I have setup a full *arr stack on my home server about one year ago. I am having some trouble finding some specific content that is not listed by popular public indexers (mostly TV shows with lots of episodes). However, my friends can find the same content in stremio, so I know there are torrents of the content out there. I have asked them to share some magnet links to specific media the *arr stack has failed to source, and I have tried to trace back their origins.
What happens next is, I register to the newly found private indexers when I can, and request everything again through prowlarr. Still, there is specific episodes where are not found, and I have to get back to step 1 and do everything again. That makes me realize that my setup is not as robust as I would like.
I wonder what you would recommend me do. Right now, I can think of two solutions. I can try to register on more private trackers that are invite only by asking around (I appreciate any invitation links), or I can try the whole usenet workflow. Of course, using stremio is a possibility, but I would like to improve my own setup if I can.
What is my best bet here? There are only a few shows where I’m struggling with. For most of the content I request, my setup works smoothly.
Usenet makes finding new content much more reliable, but if you prefer to keep it to torrents, I think your approach makes sense and should help you plug the gap in theory. Something fell through the cracks somewhere in your investigation - stremio found the content, you followed those links back to their trackers, added them to your prowlarr, and you get nothing - but why? Maybe you didn’t find the actual source, and need to go back and look into that more. I can’t offer any advice there.
Your *arr stack could be finding the content in the indexers but not grabbing it due to some filters or rules. This is common for me. It could be outside of the filesize threshold for the given quality or something like that, in which case you just need to change your quality settings. I would definitely do manual interactive searches and pour through the results.
If you have a specific example of content your setup isn’t finding, I could try a manual search and let you know if and where it turns up on my setup.
I would like to keep it to torrents, since it doesn’t hurt to improve my setup’s resilience (after all, why not, right?). But at the same time I suspect that usenet might improve my experience, according to what I have been reading online when trying to debug this problem I’m facing.
You are right about the crack in my investigation. It seems like I have to dig deeper, and this is another indicator that maybe the usenet solution would be my best bet here, since I have already added plenty of indexers. You raise a good point about the filters configured in the *arr stack perhaps being “too aggressive” and sleeping on what would be a “good match”. I will look into that.
I do have a specific example of content my setup isn’t finding. I will give it a look later to find a specific season/episode that matches the criteria and report back. I appreciate your willingness to help!
I love Usenet but it does incur a cost whereas torrenting can be totally free. If I were in your position I’d definitely also be curious to track down the discrepancy since it would nag at me that there’s something I should be able to achieve there that I’m missing. If you haven’t picked through the manual searches to see what’s being found but not grabbed definitely start there as its very likely that some content is filtered out at that stage.