We’ve covered DigitalHive tracker in the past but that was before DH v2.0 was rolled out. Now is the best time for another update as Digital Hive is currently having it’s first extended open signup since the launch of new version. Over 3 three years old, DH is a veteran general/0day tracker that is well respected in the BitTorrent scene. As some of you might be aware, Digital Hive went through a major site overhaul last July. DH v2.0 introduced a completely new user interface (not Gazelle, but heavily modified TBDEV/TorrentStrike) as well as an auto uploader bot leading to better pre times and more torrents.

If you were an old member of this tracker, you’ll immediately notice the visual enhancements the site has gone through. A sleek user interface combined with search clouds, clean category icons, drop down menus will pretty much make you instantly like the new look (if you don’t , there are about 7 other themes to choose from). However, DH 2.0 is not all about looks – they now have a fully functional autouploader bot that can upload scene releases to the tracker in a matter of seconds. Naturally, this has significantly increased the number of torrents uploaded per day.

Speaking of scene releases, Digital Hive is not a scene-only tracker such as SCC or ScT – you can find both scene and p2p content here. Something I noticed is that DH has a large number of torrent packs compared to other general trackers. At last check, there were over 275 packs (TV, Movie, etc) available for download - their uploaders have certainly been busy.

At the time this article was written, Digital Hive tracked over 3800 active torrents and had a registered user base of over 11000 members. As we mentioned earlier, the site is currently open for signup:

As most of you are aware we are now Open Signups, this is for a limited time only, tell your friends or family to join up!
DO NOT SIGNUP MORE THEN ONE ACCOUNT FROM THE SAME IP ADDRESS!
Inactive Pruning:
The site will automatically prune users who haven't logged in > 90 days. If you want to keep your account please make sure you stay active!

The current open signup period should further boost DH’s user base and increase the activity on indexed torrents. This is the first extended open signup since the launch of DH 2.0 (other than random pruning) – don’t expect it to last forever so get in while you can.

Site Name: Digital Hive (http://www.digitalhive.org)

Signup URL: http://www.digitalhive.org/signup.php

Special thanks to ACID and rest of DH staff for the information provided.

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We know for a fact that a lot of you were looking forward to join CHDBits. Without a doubt, this is one of the most sought after private trackers based in China (yeah, China does host private torrent sites – HDChina, HDStar, CCFBits to name a few). As the title says, CHDBits is a specialized HD tracker with movies, TV shows, documentaries and even anime content. Non Chinese users – there is no need to worry. There is a lot of English content here. Compared to the likes of CCFBits and HDStar, CHDBits is considered harder to get into – they don't often have open signups. However the good news is that public registrations at CHDBits will open on the 10th of September and will remain open throughout the day.

With over 10000 active members and over 7500 active torrents, CHDBits is a well established tracker in the BitTorrent scene. If this was not referred to as a ‘Chinese tracker’, I’m sure CHDBits’s popularity would have been a lot higher. Most English speaking users tend to turn away from a tracker the moment they see a Chinese character on the signup page. This is clearly a mistake – in almost all China based trackers, there is an option to change site language to English. And when you actually sign up and log in, you’ll see that these trackers are full of English content. This applies to CHDBits as well.

CHDBits seem to have good scene connections judging by the amount of scene releases available on site. In addition, there is a good number of p2p (non scene) encodes online. For example there are some untouched Blu-Ray releases by group CHD, which looks a lot like an internal release group exclusive to this tracker. Some of the torrent categories, codecs and video standards used in indexed content can be seen in the screenshot below:

Every torrent name has its title spelt out in Chinese (in addition to English) – note that this does not mean the movie is dubbed in Chinese.

Like most other private trackers CHDBits has a bonus system. You can exchange bonus points (usually gained by seeding) for upload credit, custom titles and even invites (10000 bonus points will get you 1 invite). CHDBIts might not look spectacular but it’s design is not bad at all. If you don’t like the default theme, there are several other styles to choose from and even category icons can be changed.

As we mentioned earlier, sign ups for this tracker will open on the 10th of September. A notice posted on site reads:

CHDbits will open sign-up system on Sep.10th,2009(CST China Standard Time UT+8:00 ). Invite exchange-system and invite-system will be closed during that day.

CHD STAFF
Sep 7th 2009

If signups are not open right now, check back from time to time. They will definitely open today (please consider differences in time zone as well).

Site Name: CHDBits (http://chdbits.org)

Signup URL: http://chdbits.org/signup.php

Note: Non Chinese users –  first thing you should do is to change the site language to English. This can be done from the menu in top right corner of signup page or via your profile page (once logged in).

Special thanks to Jimmy who provided a lot of info and screens on CHDBits.

If you liked this tracker you might also like:

• HDStar – Decent HD & Blu-Ray Torrent Tracker Open For Signup
• CCFBits – Chinese HD torrent tracker with English releases

Meanwhile, if you have been watching our Twitter, TorrentVault is also open for signup.

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It was only a couple of years ago when TinyURL was everyone’s favorite URL shortener. Things have changed rapidly over the past couple of months and now there are tons of these services – some a lot better than TinyURL (this growth was no doubt fuelled by Twitter and it’s 140 character limit). The likes of bit.ly and is.gd have revamped the URL shortener segment and now almost everyone on the net probably uses one of these services. But have you noticed that every time you want a URL shortened, you have to visit the service’s web page? For the lazy asses who don’t want to do this, here is a desktop application that’ll shorten the URL for you, with no browser involvement :)

MURLS (short for Multiple Uniform Resource Locator Shortener) is a windows desktop application that can generate shortened versions of any given URL. It supports not only one but 26 different URL shorteners. You get to choose which services to use and if you tick 20 different services from the settings dialog the application will generate 20 links (see above screenshot) in a matter of seconds (although I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would want more than one short link for any given URL).

A downside of using this app would be the unavailability of web based features offered by various such services. For example, you won’t be able to use Bit.ly’s click tracking features with this utility.

Download

MURLS is free, portable and easily downloadable (only 300KB in size).

[Click Here] to visit MURLS download page on Google code

There is also a link to a command line version which I didn’t try.

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It was only yesterday we talked about Libble, a ratio free music tracker. Here is more good news for fans of similar trackers – TorrentHR (THR) is the latest private torrent site to join the ‘ratio free’ club. If you haven’t heard about it before, THR is a Croatian private BitTorrent tracker that’s been around for some time. Majority of our readers, English speaking users that is, must be wondering if this tracker will be of any use to them. Well site language and some of the releases  are in Croatian language but most indexed movies and TV series have English audio. If you are looking for a ratio free General/0day tracker, you might want to give this a try.

For some reason, THR reminds me of the now defunct iTN. Well it doesn’t have as that many English releases or a cool bonus exchange as iTN but THR still looks like a decent general tracker. This tracker has over 7200 members and tracks over 5600 torrents, as of 06/10/2009.

Up until the 14th of August, TorrentHR was a ratio based site – users had to maintain a minimum global ratio in order to survive. This has now changed – you no longer need to worry about overall ratio. However users are required to seed each downloaded torrent for a total of 72 hours within 14 days (the actual amount you upload does not matter and the seeding does not need to be continuous).

As mentioned earlier THR has both English and Croatian content indexed. You will most likely be able to spot the non English content based on torrent title. In addition to local, p2p and scene releases, this tracker is home to some good packs (their ‘Packs’ category has over 125 torrents):

The cool part about being a member of foreign trackers is that you can simply turn to them when/if popular trackers at home are shut down. For example, notorious anti piracy outfit BREIN cannot touch a site hosted in Croatia as it is out of their jurisdiction (local anti piracy agencies can cause some trouble, but these are often less aggressive than the likes of BREIN, IFPI, etc).

Anyways for those interested, THR signups are open and is likely to remain open till they hit max user limit (20k).

Site Name: TorrentHR (http://www.torrenthr.org)

Signup URL: http://www.torrenthr.org/signup.php

Special thanks to folks on THR IRC for the information provided.

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Folks over at IPTorrents (IPT) have been up to some interesting stuff lately. Earlier we told our readers about their new public pre channel and now we bring you news of an another interesting move by this underrated general tracker. IPT have partnered with FLAWL3SS, one of the best p2p oriented (non scene) movie release groups that are around. On the announcement posted on homepage, it is mentioned that “Team FLAWL3SS will become IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team”. Whatever this means, one thing is certain; users of IPT can look forward to a flurry of good quality untouched Blu Ray movies and BRRips – this is FLAWL3SS’s specialty.

The full announcement is quoted below:

We are pleased to announce that IPT and The FLAWL3SS Release Group have come to an agreement that Team FLAWL3SS will become IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team. We have added a new sub category Movies/FLAWL3SS for all of their releases making searching a simple one click task.

In addition:

All FLAWL3SS Movie Packs will be FreeLeech.
All FLAWL3SS HD releases will be FreeLeech.
A minimum of 50% of all remaining FLAWL3SS releases will also be FreeLeech.
All FLAWL3SS releases will continue to be Non-RAR and single file so you can download, play and seed without taking up twice the hdd space.

We wish to thank all the members of IPT for your continued support.

The new category (Movies/FLAWL3SS) already has an impressive 315+ releases listed under it.

Before they partnered with IPT, FLAWL3SS releases used to be readily available on various other private torrent sites (on those that track non scene content) on the net. Since it is announced that FLAWL3SS became ‘IPTs exclusive in-house encoding team’, it remains to be seen whether their releases will continue to be available on other trackers, specially from now on.

IPTorrents is currently closed for signup and please do not request invites here. This tracker was mentioned several times on this blog when it was open for signup so hopefully, most of our readers are already members there.

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We’ve come across several no-ratio music torrent trackers such as CE, SQN (reviews coming soon), TSCN, etc. Although overlooked by many, Libble.com is one of the first ratio free music trackers to hit the BitTorrent scene. In my opinion this is a very underrated tracker –it has a great set of usability features (runs on Gazelle codebase), a content rich torrent index and a decent user base. Keep in mind that Libble is a private community and public registrations are currently closed. However there is some good news for those who are itching to get in - free invites are available on the official IRC channel.

Some of you might not have heard about this site but it has been around for several years. Libble has over 5600 registered members and tracks over 12000 music torrents – respectable stats for any private torrent site, not just for a specialized music tracker. However, note that Libble did not start out as a Gazelle tracker – they only migrated to the script in 2008. Same goes for being ratio free. Initially, this site was based on a ratio system just like most other private trackers. However Libble recently introduced an interesting concept called ‘Share Rank’ that effectively replaced the ratio system.

So what exactly is this Share Rank system? Following paragraph (quoted from their Knowledge Base) should give you an idea:

Share ranks are a system we've implemented to replace ratios. It is a measure of your contribution to the site based on several factors:
Ratio - If your ratio is between 0 and 3 you will get a positive or negative bonus based on how good (or bad) your ratio is.
Torrents Uploaded - The more torrents you upload, the higher bonus you get.
Data transferred - The more data you transfer on torrents (up or down) you higher bonus you get.
Torrents Snatched - The more torrents you snatch the higher your bonus.
Torrents seeding - The more torrents you're seeding the higher your bonus.
Hit and runs - Your total hit and runs in the last month is subtracted from your score.
These factors are combined (with different weightings) to give you a final score. This will determine your user class and whether you are put on Share rank watch or not. In general you should keep your share rank positive.

If you need more information about Share Rank or Share Rank Watch, I suggest you read this article on Libble.com.

Image: Screenshot of Libble, showing some of the torrent categories, tags and search features of the tracker 

As for the content available, Libble tracks a lot of English music releases spanning across a number of different genres. This includes popular album releases by p2p and scene groups. In addition, they have a series of exclusive mixtape releases you won’t find on any other tracker (look in the ‘Libble Mixtapes’ category). Most of the audio files are either in MP3 or FLAC formats.

Signups for Libble are currently closed. Although open signups do occur from time to time, there is an alternative way you can join without having to wait for one – IRC. Yes, you can ask for an invitation on Libble’s official IRC channel. Note that you might be asked to provide ratio proof/speedtest depending on staff who handles your invite request.

Site Name: Libble (http://libble.com)

IRC Details:

• Server: irc.rizon.net (port 6667)
• Channel: #libble.com
• Direct Link: irc://irc.rizon.net:6667/libble.com
  IRC noob? Read this article.

Please don’t spam the chat room – wait patiently for your requests to be handled.

Special thanks to flugger and rest of Libble staff for the support given.

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It’s a well known fact that movies leak on BitTorrent all the time. There are hundreds of movie release groups both scene and non scene that specializes in such releases. Sometimes, the same movie may be leaked by various groups with differences in video quality. When this happens it can be quite confusing to find which release has the best video quality – even pirates would like to get their hands on the best that’s available. This is where Screenshot Comparison comes in. It’s an online service that allows users to compare screenshots of different movie releases.

The idea behind ScreenshotComparision is pretty simple. Two screenshots (depicting the same scene) taken from two different movie releases are placed on top of each other, on a canvas. When the user hovers mouse cursor over the canvas, screenshot from the first release is shown. On mouse out, screen cap from second image replaces the first [See sample here]. In fact, even the slightest differences in image quality can easily be identified through this method.

Like all services, Screenshot Comparison is not perfect. For example there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to compare between every movie release out there. SC does not automatically pull it’s data as scene and p2p releases are pre’d – the service is entirely user driven. All screen captures and comparisons are submitted by users so what you can compare is limited by this factor. Also, I noticed some caparisons where images did not load or kept displaying the ‘loading’ message forever.

Either way it’s a pretty interesting service. Note that the service’s homepage takes you to the ‘submit’ page where you can submit your own screens and new comparisons. To find what users have already submitted, use the ‘Search’ feature or ‘See all’ from the top toolbar.

[Click Here] to visit Screenshot Comparison homepage

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Of all the types of private torrent trackers that are out there, magic trackers are probably the hardest to get into. There are so few of them online and even if you manage to get in, you either need to upload stuff and be very active in order to survive. Magic Warrior (MW) is another lesser known magic tracker that’s insanely hard to get into – not because it’s a level 999 secret tracker but because you need to actually know magic in order to pass the IRC interview. Yep, you need to have an advanced knowledge of magic if you are to get into this site.

Although a fairly unknown site, Magic Warrior has one of the biggest torrent indexes among specialized magic trackers – there are over 2700 active torrents indexed. However this tracker is very selective when it comes to recruiting new members. Only those with advanced knowledge of magic are able to get in and even folks who do get in need to upload a minimum of 2 new torrents each month in order to survive. This should probably explain the low member count of 220 users.

As you can see from the above screenshot, this tracker can be an excellent resource if you are actually into magic. Content spans across several categories including Card Magic, Close-Up Magic, Comedy Magic, Ebooks, Fire Magic, Flourish/XCM, Gambling Magic, Instructables, Kids/Balloon/Ju, Magic music, Mentalism, Misc Magic , Money Magic, Shows/Documenta, Stage Magic and Street Magic.

As you might have guessed, registrations for Magic Warrior are closed. The only way in is by completing the IRC interview. Let us reiterate that the entry requirements are very high – this is not a tracker you can get in by showing 2-3 ratio proofs from other sites. You need an advanced knowledge of magic even to be considered for the interview. And if you don’t, please don’t try to ‘collect’ this tracker and flood the IRC with requests – it’ll be a waste of both your and tracker admin’s time.

Site Name: Magic Warrior (http://www.magicwarrior.net)

IRC Details:

• Server: irc.p2p-network.net
• Channel: #MagicWarrior
• Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/MagicWarrior
  IRC noob? Read this article.

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With the widespread use of movies and TV shows in high definition formats, specialized HD torrent trackers have become immensely popular. We have reported about quite a few of these sites and here comes another. You might not have heard about this site before but HDpre is a veteran HD tracker that’s more than two years old. It was previously accessible via hdpre.ath.cx however the site has now moved to more secure domain and is hosted at hdpre.com. Signups for HDpre are usually closed but there is some good news - Registrations will be open on 5 September 2009.

As the title says HDpre is a tracker with Hungarian origins. Yep, it’s from the same country where many great private trackers such as nCore, Pretorians, BH, etc were born. However HDpre being a ‘Hungarian tracker’ doesn’t mean it has no English releases. In fact, majority of the indexed content is English. But if you see a torrent which contains ‘HUN’ tag in title, that is most likely dubbed in Hungarian language.

HDpre contains both scene and non scene releases. I saw releases by several groups I had never seen before (EiMi, FSK, BW) – these are probably internal encoders ( or p2p groups that I wasn’t familiar with). Most of these releases contained an English audio stream. Anyways there is an impressive collection of close to 4000 torrents at HDpre. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, music videos and even lossless music albums are tracked. The screenshot below captures some of the indexed torrents:

Although HDpre has a strong user base of 16000+ members they could definitely do with more activity. This is where the open signup should come in handy. If you register on this tracker, make sure you comply with ratio requirements as leechers will be deleted by 10th of September (thanks devil666 for help with translation). Almost forgot to say it, you can switch between English and Hungarian languages (for site interface) using the EN/HU links located above the top toolbar (next to logout).

Site Name: HDpre (http://hdpre.com)

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

Note: After you fill he signup form, the login link generated by the system might not work (it still points to their old domain). You can login by visiting http://hdpre.com/login.php instead.

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I bet you’ve all heard about BitMeTV, Tv.Torrents.Ro and TVTorrents.com but have you ever heard of TvTorrentZ? TvTorrentZ (TVTZ) is another specialized TV Tracker that focuses a lot of active members and community. It has a relatively small user base compared to the likes of BMTV, TVT.COM, etc but TVTZ also has a unique ‘adoption’ system that extends lifetime of indexed torrents and promotes activity of all registered members. As you might have guessed, TVTZ is a private tracker and is usually closed for signup. They do not have an invites system and there is no IRC invites channel. So what’s the good news? At the time of this posting, there are over 125 free open signup slots waiting to be filled.

Before you signup for this tracker, there are several things you should know. First and foremost, how TVTZ functions is a lot different that your average torrent site. Their goal is to create a huge virtual hard disk shared among dedicated members. To support this concept, a unique system known as ‘adoptions’ has been introduced. All users are required to (as a bare minimum) adopt at least 2 children (season packs) and 2 pets (single episodes). Adopting a torrent is easy – however you need to first download it completely to your hard disk (since all new users start with a whopping 50GB free credit, this shouldn’t be a problem). To keep your adoptions alive you have to seed them for at least 8 hours per every 24 hours (in average). Adoptions are a good way to earn additional credits for your account. Speaking of Credits, they are TVTZ’s alternative to a ratio system - You need credits to download content from the tracker. So how will adopted torrents earn you credits? Read the following, (selected phrases quoted from the FAQ):

For every hour you seed your pet or child you will be given one seeding hour (SH), regardless of whether someone downloads your stuff or not.
Once you earn enough seeding hours, you can then exchange them for more credits!

To keep your adoptions you have to nurse them (seed them) for an average of 8 hours per day. If you nurse them more than the required 8 SH per day average, the extra SH goes into a buffer that will nurse the adoption during periods when you aren't seeding.

• If you fulfill the minimum adoption requirements you will not be charged any Adoption fee.
• If you don't fulfill the minimum adoption requirements you will each night be charged a 1 GB credits Adoption fee
• New members have a 7 day grace period before the Adoption fee kicks in, so adopt as soon as possible!

It might be a little confusing at first and will need a little getting used to. But judging by the activity on some torrents, you have to admit that this is a system that works. For more information on how adoption, credits and seed hours work, we strongly recommend you read the Introduction and information given on signup page.

It might have a small user base but when it comes to content TVTZ is not so small. There are over 4000 active torrents and a lot of them are season packs. Almost all popular US TV Shows can be found on this site.

Like we said earlier this site is currently open for signup. There are just around 125 free spots remaining (at time of this post) and you might want to hurry if you want to join. Correct answers will need to be given for all questions on signup page – if you read the info that’s given above the signup form, this shouldn’t be a problem (also, be careful when ticking checkboxes). 

Site Name: TVTorrentz (http://www.tvtorrentz.org)

Signup: http://www.tvtorrentz.org/signup.php

Support IRC: irc://irc.freequest.net/tvtorrentz

Announce IRC: irc://irc.freequest.net/tvtorrentz-announce

If you couldn’t make it during the current open signup, don’t worry - according to site admins there will be several more open registrations (each with around 200 free slots) in the next couple of weeks. Keep checking back (or follow us on Twitter - we’ll let you know when it opens up again).

Special thanks to TVTZ admins/sysops and staff.

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