It’s not only private torrent trackers that have been growing at a rapid pace. BitTorrent news and invite forums have also had huge successes in the past couple of months, with expanding communities and increasing popularity. Of course, not all these newly launched forums were successful – some were doomed from the start (for example when a dude launches a site just so he can get a BCG invite, that has FAIL written all over it). But the site featured in this article is by no means a failure. Etiv is without a doubt one of the more successful BitTorrent forums launched recently. And if you were looking forward to becoming a member, there is no better time than now; Etiv will open IRC recruitment for a limited time, exclusively for FILEnetworks readers.

Unlike huge forums such as FST, Etiv hasn’t been around for years. However, during the few months its been online, it has impressed many. Right now the forum has over 1000 active members and over 2700 threads. This is after being closed for public registration for the most part. They’ve had several open signups in the past but another open registration period in the near future is unlikely.

Note that Etiv is not a file sharing forum – it’s specifically a BitTorrent forum. You will only find information and discussions related to BT and nothing else. From invitation giveaways, requests, bonus giveaways, tracker news, discussions, tracker reviews, release reviews, seedbox reviews, how-to guides, etc Etiv pretty much has it all when it comes to BitTorrent. Invite giveaways and requests are no doubt the highlight of this forum. These are however regulated with somewhat tough rules so as to prevent invite trading, scamming and other malicious practices.

There is a growing number of representatives from private trackers (aka Community Reps) on Etiv. Apart from offering support & tracker news, they engage in tracker recruitment, usually offering free invites to Etiv members. Etiv currently has recruitment threads for following trackers: sX, CoR, Torrent Monsters, S-I, BitShock, A/L, AnimeByt.es, TopBytes, Filmdom, nTorrents, TiT, Breathe, PiN, CC, StB, Appz BitShock, BMMAT & swap heaven. Note that you usually need to meet certain requirements (min number of posts, rep, etc) to obtain invites from recruitment threads.

Etiv has a nice reputation points system known as the ‘iRep system’ which is tightly integrated to many of the site’s functions. Like on most forums, reputation will be a measure of how reliable (or helpful for that matter) a member is. More information on the iRep system (along with associated rules) may be found on Etiv FAQ.

As we mentioned earlier, Etiv has been closed for public registration for an extended period of time. They probably may never have open signups again. However if you are interested in joining the site, here’s a good opportunity. Etiv will open up its invites IRC channel for a limited time, exclusively for FILEnetworks readers. You will still have go through a short interview to get approved. Below is a list of questions that may be asked in the interview:

1. What quality do you feel you can bring to Etiv that would help the forums?
2. What do you expect from Etiv?
3. Would you be active on our IRC?
4. Are you staff at any bittorrent related tracker/forum? If yes, where?
5. Are you a member of any other invite forums? If so please provide profile links.
6. Have you ever been banned on a tracker/forum? If so, why? (This won't necessarily deny your app--we have all had our run ins with nazi staff)
7. How familiar are you with torrenting? (i.e. beginner, amateur, advanced)

Note that this channel will not be open for ever. It may close within 1-2 days so you might want to hurry.

• Site Name: Etiv (https://www.etiv.in)
• IRC Server: irc.etiv.in
• IRC Channel: #interview
• Direct Link: irc://irc.etiv.in/interview
• If you don’t know anything about IRC or need help with it, please read this article.

Good Luck! And once you become a member, we strongly suggest you read site rules and FAQ. Also make sure to read the rules specified as sticky topics in internal sections.

Special thanks to FryLock, MastaShake and rest of Etiv staff.

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A couple of days ago, we posted a detailed review about NepToonS – a private torrent tracker that specializes in cartoons, mostly classics. To the disappointment of many of our readers, there were no open signups, IRC recruitment or any other way to get into the site (unless you were a member of the now defunct Fox Kids tracker). Then, one of our readers posted that NepToonS invites were available from Classic Nick Shows (CNS), one of their sister sites. Apparently a lot of folks registered on CNS just to get and invite to NepToonS. The admins obviously didn’t like it but instead of shutting down invites for good, they created an IRC invites channel through which you can now get invited to the tracker.

This is what JAPsniper (CNS mod), posted as a comment to our previous NepToonS review thread:

Due to the influx of new users just registering for an invite, we will no longer be giving out invites on the #ClassicNickShows forums (http://classicnickshows.info/)!
Please join #neptoons on irc.dejatoons.net to interview for an invite to the Neptoons tracker.
Topic Closed.
Thanks,
-JALsnipe
#ClassicNickShows moderator

As we highlighted in the previous review, NepToonS is a promising new tracker for Cartoons. You can find lots of toons aired over the last few decades ranging from golden oldies in the 1950s to the modern animation in early 2000’s. Currently there are around 100 torrents indexed and almost all of these are either a full season pack or a complete series torrent. Here is another screenshot for those interested:

 

You can read our previous review of this tracker (which includes more info and screens) from this link. Below is the information you need to access the site’s invites IRC channel.

Server: irc.dejatoons.net
Channel: #neptoons
Direct Link: irc://irc.dejatoons.net/neptoons
Note: that you might have to use mIRC to access the channel (Mibbit web chat might not work). If you don’t know jackshit about mIRC, read this.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out Classic Nick Shows- it’s a DDL forum for Nickelodeon toons. You can read our full review here.

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If you love portable applications, here’s some great news. Portable version of Skype 4.1 has been released and is now freely downloadable. It’s not come hacky, buggy, illegal implementation of Skypre software – it comes directly from PortableApps.com who have a long history and reputation of creating excellent portable applications including Portable FireFox. You will be able to use Skype Portable from almost anywhere, even from work, university or somewhere else. You’ll be able to carry it around in your flash drive and use it on the go. And if you are after the full version of Skype, we’ve included the link to the standalone installer for that as well.

In terms of features, the portable version is not different from the full install. You will be able to access all standard features of such as Skype to Skype video calls, instant messaging, voice mail and mobile messaging (in supported countries). User interface is exactly the same between both versions.

Download

[Click Here] to download Portable version of Skype from PortableApps.com

[Click Here] to download Standalone/Offline installer for Skype full version from official server (no annoying web setups) – link auto updated with latest available stable build

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It’s good news all around from the BitTorrent arena. In this article, you might find information on how to get into three great private torrent trackers; The Horror Charnel, TvTorrentZ and Sparvar. Out of these three sites, THC and TVTZ will be open to public signups during the coming few days. Sparvar of course wouldn’t be opening the floodgates. Instead, existing members will be given extra invites (Sparvar is celebrating 1/2 years of being online). If you have never heard about these sites before, THC is a horror and cult movie tracker, TVTZ is a TV torrent tracker (technically a ratio free one) and Sparvar is one of the best newly launched untouched DVDR trackers.

All of these sites were recently reviewed in detail here on FILEnetworks Blog. If you need more information about a site, please refer to the ‘Full Review’ link of each tracker.

The Horror Charnel (THC)
 
Site Name: The Horror Charnel
Signup URL: http://horrorcharnel.kicks-ass.org/signup.php
Description: The Horror Charnel is a private tracker specializing in horror, cult and sleaze movie torrents. THC will open registration ahead of Halloween, from Thursday the 29th of October until Monday the 2nd of November. If you still don’t have a THC account (we had an unlimited invite giveaway few weeks ago), check it out during the open registration period.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TVTorrentZ (TVTZ)
 
Site Name: TVTorrentz (http://www.tvtorrentz.org)
Signup URL: http://www.tvtorrentz.org/signup.php
Description: TVTZ is a TV tracker with some unique features. Thanks to a number of additional concepts such as adoption, etc TVTZ is technically a ratio free TV tracker (You can read all about it in our recent review of the site). Anyways the current open signup rounds for this site will be one of its last. Yep according to a news post on site “Our current open signup will be allowed to take us up to 2 000 members. When these spots are taken, open signup will be closed for good. Instead we will hand out 1 invite/year to all members in class Loyal Member and up, starting on January 1st 2010”. Current round of open registrations has around 400 spots left (At time of post).
Full Review: [Click Here]

Sparvar
 
Site Name: Sparvar (http://www.sparvar.org)
Description: Sparvar is perhaps the most successful untouched DVD//Blu-Ray tracker to be launched in 2009. The site is celebrating their 1/2 year birthday by giving extra invites to existing members. All members will receive between 1-3 invites per user, depending on their user class. Invites will only be valid from the 4th of November to 10th of November. Entire site will be set on free leech during this time. If you don’t know someone who has a Sparvar account, you can still try to obtain an invite by applying for one via the online application (below)
Invite Application URL: http://www.sparvar.org/invitationform.php
Translated Version of Invite Application: http://bit.ly/JKJ93
Full Review: [Click Here]

Thanks to turboman, gagngaz and Higa for the information.

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Let’s face it, What.cd is probably the world’s best private music tracker. Being born as one of OiNK’s piglets, What has by 2009 grown into one of the largest and most popular private BitTorrent sites in existence. With the site celebrating its 2nd birthday, a major change has been made to the it’s ratio system. This should be good news for many members, especially new ones who found it hard to seed back (and survive) on the tracker. Note that the new ratio system is not live at the time this post is being written. However according to What.CD administration, it’ll be up in about a week (members will be notified when it’s rolled out). Full news post which describes the new system in detail is quoted below:

Ratio system overhaul

This is possibly the biggest change of all. Throughout the course of our history, we have been known as a site on which it is notoriously difficult for new users to maintain a healthy ratio - even if they're trying their best and seeding everything they've ever snatched. As the torrent count has increased to the point that we have 6 times as many torrents as we do users, this problem has gotten worse and worse.

Previously, we tried to control this by implementing the bounty request system, and injecting money into the economy with freeleech. However, as the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow, we've decided that it's time for a major change.

Instead of having ratio requirements based on the number of gigs you've downloaded, we've opted for a more complex, but more fair system. In the new system, every user has their own individual required ratio, based on the percentage of their snatches that they seed forever.

Under the new system, a user's required ratio is based on the current ratio requirement for their download amount, and then adjusted by how many of their snatched torrents they're still seeding. The exact formula is as follows:

Requirement = Current requirement*(1-seeding/snatched)

The 'seeding' amount is calculated as the average number of torrents you've seeded over at least 72 hours in the past week. The 'snatched' amount is the number of unique, non-deleted torrents you've snatched. The required ratio is calculated once per day.

What this means is that users who do not seed their snatches will be unaffected by this change, and will have the same ratio requirements as before. However, users who seed everything they've ever snatched for at least 72 hours per week will effectively have no ratio requirement (until they've downloaded 20 gigs - exact details will be made available in the next week).

If a user's ratio is below their required ratio, they will have one week to either raise their ratio, or lower their required ratio by seeding more torrents.

The system is currently recording the data needed to calculate the average seeding value. However, we have seen fit to give the community some advanced warning before we roll out the system. Expect it to be some time in the next week.

As this has made ratio requirements lower for almost everyone, you can also expect us to raise the base requirements in the next few months. Exact figures will be announced well in advance.

Awesome! Isn’t it? Under the new system, you will actually be rewarded for the torrents that are kept seeding forever, even without leechers connecting to them. Anyways we’ll have to wait till the new system is fully functional to see its effectiveness.

How to get into What.CD

No article is complete without a means to get into the featured tracker. There are many ways you can get into What.CD but one of the safest and most reliable means to obtain a free invite is via their IRC interview. If you didn’t know already, What.CD has IRC recruitment and there’s even an official ‘interview prep’ site online. On the downside, there a lot you need to know in order to pass the interview. For a step by step guide on how to get to the interview channel, how to prepare for it, etc please read our article “Free What.CD invite via IRC interview – How to get in”.

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You can do a lot of bad and stupid things on a private torrent tracker but ratio cheating is one of the worst offences you can ever commit. On most private trackers, cheating will earn you a lifetime ban. Apart from banning individuals, trackers tend to ban entire countries if they find a lot of cheaters signing up for a specific country. Users of Romania could soon face another country ban from none other than BitMeTV, considered by many as the king of TV torrent trackers. In a mass PM sent to all members yesterday, BMTV warned to take “further action on a more global scale.” if ratio cheating and account stealing from .RO continued.

Full PM (which was apparently sent to all user classes) is quoted below:

ROMANIA:
For some time now we have been flooded with account stealing and ratio cheating largely from Romania.
Most of Romania have fiber connections, so we do not understand why the rule breaking has been so MASSIVE from this country.
Sure there are also some great Romanian members but the amount of account theft and cheating going on is far outweighing the good members.
THIS IS A WARNING.
This needs to STOP or we will have to take further action on a more global scale.

What they mean by “further action on a more global scale” is no doubt a country ban. BMTV is not the first private tracker to consider banning Romania. For more similar cases, read the ‘Related Articles’ list towards the end of this post. Now none of us are from Romania and we really don’t know if the internet speeds are as high as they are claimed to be. But if they are indeed high bandwidth lines, why the need excessive cheating? And there are plenty of private trackers from Romania which no doubt have user bases full of Romanian members. How do these sites cope with such problems? If there are any Romanian readers here, feel free to comment and discuss (no flaming, please).

Related Articles

• SceneTorrents (ScT) to ban Romanian IP ranges?
• Waffles.fm bans Romanian users
• STN tracker bans Romania

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Another scene groups bids farewell! ViRILiTY (VRL), a veteran Appz release group from the warez scene has called it quits. The group, which is more than 7 years old and are responsible for more than 8000 cracked software releases, announced their retirement via SceneNotice title ‘FAREWELL-ViRiLiTY’. Some of the more popular software whose protection was ripped apart by the group include mIRC, WinZIP and even PowerDVD. Final NFO pre’d by ViRiLiTY (which has the same format as a regular release) is quoted below:

ViRiLiTY!
asxSAC

FAREWELL v1.0 (c) VRL

Retail
Supplier : ..................................... TEAM ViRiLiTY
Cracker : ..................................... TEAM ViRiLiTY
Packager : ..................................... TEAM ViRiLiTY
Release Date : ..................................... 26th Oct 2009
Disks : ....................................... 01 x 2.88mb
Protection : ............................................ Serial
Requirements : ................................... Windows (32bit)
Language : ........................................... English

RELEASE NOTES
After more than seven years and over 8000 releases the time has come, so that we are going to close the curtain now.
We would like to thank everyone who supported us in the last years and especially those who have been loyal for years! Thank you for the nice friendships and the fun we had with all of you.
A big sorry to the high quality software developers who have been defeated by us. But you can relax now, because the real competition is gone ;)
Its quite sad to see that 0DAYs today dir is getting more and more empty. We hope the future will bring some new talents to make the scene what it was a few years ago. Highlighy active, talanted and with a strong competition between the groups.
I would like to thank the group, active and former members, for the nice time we had and the more fun we are going to have as being part of the scenes history :) ViRiLiTY has always been a small but very strong group, which made ViRiLiTY the way it was. This is the the final release that has been dropped under the label of ViRiLiTY. So please shut down any types of open positions that are running under the name of ViRiLiTY. Otherwise we are going to hunt you down and cut your penix of.
Good Bye
ViRiLiTY 2002-2009

INSTALL NOTES

GREETiNGS!
We dont greet. We get greeted.

NFO by asphyxSAC - Updated on 2007-06-14 by TEAM ViRiLiTY
IF YOU USE THIS SOFTWARE, BUY IT!

When a group is disbanded, at least a few active members usually join other similar groups – hopefully this’ll happen with ViRiLiTY as well. And of course, some of the disbanded groups are often seen making returns even years later. If ViRiLiTY was a movie release group, it wouldn't have made that much of an impact as there are hundreds of non scene groups which release movies.  But APPZ is not a strong point of the P2P-scene and that’s why groups like ViRiLITY will be missed quite a lot.

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Ratio free private torrent trackers have always had high popularity among our readership. The Dark Syndicate (TDS), a gazelle based private tracker that we first featured a few weeks back, is the latest site to join the ratio-free club. The move isn’t complete yet, but the tracker is well on its way to become a no-ratio site. For those who missed the previous article, TDS is a general/0day tracker that has the backing of many staffers from the legendary Araditracker (now defunct). TDS started out with a ratio system along with a set of rules that required members to maintain a healthy global ratio on site. This however has now changed.

Not a lot of information has been made public (not yet at least) by TDS administration about their new ‘ratio free’ system. However, you can still see the tracker recording total upload amount (download stats and global ratio are nowhere to be seen). It can be assumed that ‘total upload’ will be used as some sort of credit to unlock new site features, etc. It would be interesting to see how this works out on TDS in the long as going ratio free has both pros and cons. Nevertheless, the decision will no doubt increase their user base as the BT community has a ‘thing’ about private trackers without ratio rules. Till the ratio free system is fully implemented, the entire site has been placed on free leech mode.

In the meantime, TDS has been growing at a fairly healthy rate. Within just a few weeks since launch, the site has managed to recruit close to 2500 members. Around 600 (active) torrents have also been uploaded during this time. TDS community have done an excellent job when it comes to their requests system – 70% of all member request have been filled.  More information about TDS may be found in our recent review of the site which is located here.

And of course, signups are still open.

Site Name: TDS (http://www.thedarksyndicate.com)

Signup URL: http://www.thedarksyndicate.com/register.php

Related Articles

• TDS Tracker Now Open For Signup – From Araditracker Crew

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Borderlands has been released and here’s our routine troubleshooting article. There isn’t much to say here as the game doesn’t have any showstopper bugs. It does not seem to be crashing for most users and that’s a good thing, because this seems to be an incredible fun FPS/RPG. Anyways this article contains some information that might help you tweak your game to bypass some minor annoyances such as not being able to enabled Vsync, AA and those annoying Field of Vision (FOV) issues. If you have any other issues/solutions that you think is worth sharing, please feel free to post in comments.

How to edit configuration settings manually

Configuration settings for Borderlands is stored in WillowEngine.ini file. You can change settings that are not accessible from in game menu by editing this file. Before you edit anything, please make sure to backup your original config file in case something goes wrong.

Configuration settings are stored in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\WillowEngine.ini

(Under Windows XP this will be in My Documents). Edit this file with a text editor such as notepad.

How to enable VSync in Bordelands

Open the game configuration file in a text editor (as stated above). Change the following setting (UseVsync=False) so that it reads:

UseVsync=True

Save and restart the game.

How to enable Anti Aliasing (AA) in Borderlands

Note that the following solution was only tested on NVIDIA hardware. I don’t have an ATI VGA to play around or to do testing. Like most games, Borderlands is built on Unreal Engine v3.0. You can force AA from NVIDIA control panel by re-naming the game exe to another UE3 game such as BioShock.

1. Rename borderlands exe file to BioShock.exe.
2. Open NVIDIA control panel. Go to ‘Manage 3D settings’
3. Un-Tick ‘Show only programs found on this computer’
4. From the drop down menu, select BioShock.
5. You will now be able to force various graphics settings from the VGA, including Anti Aliasing.

How to adjust FOV (Field of Vision) in Borderlands

I’ve seen many players complain about the FOV in this game. It indeed seems to give a tunnel like feeling. You can however edit the default FOV of 85 and adjust it to your preference by editing the configuration file. Note that you need to make the change in two places in the file:

Under [Engine.PlayerInput], Change the values so that it reads:

Bindings=(Name="F9",Command="FOV 85",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Bindings=(Name="F10",Command="FOV NEWVAL",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Under [WilloGame.WillowPlayerInput] change:

Bindings=(Name="F9",Command="FOV 85",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Bindings=(Name="F10",Command="FOV NEWVAL",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Where NEWVAL is a numerical value representing the new FOV. Note that there is a space after “FOV” in the lines above – the. Ex- It should be "FOV[SPACE]85". You can switch between default and custom FOV in game using function keys. Pressing F9 will restore defaults while F10 will load custom values specified by you.

 

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You can also follow us on Twitter.

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This weekend marked the shutdown of two private torrent trackers; SITR and UK-*. However, that doesn’t mean the world of BitTorrent is crumbling down. New trackers are still being launched and some sites that went down months ago could be seen returning. This post is about one such ‘returning’ tracker; NepToonS. NepToonS is a new BitTorrent site that specializes in cartoon series and season packs (including a lot of retro stuff). It’s actually a reincarnation of Fox-Kids tracker [Read Review] which suddenly went down few months back. This should be exciting news to cartoon fans all over the world, specially for folks who love classic cartoons made in the golden age of American Animation.

Fox-Kids was a huge hit among cartoon fans because it tracked some truly rare toons not found elsewhere. Additionally, almost all the torrents indexed on site were either complete series packs or full season packs which was very convenient for leechers. A wide selection of cartoons were available for download on Fox Kids, ranging from animations made in the 1950s to the late 2000s [Read Review]. To the disappointment of many fans, Fox-Kids didn’t last long. The site suddenly went offline and not much was known about its return, until now.

NepToonS is Fox-Kids reborn. The site is now hosted on a different domain and as you can see it is no longer known as ‘Fox-Kids’. However just like its predecessor, NepToonS seem to track a lot of old (and new) toons, full season packs, complete series and other torrents that made Fox Kids popular. Bunch of new categories have also been added and it can be assumed that the admins have thought about expanding the tracker to index more content as well. Following categories are now listed on the tracker:

00s, 720p, 80s, 90s, Boomerang, CCongress, CNS, Comix, HFT, Mature, Movies, NepToonS, Others, Raws, RETRO, Scene, TV-Series

Screenshot below should give you a better idea on what sort of content is indexed on NepToonS:

Note that this tracker is still brand new and there are lots of areas that need to be improved. Even the torrent index is being re-built from scratch but the start so far has been promising.

When it comes to getting hold of a NepToonS account, there’s both good news and bad news. Bad news is that site is currently closed for signup. Good news is that if you had an account on Fox-Kids, you can use the same account details to log into NepToonS as well. Long time readers of this blog should all be able to get in as we had previously covered several open signups of Fox Kids tracker back when it was live.

Site Name: NepToonS (http://www.neptoons.info)

Signup URL: N/A (Closed). Use same username/password combination you had on Fox-Kids to get in.

Note: You need to play the tic tac toe game to completion in order to get to the login page. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose but the game needs to finish.

Related Articles

Fox Kids Tracker – Rare/Old Cartoon Torrents, Live Action TV Series & Kids Movies

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