More good news on the BitTorrent tracker invites front – our latest ACiD (AL) giveaway is here. That said, this technically is not an invitation giveaway – it’s more like a special open signup. Just like their sister site Merlin, ACiD is having a signup party through which members can instantly register for an account without having to go through interviews, invite applications or any other barriers. For those of you who haven’t heard about this tracker, AL is a veteran BitTorrent site that is almost 5 years old. It’s a community oriented tracker which indexes general/0Day releases by scene and non scene groups as well as uploads by its own internal teams. Use our special signup key posted at the end of this article to gain access to ACiD. This tracker hasn’t had an open signup in the recent past so this is an excellent opportunity for those who waited in line to get in. The key supports up to 2000 new registrations.

Acid isn’t by any means a newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. The site is set to celebrate its fifth birthday in a couple of months time, in January 2011. However, not a lot has been written about this tracker on BT forums or blogs – this is probably due AL’s strict rules regarding unwanted publicity. Despite being a closed community, nearly 20000 members have already made it their torrenting home ( this is without counting the 12k+ users who got banned from AL for various reasons). The site currently tracks around 12000 torrents, making it one of the larger general trackers out there.

No matter how old a BitTorrent tracker is, it wouldn’t be successful without a good community or a content rich torrent index. Thankfully, ACiD has both. It’s staff are some of the friendliest folks around and it has a loyal user base who are great at filling requests and helping each other out. Download speeds are pretty good and pre times are decent. And it’s worth mentioning that AL’s pre times, specially for TV releases, have definitely improved over the last couple of months. You can find pretty much all major movie, music, appz, game, ebook and other releases on this tracker. But that’s not all – in addition to common scene and p2p releases, AL tracks a lot of exclusive torrents and packs. These can usually be identified by the presence of tags ‘TeamAcid’, ‘RequestAcid’, ‘Acid’,  ‘ACID INT’, etc in torrent title.

Coming back to open signups, you can use the key below to create a free account on AL. They key supports up to 2000 new registrations and the sign up party would end once this limit is reached.

Site Name: ACiD

Signup URL: http://www.acid-lounge.org.uk/Main/?act=Signup&id=5&hash=a8f0df47f3f9ec8c7eed518a384250ee

Special Signup Key: gefhmj

Feel free to share this key with your friends on other BT forums or blogs. However, please make sure to link to this post so that whoever is signing up will at least know which type of tracker they are getting into. This giveaway will be pointless if 2000 members who didn’t have any use for AL signed up – that would just fill the tracker with inactive members.

Special thanks to cambo for the heads up.

P.S. – Acid’s sister site, Merlin, is also open for signup via a similar promotion. In case you haven’t checked ML out, you can read about it from this location.

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A while ago we posted an article about PeerAccess (PA), a file sharing related forum home to P2P release group T0XiC. Despite being the official home of an exclusive movie enocder team, PA was best known amongst the file sharing community for a totally different reason; R5 movie release dates - the site had probably the best maintained R5, R1, R2 DVD and Blu Ray movie release dates on the web. These lists were being updated on a regular basis, with incorrect dates being removed and new entries added. Just when things were going very smoothly, PA ran into some trouble last month and it appears that they had to rebuild the site from scratch. Good news is that PA is now back online, fully functional, with a new look and with all of its favorite features intact.

The most popular feature on PeerAccess is without a doubt their DVD release dates section. PA has a separate forum section which indexes release dates for DVDs and Blu-Ray disks in region 1, 2, and 5 (R1, R2, R5). So how does knowing a release date help the average pirate? Well, you can pretty much guess *when* a particular movie will leak online, if you know its public DVD release date. These schedules are subject to frequent change due to last minute decisions by publishers. This is one reason why most R5/R1/R2 predictions on the web soon become out of date. However, PA is one of the rare forums I have seen which regularly update its threads to reflect new schedules. This is one reason why we quote from their lists in out monthly R5 update articles such as this one.

In addition to the popular Release Dates section, PeerAccess also contains a BitTorrent tracker invite section, tracker reviews, seedbox reviews, open signup news, torrent reviews, screens and samples from latest movie releases as well as links to new movie trailers. Additionally, PA is the official home of P2P movie release group T0XiC. New site does not contain any exclusive T0XiC encodes just yet but according to a message posted on site, TOXiC RG plans to restart their operations soon.

Recent downtime seems to have reset PA’s user database and the new site is pretty much re built from scratch. Within a couple of days into the (re)launch, there are 200+ threads and 100+ active members registered. Of course, not all of these threads have high activity just yet as the forum is still at the starting stage, but over time and with more members, it could really kick off. For those interested in joining, registrations are currently open.

Site Name: PeerAccess (http://peeraccess.info)

Signup URL: http://peeraccess.info/register.php

Special thanks to Quizz for the heads up.

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The past few months have not been great for BitTorrent invite and discussion forums – I’ve seen drastic drops in activity on a couple of existing sites and only a few forums seem to have survived from losing members. The latest BitTorrent invite and discussion community to shut down is The Nation (T-N) – however, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Although T-N has closed down, their user base was merged with Etiv just before the closure. It’s actually a way more sensible thing to do than abruptly taking down a site, stranding loyal members (which is what usually happens). That’s not all – there’s even more good news. VoiceThe.Net (VTN), another BT forum in the Etiv network, has decided to open public signups in an attempt to recruit more members. More details about these stories after the jump.

VoiceThe.Net registrations open

VoiceThe.Net is the sister site of Etiv. While being a fully fledged BitTorrent community in its own right, VTN also serves as a gateway to Etiv since active members from VTN can gain entry to their sister site based on performance and activity. Getting into VTN on the other hand is comparatively easy and the forum caters towards both experienced and novice users of BitTorrent (in other words, it’s not limited to l33t members who are registered on a thousand different torrent sites :p ). Quoted below are features newly added to VTN since our last mention of it on this blog -

• Our own image host: This is meant to be a one stop shop for members to use to host their images on without having to go off site to do it.
• P2P Wiki: We now have a full blown wiki  service (vtn/wiki) that will house just about everything p2p related. It's slowly getting filled to the brim with new stuff from tutorials to helpful tips
• Seedbox Service: There is now a dedicated website (pimpmyseeds.net) that will house our very own seedbox servers.
• We have also recently upgraded to the newest vbulletin software (4.0.7) so there are a bunch of new themes to go along with that.

For a detailed review of the site including screenshots, we suggest your read our previous article located here. Registrations for VTN are currently open. Use the links below to create an account:

Site Name: VoiceThe.Net (http://voicethe.net)
Registration URL: http://voicethe.net/forum/signup.php

Etiv and The Nation merge

Loyal members of The-Nation will no doubt be disappointed with the site’s fate. However, it could have been worse. Full details about the closure were explained in a mass PM sent to all members just before the shut down:

Hello Nation,
I know it’s been a long time since anyone has heard from us unless you come by the irc to see what’s going on but then you still might not have been able to get much of an answer. MKZ has been gone for a while now taking care of his health and might have just moved on from running the forum. Staff have been busy taking care of things in real life.
It’s not that we want T-N to close one bit but we do think it in the best interest to do so. We don’t have the time, money and a few others things needed to run the site properly. So with this happening we will be closing the doors here and merging over to Etiv so that everyone still has a home. There will still be staff from T-N being staff at Etiv and everyone will be moved in to their appropriate rank/user class.
Sorry for not much of a notice but this is just the best thing we can do for our forum. Having our members a home is my main priority.
Sorry for the bad but also good news.
kilo

The merger has without a doubt further strengthened Etiv and boosted its activity – the site currently have close to 900 active members and its one of the more promising BT forums out there. At last check, signups remained closed. Interested members can gain entry into the site by becoming an active member of VTN – see above.

Special thanks to Chris Baslee and Rabbot for the heads up on VTN.

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Probably all of you have heard about PeerGuardian (PG), the P2P utility program that is able to block incoming connections based on IP blocklists. PG’s blocklists contained IP addresses of known anti piracy agencies, various government entities, spyware oriented servers, etc and the software effectively prevented these addresses from making contact with your BitTorrent client or any other file sharing program. For those very reason, PG was hugely popular among the file sharing community back in its day. However, the program did not have a bright future as its developer discontinued development and moved on to other projects. This is where PeerBlock comes in – it’s an actively maintained fork of PeerGuardian 2 with lots of updates to the core application ( and not just a new list IP addresses). A new stable release of PeerBlock (v1.1.0) was just released yesterday with several new features including signed drivers for Windows 7, direct iBlocklists.com integration and more.

Usually, this is the kind of an app only computer power users tend to use. However, using PeerBlock is dead simple – even novices should easily be able to figure out how this works. For those of you who are unfamiliar with PB, here’s a brief description of the software, as mentioned on its homepage:

PeerBlock lets you control who your computer "talks to" on the Internet.  By selecting appropriate lists of "known bad" computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been "hacked", even entire countries!  They can't get in to your computer, and your computer won't try to send them anything either.
And best of all, it's free!

Setting up PeerBlock is easy - you basically need to install it. There is no need to configure your file sharing clients manually to integrate with PB - the program will run in the background and block all incoming or outgoing connections from/to your PC based on its blocklists. It comes with several pre configured block lists, one each containing IP addresses of anti P2P organizations. spyware/adware servers, advertising servers and educational institutions. The client will automatically update these lists online, as updates become available (much like how anti virus software download new definition files). You can create lists of your own or download additional lists from http://www.iblocklist.com/lists.php

Download

A new stable build of PeerBlock has just been released. If I’m not mistaken, this is the newest stable release to hit the web after almost 6 months. You can download the installer and view release notes using the links below.

[Click Here] to download PeerBlock 1.1.0 Release 518 installer

[Click Here] to view release notes

Note that although software such as PeerBlock and PeerGuardian do provide an additional layer of security to your p2p activities, they should not be mistaken for all-in-one magical solutions that will shield you from all kinds snoopers. For example, anti piracy agencies might use IP addresses that are not yet included in PB’s blocklists. Therefore always be on the lookout for prying eyes – don’t let a sense of false security fool you.

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Here’s another private tracker open signup update. In this article we bring you news of three private BitTorrent sites that are currently accepting new members; PolishSource, LeechTurk and AceTorrents. PolishSource is a General/0Day torrent tracker which recently de-merged from HeavenSource (if you have been living under a rock, HeavenSource was formed sometime back with PolishSource and HeavenTracker (HT) merging together). LeechTurk, another General/0Day tracker which is home to P2P movie release group LTRG, has also opened signups. There are a lot of BRRips releases here and the site recently got a new look with a cleaner looking interface. AceTorrents, a long standing zero day torrent site, has also opened up after being closed for a while. Just like LT, Ace-T recently got an upgraded look thanks to an overhaul of the UI. If you are looking for sites to download your daily fix of movies, games, music and more, check these out. Full details, screenshots and signup URLs after the jump.

PolishSource

Although this may look like a new site, PolishSource has actually been online since 2008. They recently merged with HeavenTracker to form HeavenSource, a new Gazelle based torrent site (full details about HS here). The merger apparently did not pay off, with the end result being PolishSource finally de-merging from HS. HS continues to operate as a private tracker to date while PolishSource has once again moved to a separate home as an independent entity.

The new site appears to be coded from scratch and both user and torrent indexes have been reset. At the time this post was being written, PS tracked around 1000 torrents and had 1100+ registered members – these number were increasing rapidly.
Site Name: PolishSource (http://polishsource.org)
Signup URL: http://polishsource.org/signup.php?lang=en

LeechTurk

LeechTurk is one of those Turkish general torrent trackers with a lot of BRRip releases. It’s very similar to BitTurk (BT) in terms of indexed content - while BT is the official home of P2P group D-ZON3, LeechTurk is home to LTRG. Both these groups are well known for their BRRip releases and hence you can find a lot of movies & TV shows including some exclusive uploads here than on most other General/0Day trackers.

LeechTurk recently got a new look – logo and visual theme has changed but the default site language remains to be Turkish. Anyway you should be able to find your way around this tracker even if you did not know a word of Turkish and did not have access to a translator.
Site Name: LeechTurk (http://www.leechturk.com)
Signup URL: http://www.leechturk.com/signup.php

AceTorrents

Out of the three torrent sites featured in this post, Ace-T is probably the most popular. It’s been around for several years and has won a reputation among torrenters as a decent general tracker with good pre times. AceTorrents has moved forward with the times and it now features a much better looking visual design with new category icons, a more user friendly layout and a colorful, eye catching logo.

Even regular users are able to upload torrents to Ace-T. User uploads however are shown in a separate browse page accessible from the main toolbar. At the time this post was being written, this site tracked around 11500+ torrents (some dead) and 10000+ members.
Site Name: AceTorrents (http://www.acetorrents.net)
Signup URL: http://www.acetorrents.net/signup.php

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About a week ago we gave away an special signup key which allowed 1000 new users sign up for Merlin (ML), a private torrent tracker focusing on movies, TV shows,  documentaries, games and books all relating to science fiction and fantasy genres . We have now been informed by ML administration that all 1000 slots allocated to the previous key were used up a couple of days ago. Not only that, they’ve been kind enough to give us another key which will support a further 1000 new members. In case you missed out on the last giveaway, here’s another chance to join a decent niche private tracker. As we stated in the previous article, ML is a torrent tracker run by the crew behind ACiD – the site has been online for nearly an year and is yet to have a regular open signup.

For those of you looking for a quick rundown on ML, it currently tracks around 650 active torrents including scene, non scene releases as well as exclusive packs of Sci-Fi/Fantasy content. For a detailed review of the site including screenshots, please refer to the previous article located here. Use the login URL and signup key below to create a new account if you haven’t already done so.

Site Name: Merlin

Signup URL: http://www.merlins-loft.org.uk/Main/?act=Signup&id=9&hash=9404021188c817c85c230776d8a98c87

Special Signup Key: ykrkbh

Special thanks to ML staff for the support given

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Great news for music fans – TorrentTech is having a rare open sign up. TT is now 4 years old and they are finishing off birthday celebrations by opening doors to new members. Being one of the largest music torrent communities currently online, this is a must have site for music lovers looking to expand their digital collection. TorrentTech tracks a ton of torrents relating to multiple music genres including House, Techno, Trance, Pop, Hardcore and many more. Just like many other private communities, this site is usually invite only (invites are easily obtainable if you join their IRC). However, you will be able to create a free account without the need for an invite during the open registration period, which will last until Monday (22nd).

Quoted below is the official announcement regarding the latest round of open registrations:

to finish off our birthday celebration we'll be opening our doors to new members - from friday, noon (12h00) GMT+1 until monday, noon (12h00) GMT+1 we will have OPEN REGISTRATION.
help show off our great tT community by telling your friends and p2p homies; introduce them to our forums, our netlabel, and our radio... spread the word!
... and don't forget to keep seeding your downloads so our new friends can enjoy the terrific selection of available releases here at tT.
cheers to the next 4 years!

And now for some details about TorrentTech. By any standards, TT is a huge private tracker. At the time this post was being written, it had over 37000 active members and tracked over 66000 music torrents (pointing to over 590000 files). It may not be as large as What.CD (and there isn’t a music tracker on this planet that can rival What in terms of size so this may not be a fair comparison) but it’s still a decently sized tracker with a lot of content and members.

If you are used to standard tracker layouts such as those provided by TBDEV, Gazelle, etc, you may find TT’s interface to be unfamiliar. Built on a IP Board environment, this is one of those forum based trackers – it functions a lot like most DDL forums out there but with tracker features such as number of seeds, leechs, etc integrated into forum threads. Part of TT’s main torrent file index can be seen in the screenshot below:

As mentioned earlier registrations for TT are currently open. Open signups will continue for three days and will on Monday the 22nd. It’s not everyday this tracker opens its doors so get in while you can.

Site Name: TorrenTech (http://www.torrentech.org)

Registration URL: http://www.torrentech.org/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00

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Some of you may already be familiar with SceneExpress tracker. SceneExpress, better known as SeX, is the successor to the now defunct SceneLife (ScL). The site blasted its way into the BitTorrent scene with 20000 active torrents back in April this year. At the time of its launch, SeX was the only private tracker to be using the SCTBDEV codebase which was developed by crew behind SceneTorrents (ScT – now offline). With this trackers’ abbreviation being ‘SeX’, some of you may be wondering if this is specialized adult torrent site – well, it’s not. SeX is a General/0Day tracker which has movies, music, games, e-books, TV shows, anime and other scene and non scene content including packs. And now for the good news – starting December 2010, SceneExpress will have public open registrations during the first three days of each month.

In addition to open signups, site staff have also enabled IRC idle bonus. It works the same as on any other tracker – you idle on SeX’s IRC channel and upload credit gets added to your user account. Quoted below (with minor edits) is the official announcement posted on site homepage:

Open Signups
SeX staff has decided to hold open sign-ups the first three days of each month, starting from this December, for a brief duration. We hope to introduce new members into our ranks and bring some renewed energy to the site. Our main reason for opening sign-ups is to ensure a healthy growth, and for that we need more members.
So spread the word - tell your friend's, your family, torrent enthusiasts, and other people you know.
In short: For a brief duration, there will be open sign-ups at the first three days of each month. This means that sign-ups will be open on December 1st, 2nd and 3rd, January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and February 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and so on, until staff decides to end it.

IRC Bonus
Yes, we know we said in the past that we would not have an IRC Bonus System. However, we have now reconsidered this option and have decided to go ahead and do it!
Here's how it works:
The system gives each user 30MB every 30 minutes, so you get 60MB per hour total just for idling in our IRC.
Bonus Potential:
Simply, only for hanging around on our IRC you get:
1.41GB upload a day
9.84GB upload a week
42.19GB upload a month
500.63GB upload a year

Much love from,
SeX Crew

This should indeed be good news to both existing members and potential new members looking forward to join SceneExpress. While the site has indexed a ton of torrents (47000+ as of 19/11/2010, in both main and Spam categories), only around 28000 of them are currently active. There are 10700+ registered members on SeX at present - a further increase of this number would improve torrent retention as well as site activity. For a detailed overview of SceneExpress including the newly introduced features since public launch, please refer to our previous posts located here and here.

As stated above, the first open signup under the new scheme is scheduled for 1st, 2nd and 3rd December 2010. Below are the likely signup URLS (these are not confirmed and might change):

Signup URL: https://scenexpress.net/opensignup.php

Signup URL (non HTTPS): http://scenexpress.net/opensignup.php

We will be posting updates on this blog as well as on our Twitter and Facebook feeds when registrations open. Stay tuned.

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The highly anticipated Need for Speed : Hot Pursuit has finally hit the shelves. This game, which is a reboot of the 1998’s NFS 3, is the 16th installment of the long running NFS franchise which is now over 15 years old. I’ve had the opportunity to play the game for several hours and to be honest it looked good and was pretty enjoyable. Of course, this is by no means a true racing simulation – if you are looking for one go play GRID. Hot Pursuit instead is an arcade racer – its not ultra realistic but nevertheless fun to play. Anyway, before this post turns into yet another NFS review, let us tell you that this is our routine troubleshooting article for Hot Pursuit 2010. Hopefully, the tips and workarounds mentioned below will help you avert bugs, glitches, crashes and other annoyances with this new NFS title.

How to fix NFS Hot Pursuit crash to desktop (CTD) after selecting race

Judging by the number of people complaining on various gaming forums, this seems to be a fairly common problem. The game sometimes seem to crash when running on processors with 4 cores. You can try either one of the solutions mentioned below to try and fix this issue:

Set the NFS process to use only two cores

Instead of setting your computer to use two cores, you can try enforcing this restriction on NFS HP process only.

1. Start the game. Immediately start Task Manager
2. Locate the NFS hot Pursuit process in the processes list.
3. Right click the process and select ‘Set Affinity’.
4. Tick only two processor cores, preferably Processor 0 and 1. Press ok and close the dialog.
5. Switch back to the game and try selecting a race.

If this method does not work, try the solution below.

Set your computer to use only two cores

1. Run System Configuration utility. Typing msconfig in the start menu run or search box should do the trick.
2. Switch to ‘Boot’ tab.
3. Select ‘Advanced Options’
4. Set ‘Number of Processors’ to 2.
5. Restart your computer and run the game.

While the crash on race selection may get fixed, note that your computer will now only use only two processor cores instead of 4. You may want to undo the above change once you stop playing.

How to change language in NFS Hot Pursuit

1. Open Registry Editor. Type regedit in start menu run or search box.
2. Locate the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Electronic Arts\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\1.0 (on 64-bit systems)
   OR
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\1.0 (on 32-bit systems)
3. Change the Language key value to ‘English’ and Locale key value to ‘en_US’.

It may be possible to switch to other languages/locales if you are using a MULTILANGUAGE release. However, I personally have not tried it.

How to manually edit NFS Hot Pursuit configuration settings

It is possible to manually edit your configuration settings files to tweak settings you can’t change in game.

1. Browse to c:\Documents And Settings\<USERNAME>\My Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\
2. Open the config.NFS11Save file with a text editor.

Most of the display options are listed under the [Display] section of above file.

How to run NFS Hot Pursuit in windowed mode

1. Open the config.NFS11Save file as stated above.
2. Browse to the [Display] section.
3. Set fullscreen=false. Save and close the file.
4. Run the game.

How to change resolution in NFS Hot Pursuit

1. Open the config.NFS11Save file as stated earlier.
2. Browse to the [Display] section.
3. Alter width and height properties to fit your desired resolution. For example, values for 800x600 resolution would be : Width=800
   Height=600
4. Save and close the file.
5. Run the game.

Note that adding a resolution unsupported by your video card/monitor would cause black screen issues when trying to launch the game.

Please keep in mind that this article is a work in progress - more fixes will be added here as and when they are discovered. Check this space for updates.

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• Read our Private Trackers section for latest BitTorrent news

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Several days ago we featured an article on TL v3, the latest incarnation of the popular private BitTorrent tracker TorrentLeech. In a massive upgrade to the site, TL just about changed the whole user experience with a brand new visual style and a lot of under the hood tweaks. As it usually happens with new designs, not all of TLs’ users were pleased with the changes. While it’s impossible to satisfy everyone, there indeed were some nagging issues highlighted even by the site’s most loyal members, which were widely discussed on BitTorrent forums and blogs. Good news here is that TorrentLeech administrations seems to be listening to what their users have to say – in a latest round of bug fixes, they have addressed a number of commonly reported issues along with some usability improvements such as new category icons.

An official announcement of the recently implemented changes is quoted below (this was originally posted on TL homepage):

Bug Fixes and Updates

We just made several changes to our source code, fixing a few bugs and making some changes requested by many people including the following:
1) By popular demand, we added more category icons, one for each category (We thank TaeKz for this  )
2) We fixed a few bugs with Internet Explorer. The filter and category buttons on the Browse page should be functional now. If they still don't work for you, please refresh your page or delete your browser's cache so that you get the updated files from our servers.
3) We added a sort by date button next to the bookmarks button that appears when a search is active, so that you have the option to sort the results by date or score

With the addition of a sort by date option, consistency returns to TL search results. Their new search algorithm appeared to be ordering results by relevancy, which meant newer releases did not come on top. This wasn’t how it worked in the old codebase and those who wanted to find latest releases for a particular term were left disappointed. The new ‘Sort By Date’ button solves this issue and gives you even more flexibility in how results need to be displayed.

But that’s not all – another nagging issue with the category icons has been fixed. There were many complaints earlier on about new category icons all looking similar to one another – for example, BRRip, DVDRip, R5 and TS releases had the same icon and it was not easy to distinguish between them without reading the full torrent name. Thankfully, this has now been resolved with the addition of new icons, as you may see in the screenshot below:

A list of things yet to be fixed/in progress of being fixed was also listed by one of the site’s owners. Quoted below is an update by quark:

I have been receiving hundreds of PMs with "problems" that we gave instructions from Day One.
1) First of all. I will say it once more: Invitations and Signups are disabled temporarily. We will inform you when they are going to be available next week.
2) Secondly. If you feel that some aspects of the site are not working for you, then you are probably using Internet Explorer. Stop complaining and get a real browser like Firefox, Chrome or Safari. We said from day one that Internet Explorer does not work well. We will fix things in time, but not today, nor tomorrow.
3) RSS feeds will be available shortly after we finish some tests we run.
4) The Help button does not work, not because it is a bug, but because this section is being prepared. We will include documentation for all features of the site, including advanced options for the search engine.
We ask for your patience during this time, as it is a difficult transition for us, and our hands are full. We would like for you at this time, only to report problems and bugs, and don't waste our time with complaints about changes. Give us 2 weeks to stabilize the servers performance and fix the last bugs, and we will start making changes again and improvements according to your wishes.

For a site the size of TL and the nature of v3 upgrade, this is indeed a major transition (for a detailed account of TL v3 features and screenshots, please refer to this article). And honestly, the site looks and behaves much better since its initial rollout several days ago. Expect more bugs and glitches to be fixed in the coming days, and for those who still aren’t members of the tracker, we may have good news once their signup and invite system comes back online (we cannot confirm anything just yet). Stay tuned.

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If you aren’t a total newbie to the BitTorrent scene, chances are that you have heard about the likes of Zamunda, ArenaBG (Open) and RARBG (Open). Although not run by the same admin team, all of these sites share some common characteristics with each other - they are all huge torrent sites with massive torrent indexes and all have user bases exceeding over 100000 members. Todays post is about another BitTorrent tracker that is similar to Zamunda and Co; P2PBG. P2PBG is another huge private tracker that has nearly half a million registered members and of course, a content rich torrent index. It’s one of those general trackers where you can find almost every movie, music, TV, game and E-book torrents, both old and new. If you are interested, signups are currently open and new members are still being accepted.

Although we start most of our BitTorrent tracker related posts highlighting the positive aspects of a certain tracker, we’ll be taking a different approach with P2PBG. The site is not perfect and there are many flaws. It’s filled with advertisements (most of them adult themed and needless to say it is NSFW), the layout looks cluttered and the entire interface is in Bulgarian language. If so many things are wrong with this site, how did P2PBG recruit over 440000+ registered users? It’s pretty simple – content.

If you are looking for out of this world pre times and blazing fast download speeds on new releases, these are not the highlights of P2PBG (and you’ll be better off on a tracker such as SCC or GFT). However, P2PBG has one great advantage over other smaller trackers; torrent retention. Thanks to the huge user base, even older torrents uploaded months ago are still well seeded. The massive torrent index with over 80000 releases speaks for itself.

As you may have guessed from the name, P2PBG has its roots in Bulgaria. Site interface is in Bulgarian and almost every torrent title is named both in English as well as in Bulgarian (this problem can be rectified to a certain extend by using Google Chrome – see end of post for step by step guide). Content however is a different story - while there are some local releases indexed, most of the torrents point to English, international scene and P2P uploads.

In case you want to add P2PBG to your list of torrent sites, signups are currently open. You may need the help of a translator to go through the signup process – we suggest you use the Google Chrome approach below.

Site Name: P2PBG (http://www.p2pbg.com)

Signup URL: http://www.p2pbg.com/index.php?page=signup

How to translate P2PBG to English with Google Chrome

1. Download the latest version of Google Chrome browser from here.
2. Visit P2PBG signup page through this link: http://www.p2pbg.com/index.php?page=signup.
3. Once the page is done loading, Google Chrome will automatically display several translation options (the message will be displayed just beneath the address bar – you can’t miss it).
4. Choose the auto detected settings (should be Bulgarian to English) and hit translate. If you get the message  ‘Translation failed due to server error’ keep re-trying.
5. Once translation of the first page is done, you can configure Google Chrome so that it automatically translates all P2PBG pages without prompting you. Select the ‘Options’ button (in the translation help popup) and select ‘Always translate Bulgarian to English’ from the drop down menu.

Other large private trackers you may be interested in

• nCore Invite Applications Open – Large General/0Day Private Tracker
• ArenaBG tracker – Now with 0-Day appz, music and a brand new interface
• Zamunda – Huge private tracker with no mandatory ratio rules (signups open)
• RARBG Registrations Open – Huge Semi Private BitTorrent Tracker
• Zamunda.Net Down For Some Countries – Here’s How To Access
• Linkomanija – Huge Private BitTorrent Tracker
• mojblink – Large Slovenian private tracker with lots of English torrents
• Partis.si – Huge Slovenian private torrent tracker open

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We recently featured several sites that promote sharing of horror themed content. These articles were well received by our readership and we even got several requests to feature more similar sites on the blog. As always, we listen to what our readers say. Having already posted about several private BitTorrent trackers specializing in Horror movies/TV such as THC, Henteles and Horror-World, we thought of posting about a DDL forum this time. Horror Haven (HH) is a site that allows you to download Horror Movies, TV shows, soundtracks plus even books and magazines relating to the genre. This is actually an excellent alternative to HorrorFlix.ws, the now defunct forum which was considered the king of Horror DDL back in its time (HH is unofficially named Horror Flix 2.0). Horror Haven is currently open for registrations and is accepting new members.

We are not exactly sure when HH started out but it sure did rise to fame after the demise of HorrorFlix. Lots of former HorrorFlix members moved to HH after the site went down and needless to say this gave HH a huge boost in many aspects. Today, Horror Haven has evolved to become one of the largest direct download link forums for horror themed content, with over 5000 releases in its index.

As for the downloads available on HH, it’s pretty straightforward and there is very little to explain. The site is home to thousands of movies, TV shows, games, books, magazines and soundtracks all relating to the Horror genre. Video collection is particularly impressive and contains both old and new movies, including some very rare flicks. Releases are available in a wide variety of video formats ranging from VHSRips, 300MB movies to even DVD-R and BD/HD Rips.

HH is powered by a PHP-Fusion based forum script and the site layout might differ from other DDL forums you use. Some of you who are new to the site may even have trouble locating the downloads section. It’s actually pretty simple once you get used to HH. First of all, you won’t be able to see anything unless you log in. Once you do log in, you can easily find the categorized list of available downloads on the ‘Articles’ section (accessible via left sidebar). If you are looking for a particular movie by name or simply want to browse through all available releases, you might want to check out the immensely useful ‘A-Z Index’ feature (also accessible from left sidebar).

In the categorized downloads list, you may find some cat names ending with the text ‘Leeched’. Anything tagged ‘Leeched’ simply means that direct download links for that particular release were obtained from an external source i.e. from another forum. Releases in any other category than ‘Leeched’ are uploads by HH’s own uploaders – these uploads are technically unique to the site. 

If you are interested in joining HH (which you should be, if you are a Horror fan), registrations are currently open. Use the links below to sign up and browse the site.

Site Name: Horror Haven (http://www.horrorhaven.org)

Registration URL: http://www.horrorhaven.org/register.php

Downloads Section URL: http://www.horrorhaven.org/articles.php (Login required)

A-Z Index URL: http://www.horrorhaven.org/iamomega.php (Login required)

Related Articles

• Horror-World : A New Horror Tracker Open For Signup
• Henteles.Hu – Private Tracker For Horror Movies
• The Horror Charnel (THC) & ExDesi BollyWood Tracker - Now Open For Signup

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If you are tired of seeing General/0Day torrent trackers every day, here’s a niche tracker that caters to a very specific type of torrents; Merlin (ML) is a private tracker that specializes in Science Fiction and Fantasy related content. As we highlighted in a previous article, there are some very experienced staffers and uploaders behind this tracker – it’s run by the same crew who run ACiD, another veteran torrent site in the BitTorrent community. Despite being a promising new torrent site, Merlin hasn’t exactly been a hot topic on tracker forums or blogs. This is largely due to tight rules on unwanted publicity as well as their almost permanent closed signup status. In case you were struggling to find a way into this tracker, here’s a great opportunity – the special signup key mentioned at the end of this article will allow 1000 new users sign up, with no strings attached.

Launched on March 2010, Merlin has primarily been recruiting members from their IRC invites channel as well as through the sister site ACiD. No matter how good a site’s content is, it needs active members in order to survive in the long run. Being a community oriented tracker, ML has an even stronger need for good members. This is where the open registrations come in - limited open signups similar to which is provided by the the signup key below, is a great way to increase membership without losing control.

In case you were wondering what type of content is indexed on Merlin, it’s all about Sci-Fi and Fantasy torrents. The site currently tracks 650+ releases including movies, TV shows, soundtracks, etc relating to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. Quite a few exclusive, unique torrents as well as packs have also been uploaded. Exclusive releases can be identified by ‘Menc’ or ‘ML’ tags on torrent title and are usually placed inside ‘Merlin Encodes’ category. The screenshot which shows part of main torrent index might give you a better idea on the sort of content you can find on this tracker:

Coming back to open signups, you can use the key below to create a free account on ML. The current recruitment campaign will end once 1000 new members sign up or after 6 weeks, whichever comes sooner. If you are a fan of Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV shows or movies, you might want to check this tracker out.

Site Name: Merlin

Signup URL: http://www.merlins-loft.org.uk/Main/?act=Signup&id=8&hash=bb0b40ae4ca951ead838244ccc6fd847

Special Signup Key: yexpmf

Feel free to share this key with your friends on other BT forums or blogs. However, please make sure to link to this post so that whoever is signing up will at least know which type of tracker they are getting into. This giveaway will be pointless if 1000 members who didn’t have any use for ML signed up, mistaking it for a General/0Day tracker.

Special thanks to ML staff for the support given.

Related Articles

• Merlin (ML) – New Science Fiction/Fantasy Torrent Tracker From ACiD Crew
• ScienceHD Is Opening Up – Invite Applications Online

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Here we go folks – probably the most anticipated game of 2010 is finally here. Call of Duty : Black Ops is the latest installment to the long running first person shooter franchise which saw the light in 2003. Now, I read somewhere that over 5 million copies of the game were sold in North America alone, on release day itself – Black Ops is already a hit. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect release – there are numerous issues present, some of the most common problems being continuous stuttering, random slowdowns and of course, audio glitches. Here’s our routine troubleshooting article for Call of Duty – Black Ops. Hopefully, this article will help you get around these annoyances and make you single player and multiplayer gaming experience better.

Stuttering, lag, slowdowns, low FPS and other performance issues

It’s no secret that Call of Duty : Black Ops suffers from serious performance issues. Unfortunately folks, there’s no magic fix like in Fallout : New Vegas to boost the FPS. However, there are some workarounds you can try, at least until an official patch is released. We can’t guarantee these fixes will increase performance for everyone, but they are well worth a shot.

Use custom configuration file to improve performance.

1. Back up your game’s configuration files which are located in \InstallPath\Call of Duty - Black Ops\players folder. config.cfg is the configuration settings file for single player mode and config_mp.cfg is for multiplayer mode.
2. Copy the configuration settings from custom cfg file located at http://pastebin.com/at8sNzkK (this was posted on NFOHump forums)
3. Replace the values in config_mp.cfg with values copied from custom file. Save and load the game.
   Note: Changes to config.cfg file reflects only in multiplayer mode. To edit settings for single player mode, edit the config.cfg file.

Upgrade to NVIDIA 260.99 Drivers

Video hardware manufacturers can do little if the fault is on the game’s side (which seems to be the case with COD : BO). However, several of our readers had E-mailed us that they got better performance when they upgraded to NVIDIA’s 260.99 WHQL drivers. You may download the driver release from this location.

Change priority of COD : BO process

Here’s a yet another workaround you can try. This involves changing priority for COD : BO Process to monimize CPU utilization issues the game seems to be having.

1. Run the game – after you get to the main menu, Open Windows Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del.
2. Locate the Black Ops process. Right click it and set it’s priority to High.
3. If you have Steam running, right click the Steam process and set it’s priority to Low.

Audio Issues, Game crashes to desktop (CTD) at launch, black screen or won’t start

Check the sampling rate

There can be a number of different reasons why this can happen but here’s a common fix you can try. We have mentioned this previously in troubleshooting posts for other games. Black Ops might crash if your sound card’s audio sampling rate is set to any value above 24 bit/48000 Hz range. To fix this issue, follow the steps below (applicable on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems):

1. Open Control Panel –> Sound.
2. In the ‘Playback’ tab, select ‘Speakers’. Choose ‘Properties’.
3. In the Speaker Properties window, switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.
4. Under the ‘Default Format’ drop down, choose 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality) option.
5. Close all Windows by pressing Ok. Run the game.

Note that you should try this fix if you have run into audio issues including noisy sound, stuttering or lagging audio, no audio, etc. as well.

Disable SPDIF / HD Fill

1. Update your sound card with latest drivers.
2. Open your Sound Card’s control panel utility.
3. Look for any properties similar to ‘Speaker Fill’, ‘Speaker HD Fill’ or ‘SPDIF’.
4. If any of these options are enabled, disable them. Now run the game.

Please keep in mind that this article is a work in progress - more fixes will be added here as and when they are discovered. Check this space for updates.

If you liked this article:

• Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/filenetworks
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• Read our Private Trackers section for latest BitTorrent news

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This is probably old news by now but we simply can’t ignore the fact that TorrentLeech went through it’s most significant upgrade since the trackers’ birth. TorrentLeech (aka TL), considered as the king of private torrent sites by many veteran torrenters, launched the third major revision of its tracker and web interface last night. TL v3 is a massive upgrade over the previous codebase and it’s been created from scratch by TL’s dedicated developer team. According to w00t, a TL SysOp, v3 was in development for more than a year – was the wait worth it? Hell yes. There are a number of noticeable enhancements in the new version, including many changes to visual features as well as under the hood changes that result in improved site speed, faster navigation and overall site efficiency.

First thing I noticed with TL v3 was their new slogan. TorrentLeech, which carried the tagline ‘Not Here, Not Scene’ for many years has now changed it to ‘This is what happens when you seed’. Even the logo appears to have changed. But these are probably the least important of recently implemented changes. Although this post does not aim to be a full review of TL v3, mentioned below are some of the highlights of this release, just to give an understanding about the scope of the upgrade:

• Completely new, polished looking visual layout based on a new codebase
• Revamped search engine which delivers more accurate search results, along with enhancements such as results filtering, filename searching and support for searchable, user customizable torrent tags.
• Enhanced torrent Browsing with browse by category & browse by tags options. Supports filtering by Tags, Categories, Size and Uploaded Date.
• Automatic IMDB discovery and automatic IMDB information retrieval (including cover image and adding genres as tags for the torrent) for movie and TV torrents.
• New torrent description page with a tabbed layout. All available information about a particular torrent is now organized into 5 tabs; Torrent Info, NFO, Comments, Gallery and Files.
• New invitation system and invite signup process. Invitations can be sent and tracked through the Invitations Tab in the user profile.
• Speed improvements – browsing, site functions, searches and navigation are now notably faster.
• Revamped torrent bookmarking feature.
• Enhancements to in-site PM and messaging system – this is still a work in progress.
• Plus many more

Added below are several screenshots showcasing some of the new features and visual features introduced in TL v3:

New search and browse options with category and tag filtering.

New torrent description page -  tabbed structured makes it easier to locate the information you need.

TorrentLeech main index with some of the new category icons. 

The only drawback I found in TL v3 was with the category icons. They seemed a little too similar to each other – the old icons were easily distinguishable and it was easy to spot certain types of releases instantly on the main index. Either way this issue will hopefully resolve itself as members get used to the look and feel of the new icon set.

Note that TL v3 is still in its beta phase. Like any other web development project, it’s bound to have undiscovered bugs and glitches at this stage. There are many fixes still being deployed and during the first 48-72 hours since v3 launch, TL will only be open to power users and VIP members. Any other member trying to log in at this point will get invalid username/password errors.

Additionally, make sure to update your bookmarks. If you had bookmarked an internal page instead of the TL homepage (for example the torrent browse page - http://www.torrentleech.org/browse.php ), there is a high likelihood this link will return page not found errors. Pages ending with .php are gone – either change your bookmarks to direct to TL homepage or update them with the correct internal page URL.

After having featured more than 10 TorrentLeech invitation giveaways as well as two mass invite campaigns on this blog, we have reasons to believe most of our readership are already members of this tracker. If you still aren’t in TL, don’t lose hope – while the site is currently closed for registrations, there will most likely be mass invite campaigns and IRC giveaways in future (although we don’t exactly know when). If any such event occurs we will be updating this blog as usual– stay tuned.

Site Name: TorrentLeech (http://www.torrentleech.org)

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• TorrentLeech 2010 New Year Invite Giveaway Now On IRC

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A couple of weeks ago we posted an article about StoreMags, a release blog for all kinds of magazine downloads. While the site indexed a ton of mags, it received quite a bit of criticism from our readers primarily due to two reasons; 1. It indexed a lot of adult themed magazines. 2. You had to purchase premium membership at a certain one click hosting service to download some files. If StoreMags didn’t suit your needs, here’s another free magazine download site that you might find useful. It has a much cleaner interface and is free of adult content. The site is updated on a regular basis and true PDF files viewable on both PC and iPad are indexed, along with Hotfile and Depositfiles download links.

Just like StoreMags, Magazines Download is modeled after a release blog. New uploads are posted as separate articles and latest issues can be seen on the site homepage. If you are looking for older releases, there are multiple ways to search for them. You can either use the search box on top right corner of the page or you can look up the release in site Archive which is accessible from top toolbar. An even cooler way to discover new magazines is the ‘Root category list’ (located on the right sidebar). As you may have guessed, this is a magazines index categorized by genre. Clicking on a specific category will take you to a page which will look something like the screenshot below. It’s a in fact a well organized view which gives you easy access to all available issues of a certain magazine with the click of a button.

‘Magazines Download’ appears to index magazines from all parts of the world. However, some of you would be glad to know that majority of these releases are English, US published content which are hugely popular. As we mentioned earlier, downloads are hosted on one click hosting services such as Hotfile and Depositfiles – you can download files from these services even if you don’t have a paid/premium account. Downloading is pretty straightforward and no registration/log in is required.

[Click Here] to visit Magazines Download homepage.

Related Articles

• StoreMags – Release Blog For iPad/PC Magazines In True PDF Format

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Up until now, musiCore was known amongst the file sharing community as a site which offered direct download links (DDL) to scene released music albums. However, thanks to the recent changes and new features implemented by musiCore staff, this impression will soon change. It’s no longer just a DDL forum – the site has morphed into a hybrid download engine which now offers three ways of leeching music; DDL, torrents and FTP links. For those of you who’ve never heard about musiCore, it auto uploads scene released music albums to file hosting services (and now to a torrent tracker & FTP) so that they may be downloaded by the general public. In fact, a recently pre’d SceneNotice (more info in previous article) identified this site as a ‘0sec HTTP Site Mirroring to Public’. For those of you are interested in joining, basic membership registrations are currently open.

Although musiCore is not as popular a source for music downloads as What.Cd or Waffles.Fm, it’s actually doing a great job in terms of adding new content. Around 350 new albums are uploaded by the service on a daily basis – that’s a lot of music and you don’t often see that much of new content on other similar DDL/torrent sites. And the fact that you now get to choose *how* you are going to download the files (DDL/Torrent or FTP) should make the service even more popular.

But are all these for free? Well, most of it is, but to access some features of the site, you need to get promoted to advanced members group or become a donor. Actually the user class system and membership requirements on musiCore can be a little confusing so we have presented it in a more simplified form below:

• musiCore is currently open for registration. Anyone who gets is through open regs will start as a ‘Basic Member’
• Basic members have full access to DDL links.
• Basic members do not have access to torrent downloads – However, they are allowed to upload (seed). Once you upload 1GB of data to musiCore’s tracker, you will get promoted to ‘Advanced Members’ group.
• ‘Advanced Members’ have full access to both DDL and Torrent downloads.
• Users invited  by existing musiCore members will automatically start out as ‘Advanced Members’.
• ‘Advanced Members’ will all be awarded one invite each month (if they don’t have any invites left).
• FTP access is for donors only. While ‘Advanced Members’ can log into the FTP server and view directories/files, only donors can actually download. To be honest, this part is basically a pay-to-leech operation.

musiCore offers two ways of browsing their massive index – a forum based system where music releases are organized into threads (http://musicore.net/forums/index.php) as well as using a searchable index (Log in and visit http://musicore.net/). In addition, a separate page where all DDL links (sorted by date) are added, is also available at http://musicore.net/ddl. At a glance, the forum system appears to be more user friendly – main index takes some getting used to but this too comes in very handy at times.

Screenshot above shows part of musiCore’s searchable index. Through the ‘Link Mode’ drop down, you can switch between modes of leeching. If you select ‘Default’ or ‘Filehoster’ options, you will be given DDL links on remote one click hosting services (click on a release name –> this will display a yellow colored box with a link –> click this and you will be directed to album download location). If you choose ‘Torrents’ from the drop down and click on an entry, the browser will immediately start to download the .torrent file (you may also start the torrent download by clicking on the number of seeds for a particular release). FTP links work pretty much the same way, provided that your user class has the necessary permissions. There are lots of additional features in this interface and we recommend you play with it and find out for yourself :p

As mentioned earlier, registrations for musiCore are currently open. Those who sign up through this method will start out as Basic Members.

Site Name: musiCore (http://musicore.net)

Registration URL: http://musicore.net/forums/index.php?app=core&module=global&section=register

Forum URL: http://musicore.net/forums/index.php

Tracker/DDL/FTP Searchable Index URL: Log in and visit http://musicore.net/

All In One DDL Releases Index URL: http://musicore.net/ddl/

For basic members – How to upload data to musiCore:

1. Download a music album to your hard disk from another source i.e. a torrent site or another DDL.
2. Locate the same album release on musiCore. Download the torrent.
3. Once you have the torrent loaded in your client, change its data directory so that it points to the location where you placed files you downloaded in step 1. Your torrent client will now re-check the data and start seeding the torrent (if files match).
4. You can seed several albums at the same time. Once you seed 1GB+ data to musiCore’s tracker, you will be promoted ‘Advanced Member’ user class.

If you liked musiCore you may also like:

• Direct Download Techno, DnB, Hardcore & Other Electronic Music Albums From Corebay
• MUSiK.AM – Direct Download MP3 Music Albums
• FLAC Share – Direct Download Lossless Music From RapidShare, MegaUpload & More
• TrancElite – Trance Music Direct Download Forum With Lossless & Lossy Files
• 0DayMusic – Direct Download Music Albums

Special thanks to Andrew Coder for the heads up.

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