here). TBT saw its user base expand rapidly after launch and the site’s uploaders did a great job in adding over 400 movie/TV torrents within a span of a few days. However, TBT soon went down without notice, and remained offline for several days. A lengthy explanation for this downtime is posted on their homepage":

The reason why the tracker went down was because our old hosts "BounceWeb.com" decided that the tracker was too popular !!!!!! can you believe it!!! the tracker was on a shared host and with the tracker growing fast in the ten days that we opened bandwith usage was high so they cloased us down :( without any warning to me one second it was there and the next gone !! oh lol what a stress head i had on ....lol funny looking back now .....but i felt as if i lost an arm ! it was horrible so much work took away in a flick of a switch...even if they had given me a couple of days notive i could of prepared and warned everyone. The laughable part was with the message "Your account has been Disconected" was we can provide a dedicated server to the sum of 138 euro " oh yhea thanks i said i'll have two ! anyway the tracker is on its own server now so its quite safe (fingers crossed).
Sorry to everyone who has lost there account because the backup was two days old so we lost account members and a lot of torrents, but the good news is you can easily sign back up :) and our staff/uploaders are working hard to bring us back up too date :) yhey !!!!
Lastly the tracker will go down in the next 2-5 days for about 24hrs while the new IP'S Nameserers are resolved at our new hosts...i'm having nothing more to do with our old one.....but thats a long stary as well because ive had nothing but a hard life with them for the past five days...i will go into more detail in the forums when i get the tracker back on its feet and up too date.
LOl ok thank you !

Restored version of TBT already indexes over 400 torrents, and more seem to be getting uploaded as we speak. The site is currently open for registration so go ahead and sign up if you haven’t.

Site Name: TinBoxTorrent (http://www.tinboxtorrent.com)
Signup URL: http://www.tinboxtorrent.com/signup.php

Special thanks to Bugatti for the heads up on PiN.

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Lately, we’ve been getting a shitload of E-mails asking what happened to SCC, the highly respected scene torrent tracker. The site was down for nearly a day and even their IRC server was not responding. Long story short, SCC suffered from a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. This seems to have ceased right now and both the site and tracker, as it stands right now are back online. SCC hit several important milestones last week, including their 4th birthday celebration as well as the opening of long awaited SCC v2 to all user classes. The site also handed out at least one invite to each and every existing member – this was a timed invite and had to be used within 48 hours. Unfortunately, SCC went down before the 48 hour time frame was over and we are pretty sure many people could not use their invite due to the downtime. Either way don’t worry – the limited time on invites has been extended by yet another 48 hours.

A mass PM explaining the reason for downtime is quoted below (this was sent to all SCC members):

The DDoS attack on our site and IRC has ceased. The temporary channel on p2p-net is now closed, please join us on irc.sceneaccess.org. Due to the attacks on our servers, we have now extended the limited time on the invites to another 48 hours. We hope this time everyone can take advantage of the birthday gift. We apologize for the downtime, hopefully this was the last batch of trouble.
PS. If you have edited your hosts file, please remove the old IP addresses and let the DNS propagate.
We hope you'll still have a wonderful weekend. Love, Staff.

Some of you might wonder, what really prompted the DDOS attack. Well, it could be related to the recently pre’d SCENENOTICE regarding SCC – the notice, titled SCENEACCESS.ORG.P2PTORRENT-SCENENOTICE exposed IP addresses of SCC servers (which really wasn’t anything secret, after all) and pleaded the scene to help ‘take it down’. Quoted below is the notice, with personal information and IP addresses removed:

BE SMART YOUR BEST SITE CAN BE A TORRENT SITE!!! PASS THIS IPS FORWARD.
Just another tracker making dumps from scene using falow ips for this shits
[SCC URL] IP (XX.XX.XX.XX) - they use like master for dumps (can be a site or just a dump)
[SCC IRC SERVER URL] IP (XX.XX.XX.XX)
pls all siteops check this ips... if u have this ips linked on master/slaves or a user!
and help scene put this shit down
your site will be down soon! fuck you [OWNER NAME] (owner)
[List of SCC SysOp nicks]
by torrent hunters!

After all, this looks like another chapter in the seemingly never ending P2P vs Scene war. Has the DDOS been successful? Not really, coz if it had, SCC would not be up right now.

Read the rest of this article...

Two new editions of your favorite pirate magazine, The Game Scene Charts (TGSC), is out. Issues No. 45 and 46 covers PC game ISO/DOX scene releases for the months of July and August 2010. For those of you who are reading about TGSC for the first time, it’s a coded magazine that rates and ranks release groups in the warez scene based on the number of cracked games they leak each month. Groups are given points for each pre they make and at the end of each month groups with the highest number of points are selected. Each edition usually includes an editorial, a monthly overview, monthly charts, yearly charts, all time stats and in some cases even interviews with scene groups. TGSC is built with an old school scene cracktro look and feel, comes with its own rendering engine and does not require any additional software to run – just click on the executable and start reading.

As for the monthly group rankings, SKIDROW has unsurprisingly managed to retain the top position in both July and August. This group has been spewing releases regularly and consistently, and appears to have the ability to break all major DRM on the market (Steam, Securom, UBISoft DRM, etc) today. They have also been releasing cracked game updates, which we don’t always see from scene groups. Anyways go ahead and download the magazines to see complete group rankings.

Download

You can download TGSC issues from Defacto, a scene resources site we featured in a previous article.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 45 (July 2010) from Defacto.

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 46 (August 2010) from Defacto.

Note: Your screen may flash and flickering text will appear during the magazine’s intro screens. This is intentional since it’s modeled after old school scene cracktros.

If you are looking for older editions, Defacto has the complete collection of TGSC magazines since Issue #1 (September 2006) on this page. And it’s regularly updated with new editions as well.

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After a long wait, Fallout New Vegas has finally hit the streets. New Vegas is the latest installment to this long running RPG franchise and is without a doubt one of the most anticipated titles to be released this year. Fallout 3 in my opinion was a great game – however it had its share of technical issues, bugs and glitches which sometimes proved to be annoying. New Vegas is built on the same game engine as FO3 and seems to be an equally enjoyable gaming experience. Unfortunately, New Vegas has also inherited some of the bugs it’s predecessor had. This is not to say the game is bugged to hell, but there seem to be a lot of folks who have run into various issues including performance woes, crashes and audio issues. If you have run into problems with New Vegas, check out the list of fixes below – they will help you improve game performance, avoid crashes and in some cases, get the damn game to run :)

Fallout 3 New Vegas freezing & random freezes mid game, BSOD errors

Random freezes including BSOD errors can occur on certain multi core hardware environments due to incompatibilities with the game engine. You can try to avert these issues by limiting the game to use only two cores.

1. Open fallout.ini file in My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV with a text editor such as Notepad.
2. Look for the string bUseThreadedAI=0
3. Change it to bUseThreadedAI=1
4. Add another line beneath the above, iNumHWThreads=2
5. Save and close this file.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for fallout_default.ini file in installation dir (default C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout New Vegas)
   

Improve FPS, fix NPC slowdown, stuttering issues and increase framerate

I’ve got to say, this is an awesome fix and a godsend for those who are plagued with performance problems. Download and place the dx9.dll file as directed in instructions below and you may notice a significant performance increase with your Fallout New Vegas installation:

1. Download dx9.dll file from http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778
2. Place file in ../steamapps/common/fallout new vegas (or wherever your falloutNV.exe is located)
3. Restart steam and the game. Game will now use Directx 9 Render Path instead of the backward computability DX9 API with DX10

This fix was originally found here.

This is also known to resolve some crash at launch issues with Fallout New Vegas.

Fix Jerky framerate issues, low FPS in Fallout New Vegas

Sometimes, particularly if you are using low end video hardware, you might find the game to be lagging in performance with stuttering and jerky frame rates. If you encounter this issue, try setting the water multisampling setting to low. I’ve found this to be killing lower end GPU and disabling this gave a noticeable performance boost.

Fix New Vegas mouse acceleration issues

I don’t know about you but I find the sudden mouse accelration annoying as hell. I’m not sure if this is a feature or a bug but if you want to disable it, follow the steps below:

1. Open FalloutPrefs.ini located inside My Documents\My Games\FalloutNV with a text editor.
2. Find the [Controls] section in this file.
3. Add the following lines to this section: fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
   fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
   fForegroundMouseBase=0
   fForegroundMouseMult=0

Save and close the file (it’s assumed that this file is not read only – if it is, remove the read only attribute from file properties). Restart the game and mouse acceleration issues should hopefully be resolved. Repeat steps 1-3 for Fallout_default.ini located inside Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas\ folder.

Fallout New Vegas crash after intro video

1. Download dx9.dll file from http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778
2. Place the file inside your game' installation directory.
3. Restart the game.

If the above still does not fix your crash and launch, try running the game in windowed mode.

Fallout 3 New Vegas crash to desktop at intro or launch, black screen issues, audio issues

Above can happen if you have FFDShow codecs installed on your machine. Fallout 3 engine seems to have incompatibilities with these and is known to cause crashes as well as audio issues. You have to either uninstall the codecs from your system or add fallout3.exe to FFDShow audio and video decoders exceptions list.

1. Launch the ffdshow video decoder configuration window. You may access this through the start menu. If you have installed any codec packs, check the start menu entries of those. If you can’t find it on the start menu, right click the ffdshow video decoder (red) icon that appears on the taskbar when a supported video file is playing, and select ‘ffdshow video decoder’ option from the menu.
   
2. Tick the ‘Dont use ffdshow in’ checkbox if not already checked
3. Press the edit button that is next to the text field. A new dialog box will pop up. Press the Add button. The ‘Add incompatible executable file’ dialog box will be displayed. Browse to the Fallout New Vegas installation directory and locate the main game exe file. Select it and press open. Close all dialog boxes currently open by pressing ok.
   (OR you can simply type falloutnv.exe at the end of the text field next to ‘Dont use ffdshow in’ checkbox)
4. Repeat steps 2-3 in ffdshow audio decoder configuration (the blue icon in taskbar) window as well. It is important that you add fallout3.exe to both ffdshow audio and video decoder’s exceptions list.

This is a bug that’s been there since Fallout 3. We posted a separate article on how to fix this issue back in 2008, which you may find here.

New Vegas audio issues, lagging, stuttering or noisy audio

First of all, try the FFDShow fix (above) if you are having issues with New Vegas audio. If the problem persists, you can try the following:

• Disable surround sound output in your computers sound properties. Try to use  Sterero speaker setup.
• Lower your sound card’s audio sampling rate to at least 48000hz (a screenshot and detailed steps on how to do this may be found in this article)
• Try running the game in Windowed Mode. Strange as it may sound, this seems to fix lagging audio for some.
• Update your sound card’s drivers.

Update your graphics drivers and DirectX

Again, this is pretty basic stuff buy many people seem to ignore this – always update your video card drivers to the latest build before running the game. Update your video card’s drivers – if latest drivers do not work, try downloading and installing latest beta drivers (do this at your own risk).

• 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
• Beta Drivers: Check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/

As for DirectX, you may download the latest monthly runtime from this location.

This article is a work in progress – it will be updated as more solutions are found.

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• Read our Private Trackers section for latest BitTorrent news

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It’s not everyday you see the launch of a specialized private tracker for Horror Movies and TV Shows. In fact, there are only a handful such trackers around, with live examples being The Horror Charnel (THC) and Henteles.Hu (Signups open). Horror-World is the latest torrent site to join this club – and yeah, as you might have guessed its dedicated to tracking all things Horror, including movies, film stills, soundtracks to electronic books relating to this genre. Built on TS Special Edition 7.1 codebase, HW is a private tracker that’s just starting up. Some of you would be glad to know that this isn’t one of those super secret sites closed to the public – signups are currently open and everyone is able to create a free account. If you like Horror movies, check this out.

Horror World is only a few weeks old so don’t expect to join a tracker that has 50k members and 100k torrents. Additionally, this is a niche site meaning it would have much less number of torrents than your average General/0Day tracker. Nevertheless, HW is off to a pretty good start and currently tracks around 500 active torrents and has managed to amass a registered user base of 475+ members (statistics as of 10/20/2010). 

As for the content available on H-W, it’s not just horror movies and TV shows. Movie soundtracks and electronic books (including audio books) relating to the genre are also indexed. Right now there aren’t a lot of these non-movie torrents available but presence of separate tracker categories would mean there are plans to add more of these in future. As for the movies, they come in a number of different video qualities ranging from BRRips, DVDRips, R5 to VHSRips. Both new movies as well as older releases are indexed. The screenshot below should give you a better understanding of what to expect on Horror-World.

Signups for H-W are currently open. In fact, they’ve been always open ever since the site’s launch about one and a half months ago. If you like Horror themed video and audio content, check this tracker out.

Site Name: Horror-World (http://horror-world.info)

Signup URL: http://horror-world.info/signup.php

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• Henteles.Hu – Private Tracker For Horror Movies

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Welcome to our latest collective private tracker open signup update. This is a recap of notable private and public torrent sites we discussed here in the past one and a half months. This post includes summarized information about 16 different torrent sites that are currently open to the public, either via direct open registrations or by alternate means such as online invite applications or IRC recruitment. As usual, lots of niche trackers including sites that specialize in High Definition content, E-Learning material, Movies, Music, Games, Software as well as General/0Day trackers that index a broader range of content is featured in the article. All entries come complete with up to date site statistics, signup URLs and links to a detailed review which usually contains screenshots and other noteworthy information. Please take the time to read full review before you sign up for any tracker – this will save you from signing up for sites that you’ll never use and will prevent private trackers getting filled with lots of inactive members.

AceHD

Site Name: AceHD (http://acehd.net)
Signup URL: http://acehd.net/signup.php
Stats: 13600+ members and 4200+ torrents
Description: AceHD is a specialized HD tracker which tracks movies, TV shows and documentaries in high definition video formats. Although it has had only three public open signups in one year, the site has managed to build a strong user base. Signups are currently open, but most likely will not last long.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AsiaTorrents

Site Name: Asia Torrents (http://www.asiatorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://www.asiatorrents.com/index.php?page=signup
Stats: 184000+ users and ~14000 torrents
Description: AsiaTorrents (formerly known as AvistaZ), is a private tracker that focuses on movies from the Asian region. Movies, music and TV Shows from countries such as Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, India and Thailand may be found here. A massive tracker with some really rare content.
Full Review: [Click Here]

PwnNetwork

Site Name: PwnNetwork (http://pwnnetwork.net)
Signup URL: http://pwnnetwork.net/register.php
Stats: 5600+ members and 600+ torrents
Description: PwnNetwork is a new Gazelle based games tracker. This site is the successor to nTorrets – instead of limiting itself to one particular console, PWN tracks games across multiple platforms including PC, PS3, Will. X360 and more.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TheGeeks

Site Name: The Geeks (http://thegeeks.bz)
Signup URL: http://thegeeks.bz/signup.php
Stats: 3800+ torrents
Description: Latest addition to the TBZ studios family of trackers, TheGeeks is a new E-Learning tracker. With nearly ~4000 unique torrents uploaded within weeks since launch, this has to be one of the most successful trackers to be launched in 2010 so far.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Torrent My Books

Site Name: Torrent My Books (http://torrentmybooks.com/)
Signup URL: http://torrentmybooks.com/register.php (Optional)
Stats: 250+ torrents
Description: TMB is not a private tracker – it’s a new public BitTorrent search engine that focuses solely on educational material. Torrent files are hosted on TMB but it uses external trackers (such as OpenBitTorrent) to facilitate the downloads.
Full Review: [Click Here]

CreativeBits

Site Name: CreativeBits
Invites Channel URL: irc://irc.omgwtfhax.net/cb-invites
Stats: 275 users and 1000+ torrents
Description: CreativeBits is a  ratio free BitTorrent tracker dedicated to tracking templates, graphics, fonts, E-books, video tutorials, content management systems (CMS), Flash & Photoshop content, software, etc. It’d come in handy for software engineers, web developers, web designers, graphics designers and even to students of pretty much any field related to information technology.
Full Review: [Click Here]

nCore

Site Name: nCore (http://ncore.cc)
Invite Application URL: Visit http://ncore.cc/login.php and click on Meghívó igénylés
Stats: 138000+ users and ~90000 torrents
Description: A huge General/0Day torrent tracker, nCore has opened invite applications probably for the very first time since its launch. With a massive torrent index and thousands of users, activity is very high on this site. Please refer to the full review for detailed signup instructions including translation help.
Full Review: [Click Here]

iTS

Site Name: iTS
Signup URL: Please refer to this post for detailed instructions.
Stats: 4500+ torrents
Description: A private tracker that does not prefer much publicity, iTS has just started recruiting new members via their online invite applications. iTS’ a ratioless tracker that shares a lot of unique content such as AFR movie rips, lossless FLAC rips, a variety of classic collections and of course, other general content including a ton of exclusive uploads made available by the site’s internal encoders. Before you apply, please do read the full review carefully.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Wunza

Site Name: Wunza (http://wunza.ws)
Invites Channel Direct Link: http://wunza.ws:9090/?nick=&channels=interview
Stats: 3000+ users and 975+ torrents
Description: A Gazelle based specialized movie tracker, Wunza launched v3 recently with a new visual layout and a more polished look. This tracker is known for it’s IMDB style browse pages and attractive user interface.
Full Review: [Click Here]

SceneVids

Site Name: SceneVids (http://scenevids.info)
Signup URL: http://scenevids.info/signup.php
Stats: ~1000 torrents
Description: SceneVids is a specialized music video torrent tracker. As the name suggests, most of the indexed torrents are scene releases. Although only a few weeks old, SceneVids is off to a promising start, with lots of new torrents uploaded daily.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TinBoxTorrent

Site Name: TinBoxTorrent (http://www.tinboxtorrent.com)
Signup URL: http://www.tinboxtorrent.com/signup.php (EDIT: Site is temporarily offline)
Stats: 300+ torrents (at last check)
Description: TinBoxTorrent is a movie and TV tracker with a lot of focus on BRRips and BDRip releases. The site has received a lot of positive comments from our users but unfortunately, it went down a couple of days ago. According to TBT administrator, it will be back soon (read last comment in full review link for the detailed response).
Full Review: [Click Here]

Libble

Site Name: Libble (http://libble.me)
Signup URL: http://libble.me/register.php
Stats: ~8000 users and 16700+ torrents
Description: Libble is a ratio free music torrent tracker powered by Gazelle RC2 codebase. They recently increased their maximum user limit to 10000 and there are plenty of free slots left for potential new members. 
Full Review: [Click Here]

DeamonBytes

Site Name: DeamonBytes (http://www.deamonbytes.net)
Signup URL: http://www.deamonbytes.net/create_account.php
Stats: 10000+ users and 1800+ torrents
Description: DeamonBytes is the successor to long standing private tracker PeerPortal (now defunct). DB is a ratio free site and has managed to retain bulk of the old PP user base, making it one of the more active new trackers to launch recently.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Romanian ShareReactor

Site Name: Romanian ShareReactor (http://tracker.sharereactor.ro/)
Signup URL: http://tracker.sharereactor.ro/registration.php
Stats: 7500+ torrents
Description: Another veteran 4+ year old private tracker, RSR tracks both scene and non scene releases at pretty good speeds. The site is not always open for registration but the there’s space for ~1500 new signups in current recruitment phase.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Speed.CD

Site Name: Speed.cd (http://speed.cd)
Signup URL: http://speed.cd/signup.php
Stats: 25000+ torrents
Description: A private tracker that’s several years old, Speed.CD ran into hot waters after they claimed it was the official home of popular P2P ripper aXXo (which it wasn’t). Nevertheless the site has survived the controversy and is currently open for signup. Speed is a family friendly tracker focusing only on Movies and TV shows.
Full Review: [Click Here]

The Empire

Site Name: The Empire (http://www.theempire.bz)
Signup URL: http://www.theempire.bz/signup.php
Stats: 4300+ torrents
Description: Another member of TBZ tracker family, The Empire is a private torrent tracker for TV and radio shows. TE specializes in shows from commonwealth countries – television shows from Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and other regions may be found here. Just like its sister sites, TE.BZ indexes some unique torrents not usually found elsewhere.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Not enough private trackers? Check out our previous collective tracker update (September 2010) – this included 15 more sites, most of which are still open for signup.

Special thanks to everyone who’s been sending us tips, inside information and updates – you guys have been awesome.

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Earlier this month we featured a new Gazelle based PC and Games torrent tracker called PwnNetwork (aka The Network). PWN was not just any games tracker - it was the successor to the much famed nTorrents. However, back when the article was posted, this site was closed to the public – only existing nTorrent members who were sent invites were able to get in. Anyway here’s some good news for those who could not join earlier – PWN has opened registrations for the first time since its launch and now everyone is able to create a free account. In addition to open registrations, sitewide free leech has also been activated to help users build a healthy ratio. As mentioned earlier, PWN is a Gazelle powered dedicated games tracker which indexes video games for PC, Mac, PS3, XBOX360, Wii and other platforms including currently discontinued, older consoles.

Although a site built from scratch, PWN seems to be expanding at a rather rapid pace. Since the launch of its public beta around 2 weeks ago, PWN has managed to recruit 3800+ users and index nearly 600 torrents. Of course, the user base and torrent index built around nTorrents has no doubt played a major role in these statistics – but still, it’s a good start for a new tracker by any means.

If you are looking for background information, site features and the type of content PWN tracks, we suggest you read our previous article located here. We pretty much covered everything there’s to be said about this tracker in last post and there’s no need to repeat the same information here. For those looking for a quick peek, here’s a screenshot of their torrent index:

Although the site is currently open for signup, don’t expect open registrations to last forever:

Thanks to everyone who has been supporting us these last few weeks. We have decided to welcome some more members into the tracker. Signups and freeleech for the weekend! They will be closed sometime after the weekend. So please tell your friends.

If you are a video games fan, go ahead and check the site out. It’s still new but given the experienced crew behind the tracker and thanks to a successful launch, the PWN’s future looks very promising.

Site Name: PwnNetwork (http://pwnnetwork.net)

Signup URL: http://pwnnetwork.net/register.php

Special thanks to Andrew M for the heads up.

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Back in its day, OiNK was probably the most popular private tracker – it had over 180000 active members and had a celebrity status among BitTorrent sites. Sadly, all of this changed when Operation Ark Royal, a coordinated raid by IFPI, BPI and Interpol, shut down the ‘Pink Palace’ tracker and arrested its owner Allan Ellis. However during the legal proceedings it was determined that founder Alan Ellis was not guilty and he walked free. Despite this legal victory, OiNK remained down since 2007 and it was said that the site was never coming back. Now. three years later, a rather peculiar message has appeared on http://oink.me – according to the message the site is set to return on 31st of October. This is currently a hot topic on most BitTorrent forums and everyone is asking the same question – is this for real?

Before you celebrate, there are several things that seem to be wrong with this announcement. First of all, the message has appeared on http://oink.me – although similar to OiNK’s domain, this actually was not the location where the site was last hosted. OiNK’s was earlier accessible via http://oink.me.uk and then the site moved to http://oink.cd citing legal reasons. Both these domains still point to an official statement by Allan Ellis which contradicts what’s being said on http://oink.me:

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.

From what we can gather from the above, the so called return of OiNK does not seem to be official. It doesn’t look like any of the site’s former owners are behind http://oink.me project. Sure, a new BitTorrent tracker could go live on this domain in a couple of weeks, but it’s highly unlikely it’d be the same old community. I could be wrong but for me this looks like another attempt to ride on the popularity of a once great private tracker. It could be a legit site but considering the number of frauds and scams that are around, I’d suggest you proceed with caution on this one.

P.S. – If you want to read more about OiNK, the raid and events following the raid, have a look here - http://oinkmemorial.blogspot.com .

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• OiNK Music Tracker – An Update From Allan Ellis

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