Automatic downloaders Options

[Rev Drew]

if you like TV shows, movies and music but hate searching for what's new, then this is for you!

automated searching and downloading via newsgroups or torrents

tv shows

sickbeard: http://www.sickbeard.com

movies

couchpotato: http://couchpota.to

music

headphones: https://github.com/rembo10/headphones
Windows version: http://www.tbueter.com/tools/headphones_win32build.zip

sickbeard and couchpotato have windows versions available, headphones does not. - correction, headphones DOES have a windows version!
I installed Python and am running them all in it, so far so good!

SickBeard and CouchPotato I have been playing with for a while, headphones is a new one for me but I am trying it out.

I will answer any questions I am able to if you want help with them, I am no expert but I will try to help.

[Rev Drew]

after playing with a lot of this stuff I have noticed something. I run these auto downloaders on the same drive I share my TV shows from, when they are running it definitely interferes with playback over the network.

an easy fix is to install "Prio", it's free for home users. It lets you select what priority you want a specific program to run at, and it remembers it on a reboot. You can also specify the I/O priority.

setting both to low works like a charm and the programs don't seem to be affected at all as they are all running, capturing and allowing me to download whatever they get.

http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

download page: http://www.prnwatch.com/download.html

you may need to log off and back on after installing this or perhaps a reboot before it will show up but it has been working great for me for a while now.

[Rev Drew]

okay, I have an update, all that stuff with it interfering with playback over the network was actually my hard drive dying.
so, if you start to get stuttering and you never had it before, best check your hard drive ASAP!

I lost more virtual machine images than movies or shows, of course movies and shows are easier to get again but that is Murphy's Law...
oh well, most were Linux images that were out of date anyway, it will give me something to do on rainy days recreating them all.

[TXmike]

The only one I have tried on your list is Sickbeard and I have to admit I like it a lot despite it's sometimes weirdness. It's still considered in Alpha stage so I can overlook a lot of bugs.

I have it running along with sabnzb on my WHS 2011 server where I also store all my content. I haven't noticed any slow downs but then sab isn't running from the shared folder drives either.
The beauty of usenets are that whatever speed your internet connection is, you download at full throttle every time unlike torrents.

Sometimes on a really newly uploaded nzb file Sickbeard will choke on itself, maybe the complete file isn't up yet when sickbeard tries to process it ..whatever, in that case sickbeard won't retry the download automatically and I have to deal with it manually. It all depends on the nzb site too, it doesn't choke on all sites. Usually just Nzbmatrix.
Otherwise it's like having your own DVR.