BitTorrent Skins – Templates & Resources For Torrent Tracker Development

Here on FILEnetworks, we talk about torrent trackers and file sharing forums pretty much every single day. Almost all of the sites and forums we have featured up until now cater towards end users of BitTorrent & DDL, in other words the regular pirates who download stuff from the net. However, the forum we are featuring today, BitTorrent Skins (aka BTSkins), is somewhat different. It’s a gathering place and a central location of information sharing for BitTorrent tracker developers – you can discuss and download templates, hacks & mods for all major tracker codebases including Gazelle, TBDEV, TorrentStrike, TorrentTrader & more. That’s not all, BTSkins is currently developing their own tracker source named TfK (TBDEV featuring Kidvision). If you are a tracker developer or if you are interested in the underlying works of a BitTorrent site, you might want to check this forum out.

BTSkins is not really a new forum. According ApocalypseMan, one of the site’s moderators, this site was formerly known as Kidvision.me. This is essentially a resurrection of Kidvision which shut down due to server issues. The site currently has 125 members (at the time of writing) and more are expected to join as word spreads in the BitTorrent community.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, BTSkins indexes templates, mods and hacks for all major tracker codebases out there. This allows developers to share there work and re-use components developed by others without having to reinvent the wheel. A screenshot of the ‘Development’ section in the main forum is shown below – this is where you can share/download/request add-ons for trackers scripts.

There are already quite a few mods & templates indexed in BTSkins, most of which seem to be TBDEV related. In addition to these, BTSkins has separate forum threads for Graphics and Artwork sharing as well as a Guidelines & Tutorials section for BitTorrent trackers. The source code for BTSkin’s own tracker script, TfK, can also be downloaded from this site.

BTSkins is currently open for registrations and is accepting new members. Again, keep in mind that this is a development related forum – you won’t find any tracker invite giveaways here.

Site Name: BitTorrent Skins (http://btskins.net)

Registration URL: http://btskins.net/index.php?app=core&module=global§ion=register

Special thanks to ApocalypseMan for sending us this news.

4 Specialized Trackers Open – The Vault, The Place, The Occult & The Box

Four very specialized and unique private torrent trackers in the BitTorrent community are now open for signup. Yes, all four sites in ‘The.BZ’ tracker family are currently accepting public registrations. This includes The Vault - a business and E-Learning tracker, The Place - a self improvement & lifestyle tracker, The Occult – a mythology, philosophy & religion related tracker and The Box - world’s largest private tracker for British television shows. Although some of these sites do occasionally open registrations (or give away invites on IRC) times when they are all open at the same time are quite rare. If memory serves correct, last time it happened was back in May 2009, more than a year ago. Anyways it’s a great opportunity for those seeking to be part of four very special BitTorrent trackers – over 11500 uncommon, rare torrents which you probably can’t find elsewhere are tracked between these four sites.

Please read the following before starting the signup process:

• The captcha on all sites is case sensitive. Make sure to get this correct as you have a limited number of tries available.
• Sometimes you may get the error ‘Registration is not allowed’ when trying to sign up. This probably happens when you hit the ‘submit’ button on the signup page several times with some incomplete or wrong information. Re-fill the signup page properly (don’t forget to tick the required checkboxes) and re-try.
• It is not known till when open signups would continue. These could be open for a few days or could merely remain open for a few hours. Get in while you can.

Note that this post is a rehash of a similar article which we wrote back in 2009. Tracker statistics and descriptions have been brought up to date in this 2010 version. On with tracker details and signup URLs..

The Vault

The Vault is a private tracker that is focused primarily on money making (both online and offline), search engine optimization, businesses and business management. It has E-Books, videos, audio files, text documents and various other media associated with business related topics such as SEO, money making, sales/marketing, money management, economics, finance, customer service, copywriting, management, leadership, investing, trading, stocks, E-Commerce, real estate, recruitment/interviews, blogging, biographies and lots of other subjects similar to these.

Site Name: The Vault (http://www.thevault.bz) 
Signup URL: http://www.thevault.bz/signup.php
Stats: 8000+ users and 24400+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.thevault.bz:6667/thevault-invites

The Place

The Place is a private tracker that specializes in lifestyle content. From Self Improvement, Fitness, Food, Drinking, Dancing, Health, Fitness, Seduction, NLP and Cooking to Magic Illusions, this tracker has a wide array of content spanning across over 19000 torrent files. This includes videos, E-books and audio files related to day to day human life. A niche tracker in every sense of the word which tracks some very rare torrent files.

Site Name: The Place (http://www.theplace.bz) 
Signup URL: http://theplace.bz/signup.php
Stats: 6000+ users and 19500+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.theplace.bz/invites

The Occult

The Occult is the newest addition to the The.BZ tracker family but it has grown at a rapid pace, adding over 15000 new torrents within a single year. It has some of the most unusual & uncommon torrent categories ever seen on a private tracker (Mythology, Scientology, Drugs, Shamanism, Astrology to name a few). As the name suggests, it specializes in torrents related to various cults, ways of living, religions, healing and so on. Media on TheOccult include PDF E-Books, DVDs, MP3 audio, etc.

Site Name: The Occult (http://theoccult.bz)
Signup URL: http://theoccult.bz/signup.php
Stats: 3000+ users and ~15500 torrents
Notes: Unlike The Vault, The Place and The Box, signups for this tracker have not closed ever since it’s inception.

The Box

Out of all torrent sites featured in this article, The Box is the largest and without a doubt the most popular. It’s specialty is British (UK) TV series including Entertainment, Sports, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Drama, Kids and many other categories. There is a huge collection of UK TV series available on this tracker, spanning across over 50000 torrents. The Box focuses on both old and new TV series. To put it short, anyone who is a fan of UK TV should be a member of this tracker.

Site Name: The Box (http://www.thebox.bz)
Signup URL: http://www.thebox.bz/signup.php
Stats: Over 70000 users and 56900+ torrents
Notes: Signups for this tracker are known to open and close at regular intervals. If you couldn’t get in the first time, keep checking.

Special thanks to Oleg and Bugatti who sent us this news.

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Direct Download Techno, DnB, Hardcore & Other Electronic Music Albums From Corebay

Here is yet another addition to our Direct Download Link (DDL) forums section. We have already featured several sites such as MUSiK.AM, FlacShare, TrancElite, 0DayMusic and musiCORE where you can find and download zero day music album releases. Corebay is a similar music forum but it primarily focuses on a specific genre; Electronic music. The site indexes thousands of links to full albums, single tracks, mixes and livesets of techno, tribe, drum & bass, jungle, dubstep, terror, noise, hardcore and all sorts of other sub genres of electronic music. As you may have expected, links to a lot of scene releases can be found here. But that’s not all, non scene uploads as well as unique member productions are also available on Corebay. If you are a fan of Electronic music, don’t forget to check this site out.

Some of you may be hearing about this forum for the first time. However, Corebay is not an obscure forum nor is it a new site. Statistics will speak for the amount of activity on this forum -currently there are over 20000 active members who have posted over 1000000 threads. As for new music albums, over 100 new releases seem to get indexed every day, which is impressive. Bulk of these are scene releases – these are indexed pretty fast, usually only a few minutes since pre.

As mentioned earlier Corebay specializes in Electronic music. The site’s many music releases may be downloaded from the ‘Electronic Music Forum’ section in the main index. Here, uploads are categorized according to various sub-genres. Each category has several sub-forum threads in it;  Full Labels/Series, Vinyls/Tracks, Albums and Mixes/Livesets. The screenshot below captures part of Corebay’s main index:

Like almost all DDL forums we have featured so far, Corebay does not actually host any music. Files are uploaded to one click hosting services such as Mediafire, Megaupload and Rapidshare and verified download links that point to these files are indexed in forum threads. Note that in almost all cases, you need to register, log in and usually hit the ‘Say Thanks’ button on a particular thread (or reply to the thread) to view the posted download links which are hidden.

Corebay is currently open for registration and is accepting new members. If you are a fan of Electronic music, having an account on this site may well be worth it.

Site Name: Corebay (http://www.corebay.com)

Registration URL: http://www.corebay.com/register

Related Articles

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• TrancElite – Trance Music Direct Download Forum With Lossless & Lossy Files 

HD-Bits.Ro Invite Applications Now Online

There’s a lot of talk about private trackers and invite applications these days. It looks as if every tracker on the planet is starting to recruit members via invite apps. This is not really a bad thing though – invites officially handed out like this should allow tracker staff to recruit good members and minimize scams related to invite trading at the same time. Anyways the latest private torrent site to implement online invite applications is the popular specialized high definition tracker HD-Bits.Ro (not to be confused with HDBits.Org). If you could not get into this site through their recent open signup (there was one just about two months ago), you can now apply for an invite through the online form. HDbits.Ro tracks scene and P2P HD video releases such as movies, TV shows, Documentaries including exclusive uploads by their internal encoder group HDBRise.

With over 13000 active members and 4500 torrents, this is one of the larger HD trackers. Torrents are well seeded and download speeds are pretty good. Our recent review of HD-Bits.Ro which we wrote during their last open signup is still up to date. Hence, we will not be discussing site features or content in detail here – if you need to know additional information about this tracker or view screenshots of it, please refer to the full review located here.

Coming back to invite applications, you’d be glad to know that they are not insanely hard to complete. There are two stages in the process - first one tests your knowledge on HD-Bits.Ro rules. Provided that you read the rules carefully (rules page may be found here), you should easily be able to complete this section. Second and final step involves submitting ratio proof, profile links and a screenshot of your torrent client along with a few other details. Once this is done, you can submit your invite application. However, make sure you read the following (quoted from HDBR page) before you start filling out the form:

Please fill in all the forms, especially your e-mail because that's where you'll receive your invitation
Don't worry about your personal information, only staff has access; application is deleted after being accepted or rejected
We might answer your application in a couple of hours or it could take a couple of days
While we do not require you to write extremely long responses to the following questions, we do expect you to show some effort / thoughtfulness when answering
If your account was previously disabled, do not attempt to apply here. Instead, come into IRC and talk with us!
Please complete only one application form, if you post more, we will delete from without even reading them

We do not know how long (on average) it will take Hd-Bits.Ro staff to process your application and send an invite if you are approved. It’s best to wait patiently without applying multiple times as it might take some time to sort out the large number of requests they receive.

Site Name: HD-Bits.Ro (http://www.hd-bits.ro)

Invite Applications URL: http://www.hd-bits.ro/application_form.php

Special thanks to Sorin for sending us this news.

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• HD-Bits.ro Signups Open – High Definition Movie & TV Torrents
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Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands – Doors Won’t Open Or Stuck In A Level? Hello DRM!

The newest title of the famed Prince of Persia series, POP : The Forgotten Sands, was released to the public on the 12th June (Microsoft Windows version). This game, published by UBISOFT, was protected by UBI’s own DRM which itself was quite a hot topic in the PC gaming community a while back. Despite various controversies about the DRM ‘calling home’ even during the single player campaign, the system seems to be doing it’s job. True, it has not been able to stop piracy altogether but it has delayed those early leaks which were all too common with UBISOFT games a while ago. A pirated version of The Forgotten Sands eventually did appear on file sharing networks but it look pirates more than two weeks since the game’s street date develop a workaround. The pirated version seemingly works, but that too is not without flaws.

I know quite a few people who’ve grabbed a legit copy of this game and none of them seemed to encounter any showstopper bugs with it. However, the story is quite different when it comes to the pirated version. There appear to be many pirates who are unable to progress through POP due to the game not opening doors that are supposed to open and switches that are supposed to unlock. For example, in the prison level you might stumble across a door that won’t open even if you step on it’s switch. Sometimes you’ll hear the sound of the door opening but it actually remains closed. In addition to these, some save related bugs have also been reported (autosave does not resume from where it should resume after the player dies). If you wonder why this is happening, this is due to the DRM. A good explanation of how UBI’s DRM for POP : TFS works is given in the NFO released by SKIDROW:

To clear the minds of the individuals who think: "Game x was done fast and this one taking ages" etc.  The way the Ubisoft DRM works, makes it so that every game is like a brand new challenge. What it does do, is offload certain parts of the game to a server, game then requests those things at runtime. These parts can be anything that the developer wants. In the case with Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, those things were: 
Levers logic
Door timing
Upgrades
Abilities
XP & Levels
Area codes
Every time you step on a button "in game", it sends a request to server asking what to do. Server then sends the door code to open, including how much time it stays open. Levers work similarly, every time you press the "TAB" button to display skills, game asks again server: "What skills do player have", and so on and on. All that stuff takes a lot of time to implement right and we do implement it like the original do. All our doors open and close with exact same time factors as the retail do. We just wanted to clarify a little how the Ubisoft DRM really does work, because a lot of those individuals we mentioned in the beginning of this statement didn't seem to understand, yet what kind of monster this is. It's not some simply "Values" going around like it were with Assassin's Creed II.

As far as I’m aware, the workaround created by SKIDROW (as well as the Chinese ‘beta’ crack that came out earlier) functions by emulating server responses on the client side. I’m not sure if they actually wrote the server side code again (Razor1911 claimed to do so in AC2 release) or if they are using a logged response values database like in previous releases. Either way, a wrong response code for a specific trigger would mean the game would malfunction. This could very well be the reason why certain switches in the game don’t work and doors cannot be unlocked.

Anyways, some of you might be wondering, is there a way to bypass the bugs? Well there are things you could try but there is no guarantee all your problems will be solved. Whenever you encounter a bug, pause the game,  change the difficulty setting and try again. For example if you are playing on Hard, try changing the difficulty to Medium. Alternatively, you can either purchase the game legitimately or wait until SKIDROW or some one releases a fix for the pirated release (with updated server responses maybe).

Related Articles

• Who Really Cracked UBISoft’s DRM? SKIDROW, Razor1911 Or DORMINE?

PTN Torrent Tracker – Invites Now Available Via Online Application

These are definitely good times for movie buffs. Yesterday we reported about CN re opening invite applications in a fresh new recruitment spree and today we have PTN, another specialized movie torrent tracker opening their invite applications to external users. PTN has been doing this from time to time but it’s been a while since they last allowed the public to apply for invites. PTN’s invite apps work a lot similar to others – users are able to fill the form and submit it online. If approved by staff, they are sent an invite that’ll lead them into the torrent tracker. This would be a great time for new users to join as double upload (dubbed 2X Upload Raid) is currently active throughout the site. PTN is a private tracker based on a total traffic model, and there is no ratio system present unlike in most similar private trackers. The site is expected to get many new features and is planned to go through a complete overhaul during the impending launch of PTN v2.

Now we’ve posted about PTN numerous times on this blog – it wouldn’t make much sense to repeat the same detailed information here. Listed below are some of PTN site features in point form, if you seek more details and screenshots, we strongly recommend you read the full review located here.

• Ratio free- PTN is ratio free. The site is based on a ‘Total Traffic’ system and a ‘Gold’ based bonus system. You can read more on how these work in the FAQ.
• Internal encodes and exclusive releases – PTN has its own internal encoding group SKALiWAGZ. Plus, they have a lot of exclusive movie packs indexed as well.
• Seedbox hosted torrents – Some torrents on PTN are seedbox hosted and have fast download speeds. These have a special icon next to their name in the torrent index.
• Enhanced torrents – Torrents with gold upload multipliers, random category bonuses, staff picks, etc generate more gold when seeded back.
• Multiple torrent browse pages – One each for movies, TV shows and official soundtracks (OST)
• Requests system
• Community – PTN is a community based tracker There is a lot of activity in the site’s forums.
• Gold shop and DiAMOND shop – These places where you can exchange bonus points with upload credit and/or to unlock additional site features
• Extras such as Arcade, Pirate galleries, Pirate's notes box and Blackjack
• Heavily customized tracker script with a unique look and feel

A screenshot of PTN’s torrent index can be found below. The yellow colored icons next to a torrent’s name are special features activated for that particular torrent. Hover your mouse pointer over an icon (in PTN index) to see what they mean.

PTN currently tracks over 13500 torrents and has a user base close to 3000. They however do need more members – there are a lot of dead torrents indexed here. The open invite applications should help bring in some good members into the tracker. Invite apps will be open for three days – an announcement on site reads:

Are you ready?
Tick Tock Tick Tock.....
Better get your friends in here.......the moment is approaching!!!!!
Apps open for 3 days....

I’m not sure but the ‘the moment is approaching’ quote in above message could well be a reference to the impending launch of PTN v2. Either way you can now apply for an invite and check the site out yourself if you manage to get in.

Site Name: PTN

Invite Applications URL: http://*********.***/comeandplay.php (do not use ‘www’ in the address)

Note: Posting of full tracker URL is prohibited by tracker rules. We are sorry about the inconvenience.

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Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 Beta – How To Select And Install Components You Need

Microsoft has released a major update to their Windows Live products suite - Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 is currently in beta and is now available to the public. The WL Essentials suite consists of 9 different software; Windows Live Messenger, Writer, Mail, Sync, Photo Gallery & Movie Maker, Family Safety, Bing Bar and Outlook Connector Pack. All of the above apps have received major upgrades over their older Wave 3 versions. For example, WLM 15 (aka WLM 2011) now features Facebook integration including Facebook chat and other social updates from the service. Although there have been leaked builds available on various 3rd party sites for a while, you can now download the official Wave 4 beta suite directly from Microsoft. And contrary to popular belief, you can select and install only the components you need – installing all 9 apps is not mandatory.

I came across several different popular tech blogs where it was mentioned that you needed to install the entire Windows Live Essentials suite on your computer if you wanted to test out at least one app from the bunch. This is not exactly true – there are two versions of Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 installer. One will start installing the entire suite without any user prompt but the other would give a screen (see image above) where you can select and deselect which components to install. Personally, I only use two software in the Live suite – Writer and Messenger. It would be stupid to install 7 other apps I’d never use and clutter my system just to try these two out.

Download

[Click Here] to download Windows Live Essentials Installer – this installer will give you an options screen where you can deselect applications you don’t want to install

[Click Here] to download Windows Live Essentials Automatic Installer – this will download and install all live apps on your computer without prompt.

CN Tracker Invite Applications Open Again

Good news if you are willing to join CN, a specialized movie tracker that’s yet to have a public open signup. CN staff are once again looking to bring in some fresh new blood into the tracker and have re-opened online invite applications. Potential new members are now able to fill & submit the application form and if successful they will get invited in by tracker staff themselves. As mentioned before, invite apps are one of the safest ways to get into private torrent trackers without having to worry about your inviter being a trader, cheater or a scammer. Coming back to CN, it’s a pretty decent movie tracker. It has a large collection of films both old and new (SD, HD rips included) and runs on a heavily customized tracker script with tons of features, add-ons and other gizmos not usually found on other similar sites. If you download a lot of movies over BitTorrent, you might want to check this site out.

You can find over 12500 movie torrents which include quite a few packs and over 400 internal encodes exclusive to CN. As we highlighted in a previous post, this is a private tracker with a lot of BRRip and BDRip torrents (in addition to other HD and non HD releases including Blu Ray and DVDRip releases). However, CN is not all about content. The site has a wide focus on community and features lots of activities, points systems and bonuses that promote member activity beyond just downloading movies. We strongly recommend you go through the FAQ (/faq.php) once you join the site – a good summary of site features and how everything works is described in detail there.

Initially, CN was known (and criticized on a lot of BitTorrent forums) for it’s tight rules regarding publicity – members were not allowed to post full tracker name or URL in public. However, CN administration's stance towards ‘being underground’ has slowly changed over time. Although never directly opened public signups they have in the past recruited members via E-mail, via IRC invite giveaways and of course, via invite applications. They’ve always been cool with us posting full URLs whenever it came to one of these events (which I’m sure resulted in lots of new members getting into the tracker) - this IMHO is a step in the right direction. Too much secrecy can easily kill a tracker due to lack of members and activity.

Speaking of invite applications, the current version of the form does not appear to be that tough. Most of the questions in it revolve around your personal preferences when it comes to watching movies – a basic knowledge on BitTorrent’s best practices should easily get you inside. Quoted below is the news post announcing the re-opening of invite apps:

Invite Applications: ON

As stated in the title, we have decided to let some more users in so make sure you tell your friends they now have the chance to try their luck, here: https://www.cosanostra.mn/applyforinvite.php
As a side note, we are not that strict when reviewing the applications but please tell them to spend some minutes writing something acceptable or we simply ignore it.

Note that these will only be open for a limited time. If you are interested in joining CN, go ahead and fill out the application form. Allow some time for your application to be processed though – each submission needs to be manually checked by staff and this might in some cases lead to delays. Good luck.

Site Name: CN

Invite Applications URL: https://www.cosanostra.mn/applyforinvite.php

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iPlay Trial Signups Open Again – General Tracker With 5 Internal Release Groups

A few months ago we ran an article about the popular private torrent tracker iPlay. iPlay, a site that is almost always closed to public registrations, relaxed their rules a little by opening trial signups; potential new members could sign up as trial users and test drive the site. Trial accounts that met certain requirements after a specific time period were promoted to full user status and given permanent membership on the tracker. There was however a limit to the number of trial registrations allowed – although most of our readers could get in when we posted the news earlier, those who were late in reading the post obviously could not get in. Good news is that iPlay seems to have opened trial registrations yet again – you now have the opportunity to sign up for one of the best general/0day trackers currently online.

Like almost every other general tracker on the planet, iPlay tracks scene and non scene releases. However, there are several factors that makes this site stand out from the rest. First and foremost, iPlay has a lot of internal, exclusive releases. These are uploaded by 5 of their own release groups, iNCOMiNG, iDVD, iPSP, iHD and iMOBILE (you can track all internal releases from the iPlay Releases Board - http://www.iplay.ro/board/board.php). Second, this site has a great visual design - the four different themes introduced with iPlay V4 look great and gives the site a polished look. In terms of content, iPlay’s torrent index is pretty huge. There are currently over 13500 active torrents accessible via three different browse pages, one each for general content, music releases and adult content. Download speeds and pre times are pretty good across all torrents here.

Image: iHD release board. iHD is an internal release group at iPlay who specializes in HDRips and other high definition content. 

Enough about site features – you obviously came here to seek more information about trial registrations so let’s get back to that. We already posted a detailed article on how iPlay’s trial registration system works several months ago. Same information with minor updates is quoted below.

A trial account has several limitations over a regular user account - a list of them may be found below:

• Account is valid for 7 days.
• Account has a download limit of 7 torrents.
• Account has a download limit of 7GB.
• Account has no right to make requests.
• Account has limited ( read only ) access to forum.
• Account has no right to send private messages.

After the 7 day grace period, it’s possible to convert your account to a full account and become a ‘normal’ user. There are two methods to get promoted (quoted from site):

1. After the 7 days trial period if your global ratio is 1.5 or greater you are eligible for promotion, but promotion must be approved by staff.
   OR
2. By making a donation, in this way your account will be converted from trial to full automatically.

How to sign up

iPLAY signup process is a little more complicated due to the number of checks and verifications that are built into it. Tips below should help you overcome this hurdle.

• You need to read the FAQ and Rules pages. Before you hit the signup button, open these two pages on two new tabs on your browser and start reading. We know most of you skip through these on trackers but in this case make sure to actually read the content – iPLAY has some custom rules (such as minimum monthly download requirement) and you will need a good understanding of them to survive the trial period. If you close the pages too quickly and hit signup, an error message ‘take the time to read FAQ and rules’ will be displayed.
• You need to correctly answer all 3 BitTorrent related questions on signup page. Get any one of them wrong and you will only be able to try again after 12 hours.
• Your password must be at least 8 characters long.

Signup URL and site homepage details are as follows:

Site Name: iPLAY (http://www.iplay.ro/)

Signup URL: Visit http://www.iplay.ro/login.php and click on ‘Trial Account’ button. Note that trials registration will likely be open for a very limited time – get in while you can.

Related Articles

• Private Tracker Open Signup Update – May 2010
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How To Fix Singularity (PC) Crashes, Sound Issues, Launch Errors & Mouse Problems

After somewhat of a draught of good PC game releases, Singularity is here to give PC gamers at least something worth playing. I’ve had the chance to play this science fiction first person shooter from Raven software and my first impression with the game was that it was actually pretty good. It was engaging and you could definitely have some fun with the game mechanics introduced with the TMD (time manipulation device). I’m not saying it’s a perfect game but so far it’s been pretty interesting. Either way here’s our routine troubleshooting article for Singularity. The game is pretty well optimized and there don’t seem to be any showstopper bugs (hence there are only some generic fixes mentioned in this article). Hopefully this might help you resolve any nagging issues you are having with the game. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress and will be updated as we find more solutions– if you encounter new bugs or find fixes, feel free to share them in comments.

Singularity crashes to desktop

If you are running the game by clicking on the executable in game’s installation directory, try running it from the desktop or start menu shortcut. Strange as it may sound, this may actually fix your problem. To ensure optimal crash free performance of your game, follow the steps mentioned in ‘The essentials’ section towards the end of this post.

Nothing happens when I run the game

On some systems, the game might refuse to start up – it might give you a black loading screen or simply do nothing at all. This can be due to a number of reasons but there is a simple fix you can try. Right click the exe, go to properties and select the ‘Compatibility’ tab. Tick ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for’ and select Windows XP Service Pack 2 (this applies for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users).

No sound or low volume in Singularity

Various issues have been reported with the game’s audio and one of the most common problems seem to be the game not having sound or having extremely low volume. I have seen on some systems (especially those running with on board sound on Windows 7) the game setting itself a very low volume in the mixer. To fix this issue, ALT-TAB to the windows desktop while in game, select the volume icon from the system tray, click on ‘Mixer’ and increase the volume for Singularity application.

If you have other sound issues such as stuttering, noise or distortion, you may try and fix the issue by lowering your sound card’s sampling rate. For a step by step guide look for the ‘Change the audio sampling rate’ section on this article.

Mouse issues with Singularity

You might experience problems with mouse movement in game. These are mostly caused by having a 3rd party controller such as a joystick (that is unsupported by the game) connected to your system. To try and fix this issue, close the game, disconnect any game controllers and try restarting the game.

The essentials

Following the good practices below will ensure you have an optimal, crash free experience of not only Singularity but with all PC games in general.

• 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.
• 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.
• Update sound card and motherboard drivers – Overlooked by many but an essential step to playing games crash free. Please download latest video, audio and motherboard drivers from your hardware manufacturer. If you are too lazy to manually search, 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.

Note: This article is a work in progress. It will be updated as new issues are discovered.

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BDMKV & TorrentCCF – Two HD/Blu-Ray/MKV Torrent Trackers Open For Signup

Although unknown to many English speaking users, China has some of the best HD torrent trackers in the world. In fact, almost all private trackers from China seem to specialize in HD content (and they all seem to be built on the NexusPHP BitTorrent tracker script). After last week’s post about TorrentGui, here are two more dedicated HD trackers (both based in China) open for signup; TorrentCCF and BDMKV. TorrentCCF (aka ET8) is a fairly large HD tracker that’s been around for a while. BDMKV on the other hand is relatively new, and specializes in untouched Blu Ray/MKV movies and TV shows. If you are interested in becoming a member of either of these trackers, registrations are currently open - note that open signups won’t last forever so get in while you can.

BDMKV

BDMKV has over 200 untouched Blu Ray movies and more seem to be getting uploaded every day. In addition to there, there are some MKV movies as well as high quality lossless audio files available here. This tracker indexes releases from the scene as well as from a lot of non scene groups including CHD, Remux, ESiR, etc. If you are an English speaking user, BDMKV supports English as an interface language –  change the language from the dropdown located on the top right corner of signup page.
Site Name: BDMKV (http://www.bdmkv.org)
Signup URL: http://www.bdmkv.org/signup.php
Stats: 3600+ users and 410+ torrents

TorrentCCF

TorrentCCF is a relatively large private tracker which indexes HD and non HD movies, TV shows, documentaries as well as software. Just like BDMKV, TCCF tracks releases from both scene and P2P groups including WiKi, CHD, SEMTEX, TSG, CtrlHD, etc (releases by some groups that are ‘internal’ on other trackers are also available). Overall a good tracker with a strong users base as well as a rich torrent index. An English language option is available for international users.
Site Name: TorrentCCF (http://et8.org)
Signup URL: http://et8.org/signup.php 
Stats: 9200+ users and 10400+ torrents.

If you liked these trackers may also like:

• OurDiSC – Private Tracker For Full R1, R3 DVD And Blu-Ray Disks
• HDCity – Another HD BitTorrent Tracker From China
• CHDBits – High Definition Private Tracker
• CCFBits – Chinese HD torrent tracker with English releases
• HDRoad.ORG - Private HD Torrent Tracker
• HDStar HD BitTorrent Tracker Open For A Limited Time Only
• TorrenTGui (TTG) – Private Tracker For Games, Movies & TV Shows

Which Private Tracker Has The Most Number Of BRRip & BDRip Torrents?

What’s the best private tracker to download BRRips? This is a question we see all too often in our E-mail inbox. BRRip and BDRip are two relatively new video release types that saw the light after the launch of Blu Ray disk format. These are usually XViD or x264 encoded rips made using a Blu Ray video source. Although not considered as true HD encodes, BRRips usually have a higher video resolution and image quality compared to regular DVDRip releases. In fact, a good BRRip usually has better image quality than even a DVD5/DVD9 DVDR release. Additionally, these often have lesser file size than regular 720p and 1080p Blu Ray encodes (usually 2-3GB as opposed to 4-13GB) and are becoming increasingly popular amongst BitTorrent users with relatively low bandwidth internet connections. While almost every tracker on the planet tracks XViD encoded DVDRip releases, only a select few index Blu Ray Rips. Coming back to the original question, which private tracker has the largest collection of BRRip/BDRip torrents?

If you are looking to download BRRips/BDRips, first tip would be to stop looking in scene only trackers. These are not popular release formats amongst scene release groups and even the best scene trackers such as SCC have only a handful of such releases (SCC only has around 90 torrents). P2P oriented groups on the other hand have had much more success with these formats.

Tracker	No. Of Blu Ray Rips	Notes
IPTorrents	~4000	The actual number of movies may even be higher as the torrent count includes ~100 movie packs.
Demonoid	2240+	Yeah, Demonoid. Never ceases to amaze :p
RevolutionTT	1700	This includes XvidHD releases by NPW.
TorrentLeech	1550	Finding BRRips on TL is easy. Just browse the NonScene/BRRip-x264 and NonScene/BRRip-XviD categories.
BiTTURK	1450	Home to group D-ZON3 which releases a lot of BRRips
ExtremeShare	960	Signups currently open.
LeechTurk	950
CN	880
LastTorrents	730	Signups open.
TorrentDay	580	Tracks NPW XvidHD releases. Signups open.
PTN	360	Again, the actual number of BRRip movies tracked is a lot higher than 360 as some of these are movie packs.

As you can see from the table above, IPTorrents leads the pack with nearly 4000 BRRip/BDRip torrents. IPT indexes a huge number of releases from SANTi, D-ZON3, JEZZA, Rx, FLAWL3SS (who release non HD rips internally on IPT) and a number of other P2P groups who frequently release Blu Ray rips. Some of you might be surprised not to see specialized movie trackers up in the list – well this is once instance where having access to a huge general tracker pays off (and remember, we’re talking about 2-3GB Blu Ray rips here – thousands of full HD 720p/1080p releases indexed on HDBits, etc were not counted). Speaking of movie trackers, a good niche site to download x264 BRRip releases from is x264.me. This tracker has it’s own internal encoders and has releases not found anywhere else.

If you are looking to download BRRips you now know where to go. Those who still haven’t given this format a try, don’t forget to check it out. While not true HD releases, BRRips have greater video quality and lesser file size. These should be ideal for folks on systems with SD video and/or if you are worried about internet bandwidth. If you know any other torrent sites that track a lot of BRRip releases, feel free to share them here – surely we must have missed some of them :)

How Not To Send Your Tracker Invite Requests

In addition to bringing you news from the BitTorrent scene, we also give away invitations for various private trackers. In fact, we have now conducted over 50 giveaways in conjunction with staff from various torrent sites. During some of these giveaways, we simply direct users to a tracker’s invite IRC channel, recruitment thread, special signup URL, online invite application, etc and staff then take it over from there. In other cases we ask readers to send an E-mail to our invite request address – we process the request and send an invite back over E-mail. Whenever this is done we clearly specify the format of the mail you need to compose (with specific subject text and contents that should be included in msg body) on the the giveaway article itself. While majority of the responses we get are well formed, we do receive quite a few dodgy mails as well. Quoted below are some of the requests that made it to our hall of shame.

Included screenshots are from requests we received for our most recent giveaway, which was for BlackCats Games. Although we clearly specified how to send in the invite request E-mail in the giveaway post itself, take a look at some of the interesting responses we received. We have edited out the names and E-mail addresses of the senders to protect their privacy.

1. What we asked for was a profile link on a private tracker the reader was already a member of. Instead, we received a 4MB Bitmap image that made the E-mail server cry (the image was an screenshot of a tracker profile page – which was not needed).

2. This response has fail written all over it. It has none of the information we requested and even the subject line is wrong. We sort invite E-mails by the subject text and if you set this incorrectly (to something other than the one mentioned in the giveaway article), your response will not get processed.

3. Again, another example of a dumb request. This one does not even have the name of a tracker. I’m pretty sure this is one of those folks who litter BitTorrent invite forums and blogs with generic posts like “please send me invite for XYZ tracker. my email is dumbass@provider.com. thx in advance”. There were a lot of similar requests sent in by different users and this is just one example. Kinda sad, really.

4. When we respond to an invite request E-mail, we usually use the ‘reply’ button in our mail client. This particular user had support@google.com set as his reply E-mail and needless to say the invite code got sent to that address. This is not really an error with the invite request itself but just be careful what you set as the default reply-to address in your outgoing mails.

5. There are some folks who try to improve their chances by sending in multiple requests. Some do it from different E-mail address and some (like the guy below) do it with the same address. If we detect someone sending multiple requests for the same giveaway (and we usually do), all of those mails will go straight to the trash bin (and the addresses will also be added to the junk mail filter).

6. There was nothing wrong with this guy’s invite request. However, the automatic response he had set up had us surprised. “I’ll Feed You Back as Soon as Possible…”. You might want to change this text buddy.

By posting the above, we did not want to trash anybody. We just wanted to say that the key to obtaining an invite from giveaway threads conducted by FILEnetworks (and other blogs) is to follow instructions in the giveaway article itself. This usually has detailed information on how and what you should include in an invite request. Either way, good luck with your next invite reqeust – we have some more giveaways coming up :)

5 Large General, 0-Day Torrent Sites Open For Signup

Here’s another update about private tracker open signups – this article features 5 general/zero day torrent sites are currently open for registrations. There are several characteristics common to all of the featured sites – they have large user bases, index thousands of torrents and they are all based in Romania (since we talked about Hungarian sites yesterday, why not feature Romanian trackers in this update?). Note that we have previously posted individual articles about all of the sites mentioned here. Some of these trackers such as LastTorrents are almost always open to the public. However, you don’t often see all five of the mentioned sites open at the same time (and hence this article). As usual, updated statistics, signup URLs and links to full tracker reviews have been included with all entries.

LastTorrents (LT)
  
Site Name: LastTorrents (http://lasttorrents.org)
Signup URL: http://lasttorrents.org/signup.php
Stats: 33000+ torrents and 70000+ users judging by their Alexa rank of ~10900.
Description: LastTorrents, formerly known as BitTorrents.Ro, is a huge private tracker with lots of activity. Includes a sh1tload of packs (including exclusive releases snatched from other trackers), scene and non scene releases. LT features a great interface that has separate browse pages for new torrents, archived releases as well as free leech torrents.
Full Review: [Click Here]

SceneFZ (SFZ)
 
Site Name: SceneFZ (http://scenefz.net)
Signup URL: Go to http://scenefz.net, accept the agreement and choose ‘Sign up’ from the left pane.
Stats: 20100+ torrents and 63000+ users
Description: SceneFZ is a decent general tracker with a lot of focus on movies. This site has over 10000 films which is more than the amount tracked by some specialized movie trackers that are around. Refer to the full review for a detailed description.
Full Review: [Click Here]

TorrentBits V4
 
Site Name: TorrentBits (http://torrentbits.ro/)
Signup URL: http://torrentbits.ro/ and click the signup link
Stats: 20200+ torrents and 60000+ users
Description: TorrentBits, a long standing Romanian tracker silently launched V4 of it’s web interface with lots of new features and a new, streamlined user interface just a couple of months ago. For full details on V4 features, please refer to full review linked to below.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ExtremeShare (ES)
 
Site Name: ExtremeShare (http://www.extremeshare.org)
Signup URL: http://www.extremeshare.org/tracker/signup.php
Stats: 16400+ torrents
Description: ES is one of those General/0Day sites with lots of internal releases – just browse the ‘ES Torrents’ and ‘ES DVD’ sections on the left sidebar to find them. In addition to internal group uploads, this tracker indexes almost all major scene and p2p releases as well. 
Full Review: [Click Here]

BitShock (BSK)
 
Site Name: BitShock (http://www.bitshock.org)
Signup URL: http://www.bitshock.org/register.php
Stats: 5100+ torrents
Description: BitShock is a family of BitTorrent trackers that’s been around for a while. BitShock.org is their main tracker which is a general/0day torrent site. Their sister sites include Appz BitShock and Games Bitshock. BSK tracks almost all major scene/p2p releases as well as exclusive packs.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Hungarian Torrent Sites Shut Down – Here Are 5 Trackers That Are Still Open

Hungarian police are raiding BitTorrent trackers hosted in the country. While raids against torrent sites are not uncommon, the current legal operations conducted by Hungarian authorities seem to be targeting multiple sites at once. As TorrentFreak reports, a number of Hungary based BitTorrent sites have gone down and this includes several well known private trackers such as nCore, GigaTorrent, BD (Blue Dragon) and PirateDay. So, does this mean it’s game over for the Hungarian BT scene? We don’t think so. While a number of sites have indeed been forced offline, quite a few Hungarian trackers still operate without interruptions. This includes some of the larger private trackers such as PREtorians and Carpathians. If you are looking for Hungary based torrent sites to join, listed below are 5 such trackers all of which currently have open registrations.

PREtorians
  
Site Name: PREtorians (http://www.pretorians.net)
Signup URL: http://www.pretorians.net/signup.php
Stats: 16000+ torrents and 45000 users
Description: PREtorians is a huge General/0Day torrent tracker with all sorts of content including movies, TV shows, music and games. Includes uploads by Hungarian P2P groups as well as international English scene/p2p releases. This is a veteran tracker that’s been online for many years. For translation help and more information, refer to full review.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Carpathians
 
Site Name: Carpathians (http://carpathians.hu)
Signup URL: http://carpathians.hu/signup.php
Stats: 6000+ active torrents
Description: Carpathians is a private tracker started by ex-staff members who left PRETorians. Similar to PT, this is a decent General/0Day torrent tracker with all types of content.
Full Review: N/A

Henteles
 
Site Name: Henteles (http://henteles.hu)
Signup URL: http://henteles.hu/signup.php (tick checkbox at end of page to open signup form)
Stats: 4300 users and 1200 torrents
Description: Henteles is a specialized tracker with horror themed movies, TV shows and games. In addition to Hugarian dubbed films, there is a decent amount of English movies indexed as well. Refer to full review for more info.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HDPre
  
Site Name: HDpre (http://hdpre.com)
Signup URL: http://hdpre.com/signup.php
Stats: 21000+ users and 6000 torrents
Description: HDpre is a Hungary based HD tracker that’s more than two years old. HD encodes from both scene and P2P groups (ex- WiKi) are indexed here. Signups might close anytime as the current open registration period (starting 17th) will last only 1 day (and we are already late in posting this)
Full Review: [Click Here]

CRNABERZA
 
Site Name: CRNBERZA (http://www.crnaberza.com)
Signup URL: http://www.crnaberza.com/signup.php
Stats: 3400+ torrents
Description: Another General/0Day tracker with Hungarian/English content. Relatively smaller than PREtorians and Carpathians but still has a decent user base and a steady flow of new torrents
Full Review: N/A

Of course, these are not the only Hungarian sites that have survived the police raids. There are numerous others that are around (most invite only) and if you know any good similar trackers that currently have open registrations, feel free to share them with us via a comment.

CartoonChaos (CC) Invite Applications Now Online

If you were looking forward to becoming a member of CartoonChaos (CC), here’s some good news. CC now has an official invite application set up on its website which potential invite seekers can use to get into the site. This site was not included in our recent ‘25 Private Trackers With IRC Recruitment & Invite Applications’ article as CC invite applications were not online by the time we made that post. For those who don’t know about this tracker, CartoonChaos is a specialized cartoon torrent tracker with both kids and mature cartoons. In fact, it’s safe to say that this is one of the best trackers out there for animated content. If you could not get into this tracker during their last open signup (which was back in March 2010), you now have another opportunity to join, without having to beg for invites from strangers.

In terms of statistics, CC it not really a huge private tracker – currently there are only around 1200 active members registered on the site. However, CC’s main attraction is the diverse, uncommon content it tracks. You can find over 2500 torrents of cartoons, anime, animated movies, sound tracks and even cartoon theme tunes here. In addition to individual releases, there are a ton of complete series packs as well as full season packs indexed on CC. If you are looking for more information on this tracker, we strongly recommend you read our recent review of this site which can be found here (includes screenshots).

Coming back to invite applications, the app itself is fairly simple. It’s basically a set of standard questions and the usual request for profile links from trackers you are already a member of – Overall this is one of the less complicated invite applications out there and should not take you more than just a few minutes to complete.

Site Name: CartoonChaos (http://www.cartoonchaos.org)

Invite Applications URL: http://www.cartoonchaos.org/index.php?page=inviterequest

Full Review: [Click Here]

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