News about large torrent sites being shut down is not uncommon. However you don’t often hear about smaller, private BitTorrent communities getting raided by the police. Such an unfortunate turn of events took place at Scene Base (SB), a private torrent tracker for General/0Day content. One of SB’s co-owner’s house was raided by the police yesterday and he was arrested on charges of copyright theft (info still not very clear). Both SB site and tracker have gone offline since the arrest. However for users of the tracker, there’s still hope; SB’s admins are determined to bring the site back online. Following notice is now posted on Scene Base homepage:

Site Down due to unforseen circumstances aka Police raid on my house

We will be back better and stronger but probably a different name we will be in contact with you all soon

In the mean time you can still chat with us etc on irc

irc://irc.scene-base.net

SB’s admins believe the arrest might not entirely be a ‘natural’ one. In other words they think that somebody set the owner up. Reason? Apparently some folks were not too happy with the good pre times SB was having on IRC tracer channels (note that these claims are unverified information).

Either way  good news is that the owner has been bailed for 4 days. In addition, SB’s coders are already working on bringing back the site on a new server (possibility under a new name too). If you were a fan of SB’s all you can do now is to wait patiently for the site to return. In the meantime we hope that legal issues will be sorted out soon and life returns to normal for all affected parties.

You may find a review of Scene Base here ( this is a very old review – SB’s has gone through a lot of changes since that was posted)

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Great news for lovers of E-Learning & infotainment content. As we previously revealed via Twitter, Docs.Torrents.Ro has returned. Docs.Torrents.Ro was once a hugely popular private torrent tracker for E-learning content. To the disappointment of many of its users, Docs shut down back in last April leaving many stranded in the seas of BitTorrent. Now here is the good news – after almost 7 months of downtime, the site has returned in grand style. It now sports a brand new look, an overhauled codebase and runs on a new domain. Name of site remains the same (Docs) and their tagline (‘Knowledge Overdose’) too remains unchanged. Some of the most experienced staff/admins in the BitTorrent community are behind this project so expect more good things in the future from new Docs.Torrents.Ro.

As you might have already guessed, Docs is a private tracker from Romania although it mostly tracks English content. It’s a veteran BitTorrent tracker that has a history of over 4 years. What’s even more great about the return of Doc’s is that the site has retained user information as well as forum posts since the time of shutdown (if you can remember your old username but not the password, you can recover it). With sites like Docs returning and new trackers such as DocsBits being launched it’s looking pretty good for those interested in E-Learning/Documentary niche. Staff of the tracker remains largely unchanged from its previous incarnation. Behind the new Docs project are moderators/staff/admins from the community portal Torrents.Ro who are also behind other well known private trackers such as RsR (Romanian ShareReactor), LastTorrents (Open) and Freshon.TV. The owner too remains the same – new Docs is run by the same admin who ran the old site (and did an extremely good job of it considering he ran the site without donations). New site’s welcome message reads:

After some time offline, we are back.
Let's continue what we started so long ago, so... start uploading, seeding and learning !

Apparently, the folks behind the tracker haven’t been sitting on their asses doing nothing for the past few months; there are lots of improvements and new features visible in the new Docs.Torrents.Ro. First of all it now sports a sleek new interface that’s lightning fast to navigate and very user friendly. With a torrent browse page with multiple panels, the layout looks like a hybrid of Freshon.TV’s and LastTorrent’s interfaces (which is a good thing). Docs’s codebase seems to have been revamped as well – current one looks more optimized with faster loading times and error free navigation.

As of 12/11/2009 there are around 525 torrents indexed on the tracker. Considering the site has only been online for about 1-2 days, this is a great achievement (torrent index is is being rebuild from scratch). Expect this number to increase rapidly as days progress – there are a lot of new torrents being added daily. Content on Docs ranges from video documentaries to E-books and spans across multiple categories including education, infotainment and lots more. Scene releases as well as lots of P2P uploads are indexed.

No matter how excellent a site is, it would suck if new users cannot get in easily. Well you shouldn’t have any problems getting into the new Docs as the site is currently open for registration (although we don’t know till when EDIT: There are around 20000 free spots left, as we were told by the admin). If you love E-books and documentaries, you’ll definitely love this tracker. Check it out.

Site Name: Docs.Torrents.Ro (http://docspedia.org)

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

Special thanks to ‘Silverleaf Of Bittorrents’ and ‘Angelitta™’ for the information provided.

Related Articles

• DocsBits – A New E-Learning Torrent Tracker
• LastTorrents is the new BitTorrents.Ro (BiTT)

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The word ‘DarkSide’ can be quite confusing when it comes to BitTorrent. That’s because it has many meanings. DarkSide was the name of a well hidden but widely sought after Hungarian private torrent tracker (now defunct). It is also the name of an online forum (DarkSide_RG) that’s home to many well known P2P encoders and rippers. Today’s post is about the latter. DarkSide_RG is a private community and a torrent forum for movies, TV show, audio files, games and more. It is the birthplace and home of many well known P2P rippers such as aXXo, Release-Lounge and even KVCD groups such as UKB.

First things first - DarkSide Release Group (or DarkSide_RG) is not a private tracker. It’s not even a public tracker. It’s an online forum which hosts .torrent files and for various movies, music and game releases. Like most private communities out there, DarkSide looks just like a regular discussion forum to the unregistered user. The site’s torrent forum will only be visible once you register an account and log in.

Speaking of the torrent forum, this is where all the ‘good sh1t’ is. DarkSide has several kick ass encoders and rippers including some popular names in the BT community such as aXXo. DarkSide is aXXo’s real home and his releases are always made available first via this forum. By the way, aXXo hasn’t been active lately – his last login on site is 19th July 2009 - 03:44 PM so any aXXo release you downloaded after that stand a good chance of being gay pron. In addition to aXXo, some pretty well known rippers such as HellRaiser, FLAWL3SS RG, Konzilla RG, UKB Release Group, `jedi and many others have joined hands with DRG. Screenshot below shows part of their torrent forum:

As mentioned earlier none of the torrents are tracked by DarkSide; External trackers such as TPB and H33T are are used instead. Indexed torrent files however are hosted by DRG itself. And of course, with a registered user base close to 160000 members, DarkSide forums are pretty active. If you can’t find anything to download, you can always join in on the discussion – there’ll always be various threads open in the ‘Community Forums’ and ‘Reviews and Discussions’ section.

Public registrations for DarkSide are currently open. It’s almost always been open during the past couple of years and there are no signs of this changing anytime soon. DarkSide is actually a great place to discover new, non fake releases that would otherwise be difficult to find just by searching a torrent index. Check it out.

Site Name: DarkSide_RG (http://94.75.224.58/forums/)

Registration URL: http://94.75.224.58/forums/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00

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Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 (aka CoD : MW 2), which is without a doubt one of the most anticipated games of this year, has finally been released. The game is distributed via Steam and has been available since the 10th of November in some locations. There’s been a lot of pre-release buzz around this game specially regarding its supposedly flawed multiplayer component and non availability of dedicated servers. There’s also been a lot of criticism of the game’s relatively short single player campaign. Either way, here’s our routine troubleshooting article for CoD : MW 2. We hope to discuss various problems users may encounter with the game and possible fixes if any are available.

Please note that this is a work in progress –and this is a very early version. More issues/fixes will be listed as they are discovered.

How to manually edit game settings via configuration file (NEW)

While the game does allow you to change basic audio, video and control settings, hard core gamers would want to tweak the hell out of this game. You can do this by manually editing the configuration file. PC Confuguration settings are stored in:

InstallDir/Player/Settings.cfg

It’s highly recommended you backup the current file before making any changes – if something goes wrong simply restore the backup.

Could not locate resource errors and install issues

As you may already know, Modern Warfare 2 is distributed via Valve’s Steam content delivery platform. Some users have reported errors related to Steam – here’s a brief summary of them:

Sometimes you may encounter strange errors such as ‘could not locate arcadia.ff’ and the game might crash. Most such issues can be fixed by refreshing the game via Steam. To do this:

1. Open Steam client
2. Right click Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2
3. Click ‘Verify Game Cache’
4. Wait until operation completes.

If you run into ‘Failed to run install script’ error, try running the setup as administrator (Right click- run as Administrator).

Also if you receive the annoying “Incomplete Installation of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″, towards the end of setup try inserting DVD1 back into the drive.

Slow performance and stuttering intro movies

Sometimes you might experience stuttering and slow performance both with the game as well as intro movies. There could be many causes for this but try disabling ‘Sync Every Frame’ from the options menu – this has proven to help.

CoD : MW 2 sound issues – stuttering audio, noise or no sound

Thankfully not a lot of people have reported audio issues with the game ( it wasn’t quote the same with MW1).  However if you are experiencing any audio issues including stuttering, noise or skipping sounds, you may try lowering hardware sound acceleration level. You might also try the audio fix mention at the end of this article.

Corrupt textures, artifacts, graphics issues, etc

I’m not sure this is a common issue or not but this is my personal experience. I’ve found both CoD MW1 and MW2 run my graphics hardware on higher temperatures than during normal gaming. This has sometimes caused artifacting, corrupt textures and various other graphics glitches after few hours/minutes into the game. If you are experiencing similar issues, I suggest you re adjust fan speed (try speeding it up with an utility such as RivaTuner) of your VGA or opening the system casing to allow better ventilation (at least when you play the game).

Random crashes? Are you using a pirated release?

It is not secret now that the game has leaked online. Two groups from the warez scene have pre’d the game (Razor1911 (RZR) and SKIDROW) and it’s all over the internet. Razor1911’s release is a custom launcher which comes with SteamWorks in tact while SKIDROW claims to have removed Steam. Some folks have reported random crashes with RZR release but I have not personally tested this. Anyway to experience optimal, crash free performance and especially to enjoy the game’s multiplayer component, buying the game is encouraged.

Does this game require online activation? 

Essentially not a technical question but one of the most popular ones. Yes. Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 requires online activation to play both single player and multiplayer components (that is assuming you are using a legit, non-pirated copy). Online authentication is handled by SteamWorks protection by Valve software.

I pirated the game. Can I play online?

Possibly one of the most frequently asked questions. As mentioned above, you’ll have to by the game for full online multiplayer experience. Even multiplayer via emulated LAN such as via Hamachi does not seem to be possible with CoD MW 2 – pirates seem to be really screwed in this case.

Where are the saved games?

One thing i hate about Steam games is they store saved games in fukd up places where no one can find them. In this case, saved games are located in the following location:

X:\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2\Players

Fix Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 random crashes to desktop (CTD, black screen and more)

So far, we are not aware of any specific scenarios that always cause showstopper bugs. In this case, only some guidelines to minimize the possibility of crashes can be given. Please read the following – these probably won’t fix all of your problems but they sure as hell will help in one way or the other.

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

This post is a work in progress. Check back later for updates.

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Here’s a tracker that we have never discussed about before. TopBytes is a scene General/0Day private tracker with movies, music, games, TV shows and more. TopBytes has been online for some time and now they’re a pretty well known tracker amongst torrenters. That being said, TB has gone through some pretty tough times. There were several SceneNotices pre’d against them by the scene and if memory serves correct, they got hacked too. Apart from that TobBytes is a decent general tracker with a beautiful user interface. Site is occasionally open for signup and if you feel like joining, now is a good time – registrations are open.

First thing you’ll notice after logging into TopBytes would be the interface. From the top toolbar to category icons, everything has been improved a lot and right now looks pretty good. If you like some variation there are plenty of stylesheets to choose from. In fact, there are a total of 9 layouts – v2.0 styles look better than others.

TopBytes is a pretty well established, medium sized tracker in the BitTorrent scene. Right now it tracks over 3500+ active torrents (~9500 total) and has a registered user base of over 7800 members. Pre times and download speeds are average. Note that this is a tracker with dual browse pages but it’s easy to miss their new 0day section – you can access it from 0day.php page.

As you can see from the above screenshot, TopBytes mostly tracks scene releases (new torrents are added quite frequently). You’ll be able to find these releases elsewhere, on almost any other General tracker. They do have an exclusive packs section but right now it only lists 6 torrents.

As of now the entire site has been placed on free leech. Free leech will last for another 2.5 days (since time of this post) and better yet, signups are open as well. If you are looking for a general tracker, check TopBytes out.

Site Name: TopBytes (http://topbytes.net)

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

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Google Maps is an awesome online service – there’s no doubt about that. But how about using the maps offline? Wouldn’t it be cool to save maps as images to your hard disk and view them offline? Or view them instantly without having to load them in a web browser? Google Map Saver is a free utility that will allow you do just that. It’s lightweight (400kb in file size), doesn’t clutter your system and does what it claims to do pretty well. And unlike most similar tools out there, GMS does not seem to break Google Maps’s Terms of Service (TOS).

GMS allows saving maps as following image types; JPEG, PNG-8, PNG-24, BMP or Targa file. This app is able to download huge images which is impressive. What’s even better about the app is that it’s portable – you don’t even need to install it on your system.

One of the main issues with other map downloaders is that they sometimes violate Google’s TOS. This does not seem to be the case with GMS. Following is quoted from the FAQ:

Q: I think your tool brakes the Google’s Terms of Use
A: I was thinking about this before I made the application public. What I can tell you, is that I’m not using any tricks (e.g. direct and bulk downloads) to get the maps. I’m simply using the a standard Google URL via IFRAME. Google allows us to see bigger maps. I found is possible, I did it. In GMS one user request = one Google Maps access. No bulk download.

A lot of additional info about the service may be found on the app homepage located here.

Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version of GMS from official server (Direct Download)

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Yeah the title is a little confusing – read the article and you’ll decode it :p Lots of stuff’s been happening around the untouched DVDR torrent tracker DVDRSource. First, the site suddenly went offline somewhere around the 29th of September. Tracker and torrent index were unreachable and their domain began redirecting to a blog. Reason for this (as explained by the admins) was non payment of server bills. The site is now back up, with torrents and user databases in tact. In addition, the tracker has opened registrations, enabled sitewide free leech and double upload. While all of this was happening, the scene attacked DVDRSource’s Sysops by pre’ing a SceneNotice which appeared to contain their personal info.

The SceneNotice which was apparently pre’d by WEDiDiTAGAiN (not  a real group) contained names, addresses, zip codes and other info about two of DVDRSource’s sysops (we don’t know if these claims are real or not). It also carried the threat “We all want you down.. hopefully you think twice before you decide to stay”. However DVDRSource doesn’t seem to care. The site is back online in grand style – with open signups, double upload and free leech.

As you might have read in our previous articles, DVDRSource is an untouched DVDR tracker based on SweDVDR’s source. It was one of the very first SweDVDR replacements to surface after the veteran site shut down. DVDSource itself hasn’t done bad at all. It currently tracks over 1500 torrents and has around 9800 registered users.

Lots of DVD5 and DVD9 movie and TV releases can be found on this tracker. Unlike rips, these come complete with original menus, languages, subtitles, bonus DVD features and soundtracks. Note that DVDRSource is a Swedish tracker; it’s interface language is Swedish and lots of indexed DVDRs are those released in the Nordic region. This doesn’t mean this is a useless tracker for English speaking users – most indexed DVDRs have English audio with optional Swedish subtitles (NORDiC/SWESUB tags usually does not mean they are dubbed).

Signups are currently open – however you need to use the special happysignup link (see below) to register..

Site Name: DVDRSOURCE (http://www.dvdrsource.org)

Signup URL: http://www.dvdrsource.org/happysignup.php

As for the interface, clicking on ‘Nytt’ will take you to the new torrents page. ‘Arkiv’ lists older releases. Rest is self explanatory.

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Recently we featured an impressive tool for automatic subtitle downloading called SubLight. Here’s an update – a new version of Sublight (v1.70) has just been released and the new build contains many improvements and enhancements such as the Windows 7 style ribbon based user interface. With this app, subtitle searching for downloaded movies and TV shows becomes very easy. It autodetects the input video file and searches several subtitle repositories for matching subs. When it finds one, you are given the option to download it to the correct dir with the click of a button.

If I wanted to search for a subtitle for a particular episode of a TV series, all I need to do is to select the video file from the app. As you can see from the screenshot above, SubLight detects the file format, auto fills the required information and performs the search. Downloading is almost instantaneous – there is zero web browser involvement and everything can be done through your Windows desktop. Speaking of Windows, it runs on XP, Vista and Windows 7 flawlessly.

Subtitle search is powered by several online sub repositories. In addition to the main source, it searches through following databases:

• divx-titlovi
• divxfinland
• subdivx
• podnapsi
• allsubs

There’s lots more to SubLight that just downloading files. This includes IMDB link generation, NFO file viewing and even publishing new subs. The ribbon UI will come in handy when discovering these features.

Download

[Click Here] to download latest version of SubLight from official download page

Note that they also have a Silverlight based online version of the app – if you don’t like installing desktop software, give this a go.

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I first stumbled across SceneXViD a few days ago while browsing FST - someone had opened a thread advertising the tracker there. Initially it appeared to be another forgettable tracker but it’s recorded some impressive growth over the first few days since launch. SceneXViD is a private torrent tracker that specializes in movies and TV shows encoded using XViD codec. It would have been the first private tracker of this kind but 700m.bz (Open) kinda already won that trophy. Still, SceneXViD appears to be a decent tracker in a world populated by thousands of ‘general’ trackers.

I’ve seen folks argue that XViD is a dying codec specially when it comes to BitTorrent. Argument is that higher fidelity encoders such as X264 are taking its place. While this is true to some extent, XViD is by no means a dying codec. In fact, it is still the king among movie/TV encodes – if you look in most trackers, XViD version of the same movie/TV show is snatched a lot more than the x264 version. Anyways I just wanted to point out that SceneXViD will have no problems when it comes to finding or indexing new XViD rips and their decision to index XViD-only content would not limit or reduce member recruitment. (If you want non XViD content, you can try looking in SceneDVDR (Open), their sister site which indexes untouched DVDs)

SceneXViD has only been online for about a week and it’s done quite well during this time. So far the site has managed to recruit around 750 members and get close to 300 torrents uploaded. Note that this is a Swedish site and the interface language is always set to Swedish– right now there is no way to change it to English. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem as navigation is pretty straightforward.

Download speeds and pre times (which are sometimes measured in hours) on SceneXViD are nothing much to talk about but hopefully they’ll improve as the site grows. As for the content, both Swedish and English releases are indexed. If you are looking for English only releases, look under ENG, TV-ENG and PACKS categories. Below is a screenshot showing part of the torrent index:

Signups for SceneXViD are currently open – there are no IRC recruitments, invite applications or interviews. Just fill the signup form (you might need the help of Google Translate) and you’re in.

Site Name: SceneXViD (http://www.scenexvid.org)

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

Related Articles

• SceneDVDR and CareStreet – Two new DVDR trackers open for signup
• 700MBz movie tracker – 24 hour freeleech on all new torrents

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About two weeks ago we ran an article on NTorrents (NT), a popular Nintendo games tracker, opening public signups. Unfortunately, open signups didn’t last very long and apparently a lot of our readers could not make it in time. If you are one of those souls who’s still locked out of the site, here is some good news. NTorrents will have another open signup soon and this time we are giving a heads up before it actually happens. NT will open public registrations for a few hours this coming Sunday ( 08 November 2009). Quoted below are two notices posted on site related to the upcoming open signups:

First news post reads:

Open Registration once again... expect site delays - posted 2 days ago

On sunday, we will be having open registration again... for a VERY short amount of time. Which is just about 4 hours, maybe a little more. (depends how long i stay at my sister's b-day party across town)
This is the first announcement here on Ntorrents, but it's been making the rounds on other websites. So be prepared for the worst.
This second, short burst of open registration is designed to give help us catch cheaters and multiple account users. If you already have an account this is NOT a way out of ratio watch, this is not a chance for you to pick up a 'spare' in case of ratio watch, and this is not a good time to try and get back in if you have been banned recently.
//Poek

Then the site underwent some downtime but another more recent update confirms open signups this Sunday:

Recent Downtime, and Raffle Opening - posted 13 hours ago

Apologies for the recent down time, real life consequences are catching up with the people in charge of our money.
On Sunday... we will have open registration for aprox. 4 hours.
On Monday... Our raffle will open, here's some details:
1ST Prize - DSI Slot 1 Flash Cart 2x Micro SDHC card full set of stickers 3 packs of cards button (user choice) 50gb upload credit 3 Invites
2ND Prize - DSLite Slot 1 and slot 2 flash cart micro sdhc 3 packs of cards button (2nd choice) 25gb upload credit 2 Invites
3RD Prize - DSLite Slot 1 Flash cart micro sdhc left over button 10gb upload credit 1 Invite
//Poek

4 hours is a very small window even if you know in advance that signups are going to open. So if you want to get in, be sure to keep checking nTorrents from time to time this Sunday. In case you miss it, they have an IRC invites channel too.

Site Name: NTorrents (http://ntorrents.net)

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

Full Review: [Click Here]

IRC Invites Channel: irc://irc.ntorrents.net:6667/nt-invites

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