R5 DVD Release Dates For September, October & November 2010 (Updated)

Lots of people seem to be interested in getting to know movie DVD release dates in advance. Usually, this information is easily obtainable from stores that sell DVDs, both online and offline. But how about guessing when a movie will leak online? Although movies don’t have an official ‘leak-to-P2P date’ scheduled by publishers, you can pretty much guess when some movies will appear on file sharing networks if you know their DVD Region 5 (R5) release date. The R5 format was first introduced to reduced DVD movie piracy in areas such as Russia, Indian subcontinent and Africa. These DVDs are usually released ahead of other regions and movie pirates use them as early video sources for their uploads. Anyways here’s yet another updated, revised version of R5 DVD release dates – please note that the schedules are subject to frequent change and may not be 100% accurate.

September

• Grown Ups - September 2
• Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back - September 16
  (expect some of these dates for the 23rd to change in the next week or so, most likely only about half of these will drop)
• Please Give - September 23
• Machete - September 23
• Piranha 3D - September 23
• Letters to Juliet - September 23
• Knight and Day - September 23
• Stomp the Yard 2: Homecoming - September 23
• Unrequited - September 30
• Predators- September 30
• An Invisible Sign of My Own – September

October

• Iron Man 2 – October 5
• Rust - October 7
• Resident Evil: Afterlife - October 7
• Jonah Hex – October 12
• 30 Days of Night: Dark Days - October 14
• Toy Story 3 – October 19
• Takers - October 21
• Lost Boys: The Thirst - October 21
• Nightmare on Elm Street – October 26
• The Other Guys - October 28
• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - October 28
• Get Him to the Greek – October

November

• Eat Pray Love - November 4
• You Again - November 9
• Expendables, The - November 11
• Open Season 3 - November 18
• StarStruck - November 23
• Sorcerer's Apprentice, The - November 23
• Charlie St. Cloud - November
• Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore - November
• Get Him to the Greek - November
• Last Airbender, The - November
• Cane Toads: The Conquest - November
• Shrek Forever After - November

December

• Unstoppable - December 9
• Next Three Days, The - December
• Despicable Me - December
• Debt, The - December
• Easy A - December
• Inception - December
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - December
• Social Network, The - December
• Beastly - December
• Dinner for Schmucks – December

Above information was quoted from R5 release date threads on PeerAccess forum. PeerAccess is a DDL forum and a detailed review of the site along with screenshots can be found here (they seem to have recovered from an extended downtime so some site features may not yet be available).

Related Articles

• Updated R5, R1 Release Dates For August, September & October 2010

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HDBT Celebrates 2nd Birthday – Signups Open (Polish HD Tracker)

With the rising popularity of Blu Ray disks along with high definition video formats, dedicated HD torrent trackers have become some of the most sought after torrent sites within the BitTorrent community. No matter how many different HD trackers we feature on this blog – it simply does not seem to be enough to meet the demand :p For those of you who are looking to be part of a new private tracker with high definition video content, here’s another decent choice; HDBT. HDBT is a Polish HD tracker which indexes 720p/1080p TrueHD video obtained from Blu Ray source (mind you, these torrents are huge in file size), x264 encoded video including TV, movies, Anime, Documentaries, etc and even some high quality lossless music tracks and music videos. HDBT recently celebrated its 2nd year of being online and the site currently has open signups and free leech plus 2X upload on many indexed torrents.

Although HDBT hasn't been making a lot of noise in the BT community, the site has slowly but surely attracted quite a few dedicated members. There’s a fair amount of leeching going on and most of the indexed torrents are pretty active. Thanks to double upload and free leech on some of the uploads, building and maintaining a ratio on this site has become easier. As of 31/08/2010, HDBT tracked 1550+ active torrents in its database.

You might have noticed that HDBT is a ‘Polish’ HD tracker. Does this mean it only tracks non English content local to Poland? Not really. If you are from an English speaking nation you’d still find this tracker useful. Most of the releases uploaded to HDBT (including the ones with Polish Flag), have multi language audio. They usually have both English and Polish audio feeds and you can choose whichever you like during playback. Just check the AUDIO section in torrent description page to see the list of audio feeds embedded in a particular release. As mentioned earlier HDBT tracks TrueHD Blu Ray video, high fidelity x264 encodes and even lossless music and HQ music videos. Some of these releases are of course unique and exclusive to this tracker. A screenshot showing part of the torrent index at HDBT can be seen below:

If you are interested in joining HDBT, signups are currently open. On a side note, the site has one of the simplest registration forms I’ve ever seen on a private tracker. Either way it’s not known till when the open registrations will continue so get in while you can.

Site Name: HDBT (http://hdbt.eu)

Signup URL: http://hdbt.eu/signup.php

Private Tracker Open Signup Update – September 2010 (15 BitTorrent Sites)

As the end of another month draws nearer, our routine monthly open signup update is here. This post is a recap of private torrent trackers we discussed on this blog in the last 1-2 months. It lists summarized information, up to date statistics and signup URLs of 15 private BitTorrent communities that are currently open to the public and are accepting new members. Most of the trackers featured in this article specialize in certain niches such as Cartoons, Games, Movies, High Definition Video, Sports, Audio Books and EBooks – only 3 out of the 15 sites are General/0Day trackers. As usual, we have included links to full tracker reviews – you can always refer to these should you need more information (or view screenshots) on a featured entry. In fact, we recommend reading the full review before signing up – this way you’ll know if you really have a need for the site and trackers will not fill up with lots of would-be inactive members. On with the list of sites…

GameBurner

Site Name: GameBurner (http://gameburner.net)
Signup URL: http://gameburner.net/signup.php?akcja=english
Stats: ~1000 torrents and 1850 users
Description: GameBurner is a new games torrent tracker (in fact, this is a resurrected version of the site previously known as GamesAccess). It deserves a lot more attention that it’s got – the site has a unique and attractive user interface, a healthy flow of new torrents and a pretty active user base. Check the full review for a detailed account on site features.
Full Review: [Click Here]

FilmBits 

Site Name: FilmBits (http://www.filmbits.net/)
Signup URL: http://www.filmbits.net/freesignup.php
Stats: 2100+ users and 2650+ torrents
Description: FilmBits is a DVDR and Blu Ray movie tracker that’s based on SweDVDR’s codebase. Although it hasn’t made a lot of noise, this tracker has been growing steadily.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HD-Space

Site Name: HD-Space (http://hd-space.org)
Signup URL: http://hd-space.org/account.php
Stats: ~19500 users and 4475+ torrents
Description: HD Space is an underrated but decent private tracker for high definition content including movies and TV shows. They recently launched v2.5 with a streamlined user interface, new features and content. See full review for more information.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ABTorrents 

Site Name: Audio Book Torrents (http://www.abtorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://www.abtorrents.com/signup.php
Stats: 6500 users and ~3000 torrents
Description: An excellent audiobook and E-book torrent tracker that’s been growing pretty fast. This is another underrated site that deserves a lot more attention.
Full Review: [Click Here]

EUTorrents 
 
Site Name: euTorrents (http://bt.eutorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://bt.eutorrents.com/index.php?page=signup
Stats: 10300+ users and ~1300 torrents
Description: EuTorrents is a BitTorrent tracker for European movies. Among the movies you can find on this site are Dannish, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss and Turkish flicks. EuTorrents is a project by the AvistaZ crew.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ChinaHDTV

Site Name: ChinaHDTV (http://www.chinahdtv.org)
Signup URL: http://www.chinahdtv.org/signup.php
Stats: ~1500 users and 2500+ torrents
Description: Yet another Chinese HD tracker with English content. This one is not as popular as the rest of Chinese trackers but it’s equally good. You can find 720p/1080p HD movies, TV shows ,etc here. See full review for more details, translation help and screens.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Neptoons

Site Name: NepToons (http://www.neptoons.info)
Signup URL: http://www.neptoons.info/signup.php (You need to obtain the username and password for the page from IRC channel irc://irc.dejatoons.net/neptoons. For detailed steps refer to full review)
Stats: 300+ torrents (almost all packs)
Description: An excellent private tracker for Classic and modern cartoons. Read all about this site and the type of content it trackers in our recent review.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ExtremeBits

Site Name: ExtremeBits (http://www.extremebits.org)
Signup URL: https://www.extremebits.org/signup.php (usually open for signup every weekend)
Stats: 5000+ torrents
Description: ExtremeBits is for fans of extreme sports such as Skateboarding, Skiing, Rally, Surfing, Kayaking, Climbing. Street Racing, etc. Definitely the best tracker serving this niche. On a side note, it appears that XB staff were offered money to sell the tracker to a ‘corporate’- they have obviously asked the potential buyers to fcuk off. You can read the full news post on XB homepage.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Blu-Torrents

Site Name: Blu Torrents (http://www.blu-torrents.net)
Signup URL: http://www.blu-torrents.net/signup.php
Stats: ~7000 users and 220 torrents
Description: A specialized private tracker for full, untouched Blu Ray movies. File sizes are huge but video quality is excellent in these releases.
Full Review: [Click Here]

iTN

Site Name: inspireThe.Net (http://inspirethe.net)
Interview URL: irc://irc.inspirethe.net/itn-interview (For step by step instructions, please refer to full review)
Stats: 600+ torrents
Description: A ratio free private torrent tracker, iTN has been resurrected after a long downtime. Signups are not directly open – but you can get a free invite from their invites IRC channel. For more details on site and its features, refer to the full review.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HDstar

Site Name: HDStar (http://www.hdstar.org)
Signup URL: http://www.hdstar.org/signup.php (It took some time for the confirmation email to arrive)
Stats: 11500+ users and 14500+ torrents (at last check)
Description: Another China based HD tracker – a large one at that too. HDStar does not open signups that often. Tracks a good collection and movies and TV shows, including some exclusives releases which have excellent video quality. See full review for more information.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HDRoad

Site Name: HDRoad (http://hdroad.org)
Signup URL: MySilu forum registration is required prior to signup on the private tracker. For detailed signup instructions, please refer to full review.
Stats: 13000 members and ~3000 torrents (at last check)
Description: HDRoad is a China based private tracker that specializes in HD content. It has all sorts of HD content including Blu Ray movies, HDTV shows, TrueHD encodes, etc
Full Review: [Click Here]

HDCity 
 
Site Name: HDCity (http://www.hdcity.org)
Signup URL: http://www.hdcity.org/signup.php
Stats: 13300+ users and 9000+ torrents
Description: HDCity is a high definition movie and TV tracker from China. Although the site has Chinese origins, it tracks (mostly) English torrents and even has an option to change site language to English.
Full Review: [Click Here]

DigitalHive

Site Name: Digital Hive (http://www.digitalhive.org)
Signup URL: http://www.digitalhive.org/signup.php
Stats: 21200+ torrents and 17700 members
Description: DigitalHive (DH) is one of the leading General/0Day torrent trackers with a cool looking interface, lots of daily torrents and active users. To read about new features launched in DH v2.0, read full review.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HeavenSource

Site Name: HeavenSource (http://heavensource.org)
Signup URL: http://heavensource.org/register.php
Stats: 20800+ torrents
Description: HeavenSource is a Gazelle based General 0Day tracker. Signups will be open till 29th August but keep in mind there are daily limits on no. of new registrations allowed. If you get ‘invite only’ message, try again later.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HeavenSource Open For Signup – Gazelle Based General Tracker With Great Pre Times

Some refreshing news for those who are tired of seeing the same few trackers open for signup everyday. HeavenSource, a General/0day tracker running on Gazelle, will have open registrations throughout this weekend starting today until Sunday the 29th. Although some of you may never have heard of it, HeavenSource is not a brand new tracker. It’s the end result of two popular trackers merging - PolishSource and HeaverTracker (HT) merged together back in last February to create HS. HS retained many of the former sites qualities including HeavenTracker’s popular trait, blazing fast pre times. Just like its predecessors, HS too is a ‘general’ tracker where you can download almost anything, ranging from movies, video games, books to music. This is the first time HS is opening signups since the merger so don’t let this opportunity go waste.

A news post announcing the upcoming open signups was posted on HS homepage several days ago. Although tracker staff hadn't (yet) gotten around to translating the notice to English, one of our readers nmph sent us a translated version which we have quoted below:

We will be opening our doors for the first time since the merger between 27th and 29th August. It will give a great chance for your friends and others who haven't got their accounts here yet, but would very much like to. Please be aware that there will be a daily limit on how many new accounts may be created so there will be no reason to cut yourself if someone fails to register on the first day. Just come the next day and keep trying.

There're also some other less important information, however what might also be interesting to the readers is they added two more styles to the site, which makes it less boring while browsing and having to use the default gazelle's. You'd have to switch in your profile: HeavenSource and HeavenLayout (the second is default now).

Although there hasn’t been a lot of hype around this tracker, HeavenSource is one of those sites that house a large number of new and old torrent releases. In fact, this is probably the largest Gazelle based general tracker next to TorrentVault, in terms of torrent count. As of 27/8/2010 its main index comprised of over 20500 torrents. This included scene, non scene and internal releases. There is a healthy flow of new torrents with around 100 new releases getting uploaded daily – and these do get uploaded quite fast. HeavenTracker’s great pre times seem to have migrated to HeavenSource as well. Additionally, it might be worth mentioning that HS tracked over 500 packs at the time this article was being written – these were mostly TV and movie packs, some of which you probably can find on other sites too.

Note that HS is a private tracker based in Poland – some native Polish content can be found among the torrents but most of the releases cater to an English speaking population (you can stop Polish torrents from showing up in search, if you hate them that much :p). The site itself supports an ‘English’ language option – switching to English can be done from your profile page. However, keep in mind that this will not automatically translate announcements and news items to English (not a big deal).

As mentioned earlier, signups for HT will open on 00.00 (CET) on Friday (27) and continue till Sunday (29th).

Site Name: HeavenSource (http://heavensource.org)

Signup URL: http://heavensource.org/register.php

Note: In case you get an ‘invite only’ error, please try again later. The site may not have opened signups (yet) or the daily new accounts limit may have reached.

Special thanks to nmph and majki123 for the excellent support provided.

Related Articles

• HeavenTracker – Private Tracker With Great Pre Times
• News – Open Signups, No Olympic Torrents On BitMeTV, HT Merges With PolishSource
• DigitalHive and TorrentVault – Two Trackers With Great Pre Times

DigitalHive Tracker Bans Romania, Israel Could Be Next

If you’ve been using private trackers for some time, you should be no stranger to country bans. A ‘country ban’ is when a private tracker bans all IP ranges coming from a particular country, making the site inaccessible to anyone from the region. These mass bans are usually imposed when tracker staff notices increased amount of cheating, invite selling or any other form of scamming coming from a higher-than-normal percentage of users from a particular country. Talks of country bans have now been renewed with DigitalHive (DH), one of the leading General/0Day torrent trackers, banning Romania effective from yesterday (24th). This is not the first time Romania was banned from a private tracker – if the statistics provided by DH are correct, it doesn’t look like site staff were left with much choice with their decision either.

Quoted below is an announcement posted by ACiD, one of the site’s SysOps:

We've decided to ban the country of Romania from accessing Digitalhive.
We've been debating this for years and well, we're tired of banning cheaters, traders, dupes and bad users from this country. Today alone I've personally banned 10+ users with Romanian IP addresses. We debated doing this when a bunch of other sites did but we held off, we always just left it alone but enough is enough.
Look at these statistics:
1,181 Romanian Users on Digitalhive
1,076 are banned for cheating, dupe accounts, trading or bad ratio.
That leaves 105 active Romanian accounts on DH, those 105 active accounts will be allowed to pm us with a static IP to be put on the allowed list.
We aren't happy we have to do this but this will give our staff more time to do other things on the site and focus less on these bad users and stop wasting our time hunting them down.
Israel may be next. Out of 355 users, 284 are banned/disabled.
:: ACiD

If the stats are correct, more than 90% of Romanian users on DH have already been banned for site breaking rules. That really is an unusually high percentage of users engaging in undesirable activities – as to why it’s so high, I have no idea. DH however is not the first tracker to issue a country ban on Romania – it’s already banned on several leading trackers including BitMeTV (warned), GFT, What.CD and more.  Although Romanians seem to get themselves banned from every torrent site on the planet, they themselves have quite a few large private trackers including LastTorrents (Open), ExtremeShare (Open), TorrentBits (Open), FileList.Ro, iPlay, etc which all seem to be pretty successful and popular (and these sites obviously welcome Romanian users with open arms).

In other news, DigitalHive is currently open for signup. For those who haven’t heard about it, DH is a decent General/0Day tracker with 17000 users and 20500+ torrents. The site recently rolled out v2.0 with new features and a brand new visual theme – you can read all about it here.

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

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

Related Articles

• BitMeTV Warns Against Ratio Cheating and Account Theft
• SceneTorrents (ScT) to ban Romanian IP ranges?
• Digital Hive v2.0 Signups Open – General Tracker

Deli.Sh – BitTorrent Tracker For Food, Health, Cookbooks, Recipes & More

Honestly, I never though I’d live to see the birth of a food tracker. It just shows how much private trackers have expanded in the recent past. Deli.Sh is a brand new torrent tracker for all things food related. Some of you might be wondering, is ‘Food’ a big enough niche for a torrent site to focus on? This question will be answered once you take a look at the quickly expanding torrent index of Deli.Sh - cookbooks, recipes, food & health related E-books, audiobooks and even TV shows such as Hell’s Kitchen, The Naked Chef can be downloaded from this tracker. Running on the state of the art Gazelle RC2 codebase, Deli.Sh has been online ( in closed beta) for several weeks. Today, the site has finally launched to the public and signups have been opened for a limited period of time.

Since Deli.Sh recruited some users early in the beta period, it had quite a few registered (and active) members by the time it went public. When this article was being written, the site had around 1275 members, including 300+ new registrations today. This is an excellent response for a start up tracker, especially for one that’s focused on a rather uncommon niche. From what I have seen so far, member activity is pretty good with some popular torrents being seeded by 50+ seeders.

Deli.Sh currently tracks around 350 active torrents. Some of these are packs and collections so the torrent count might not reflect the actual amount of content indexed here. As said earlier, stuff you can find on this site ranges from recipes, cookbooks, food & health related TV shows, audiobooks, e-books and so on. Following screenshot which captures part of the torrent index might give you a better idea on the type of content indexed here:

Simultaneous to the public launch, signups have been opened at Deli.Sh. An announcement posted on homepage reads:

The day is here. Many members have been asking for us to launch and allow new members in. We have decided that today will be the day. We will be launching in little over an hour at 2:00 GMT. Registrations will be open until our user cap is hit at 1.5k users. We are aware that there are some minor issues to be worked out. However, in our current situation we feel it is best to allow in new members. So get ready to welcome an influx of new deli.shers!

Deli.Sh’s maximum user limit is currently set at 1535 - that leaves around 250 more free slots up for the taking. Judging by the rate of new registrations, you might want to hurry if you want to create an account here.

Site Name: Deli.Sh (http://deli.sh)

Signup URL: http://deli.sh/register.php

Official Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/officialdelish

FileList.Ro Invite Giveaway – 100 Invitations To A Great General Tracker

We are pleased to bring you yet another official private tracker invitation giveaway – this time around we will be giving away 100 free invites to FileList.Ro, a private tracker that hasn’t opened public signups for more than 2 years. With around a quarter a million members and a huge database of torrents. FileList is one of the largest private trackers in existence. It tracks all sorts of content including movies, video games, music, TV shows, documentaries, magazines, E-books and other general scene and non scene releases. In short, this is a tracker that can rival TorrentLeech (which is considered by many as the king of private torrent sites), both in terms of content as well as member activity.
UPDATE: We have received more than 100 valid requests. Please do not send any more emails as this giveaway has now concluded.

Statistically speaking, FileList is actually larger than TorrentLeech. It has around 254000 members and currently tracks ~48000 active torrents. Thanks to somewhat strict ratio rules, the large user base has not resulted in heavy leeching and hit and run commonly seen on most other sites of similar scale. Majority of the releases on FileList.Ro are well seeded and even torrents uploaded months ago have pretty good download speeds. This is one of those sites you can trust to have both hot new releases as well as archived releases pre’d sometime back.

FileList has a large torrent index comprising of around 48000 active torrents. There are ~45000 releases in the main category and further 3000 uploads in the Docs section (which is presented in the form of a separate browse page). Main index covers movies, games, music, TV shows, etc while ‘Docs’ lists E-books, magazines, tutorials and more. The Docs section is actually similar to a mini E-learning tracker inside a general torrent site. As you might have guessed, FileList has a lot of exclusive releases and packs (including a lot of game and movie packs) that are unique to the tracker. To identify these releases, look for torrents ending with –FL tag.

As mentioned in the title of this post, FileList.Ro staff have offered to provide 100 invites exclusively to readers of FILEnetworks Blog. Naturally, we will be giving these invites away for free – and we will not be excepting insane ratio proof, speedtests, etc from you. You don’t need to have huge buffers and you do not need to be members of elite trackers. If your stats show that you can be an active member of a private tracker without hit and running, that’d suffice. To request a FL invite, send us E-mail with the following format:

• Subject of the E-mail should be ‘FileList.Ro 01’. We use an automated software to filter the mails so don’t get this wrong.
• In the body of the mail, please include a link to a profile page on a private tracker of your choice– for example http://trackername.org/user.php?id=2447424 (you can visit the profile page on most trackers by clicking on the username located next to your ratio stats).
• In the body of the mail, include a link to a screenshot of the same profile page you included in previous step. Note – screenshot should be un-edited and un-cropped. Please do not send images as attachments – upload the image file to an image host and include the link in the body of the mail.
• Send your email to invites[dot]filenetworks[at]gmail[dot]com

Any Emails that do not meet the above standards will be ignored. First 100 valid requests will be forwarded to FileList.Ro administrators who will then send out the invites. Please allow 3-4 days for your invite to arrive.

Special thanks to Tatarus for the support given.

Mafia 2 - Fix Crash, Low FPS, Black Screen, Clothes & Particle Fix, Control, Authentication Issues

Mafia 2, the game we have all been waiting for 10 long years, is finally here. PC version is due to be released on the 24th in North America, 26th in Australia and 27th in PAL region. A demo was made available several weeks prior to the official release of the game so avid gamers could try it out before buying. If you thought the demo was good, just wait till you see the real thing. While Mafia 2 is not a perfect game, it’s a clearly one of the best PC games to be released this year. Anyways this post is not yet another Mafia 2 review – objective of this article is to provide some useful troubleshooting tips so that you can get the best of this game without annoyances. We have also included some guidelines on how to improve Mafia 2 performance, in case you have run into slow frame rate issues.

Download and install the latest PhysX system software & DirectX

First things first. Mafia 2 is a heavily PhysX dependent game. If you have a PhysX supported graphics card, having the latest version of NVIDIA PhysX System Software installed is an absolute necessity. Currently, the latest stable version of PSS is v9.10.0513. If you look closely at release notes for this build, it actually has one entry titled “Bug fixes for Mafia 2”. So yeah, you’d want to download and install it prior to running Mafia 2. You can download PhysX System Software separately from this location (Note that the latest Geforce driver release 258.96 includes an older version of PhysX – v9.10.0513 does not come bundled with these drivers).

You will also want to upgrade your current DirectX installation to the latest monthly build. You can download the latest monthly runtime from here. For further optimizations, do everything mentioned in ‘The Essentials’ section in this article.

Improve Mafia 2 performance with the APEX clothes fix

Some of you with even mid-high range video hardware might find slowness, stuttering and other framerate related issues while playing Mafia 2. Thankfully, there is one simple fix you can try to get a massive framerate boost without losing too much visual quality. The game uses dynamic clothing (realistic clothing simulation) not only for the main character but for all NPCs as well. This is a very CPU and GPU intensive task and can take up quite a lot of resources. You can safely disable dynamic clothing for NPCs and keep it on for the main character only – this should greatly improve frame rate. Step by step instructions on how to apply the clothes fix may be found below:

1. Navigate to your Mafia 2 installation directory.
2. Navigate to Edit/APEX/CLOTH directory. Make a full backup for CLOTH folder before you start modifying its contents.
3. Inside the CLOTH directory, delete all files except - those starting with VITO, and the two files m2skeleton and ClothRemapTable.

This will leave dynamic clothing on for the main character and revert to static clothing for NPCs.

Improve Mafia 2 performance by removing particle effects

You can remove particle effects in a similar manner. While this too will improve Mafia 2 performance, the loss of visual quality will be more noticeable than the clothes fix.

1. Navigate to your Mafia 2 installation directory.
2. Navigate to Edit/APEX/Effects directory. Make a full backup for Effects folder before you start modifying its contents.
3. Remove the Effects directory. This will disable all particle effects in game, including bullet damage, smoke and will lower the quality of explosions as well.

Note: The performances fixes above were based on a similar solution devised for Mafia 2 Demo. For a detailed account on how this works, refer to this article.

Random crashes, black screen errors, authentication issues, controls getting inverted & more

I have seen folks reporting a lot of problems with the game on several gaming forums. These include random crashes, black screen errors, authentication error messages, control issues and so on. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that most of those had problems with the game were playing Mafia 2 copies leaked online with either beta or incomplete cracks. There are about 10 different modified executable for the game out there and some of these are very badly done. If you are using a pirated version of Mafia 2, you may experience one or more of the following issues :

• Random crashes to desktop on certain chapters. For example, you might experiences crashing in chapter 3 or chapter 7, sometimes when trying to enter vehicles.
• Health (or energy) drops to 0 in certain chapters
• Movement issues and controls getting inverted
• Error message : Authentication failed - game experience will be negatively affected

Only way past these barriers is to either buy the game or switch to a better pirated copy :D (and please do not post links to torrents or cracks here – this is not a warez blog). Personally, I recommend buying the game as the developers clearly deserve the credit.

Note that if you switch between different copies of the game (different pirated copies or later switch to a legitimate copy after using a pirated version), you might have to create a new game. Quoted from NFO of one of the releases out there:

If you have used any of these hacked demo cracks out there, then make sure you start a new game, as your old saves will make the game crash. The main reason: it wont work is because those "cracks" are modified demo exes.

More fixes will be added as they are discovered. This article is a work in progress.

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SyncTheBits (StB) Mobile Tracker Goes Down

It’s a sad day for the fans of mobile torrent tracker SyncTheBits (StB). After being online for more than two years, StB has finally shut down, possibly for ever. According to Reese, StB’s owner and administrator, lack of activity and continuous lack of donations were the primary reasons that prompted the shut down. Many existing members were no doubt surprised by the move, considering StB only recently rolled out v2 of the site, a massive overhaul to which quite a lot of effort was put into. StB v2 was based on Gazelle and it truly was a well organized, great looking torrent site which had a lot of potential. Either way the site is now gone and it’s unlikely to return (as a private tracker) – however, a temporary forum has been set up to discuss the possibility of a resurrection, perhaps in the form of a DDL forum.

The paragraph below explains the reasons for shut down – this was quoted from a post made by Reese on the temporary forums:

This week it became clear to me that STB will not be able to support its self and i can no longer put my own money into the site to keep it afloat. So im sorry to announce that STB the tracker as we have known for the last 2 years is gone. Im sorry.
I have created this forum to get feedback from some of our users that were very active at the site to see if there is any interest in keeping this forum online and building STB around a forum based community..
Please give me any feedback or ideas that you guys have.
The only thing I am ruling out is a Torrent Tracker since we have tried that and it did not work out.

At the time of its closure, StB tracked around 4000 torrents and had ~2500 registered members - it was one of the oldest and largest mobile trackers in existence. To read more on the launch of StB v2 and to see how this tracker looked when it was online, please refer to this article.

StB is not the only specialized mobile tracker to shut down in the recent past. Quite a few similar sites including Mobile.SceneLinks, PimpYourMobile, etc had closed down, indicating that BitTorrent is not so popular when it came to sharing mobile applications, games, themes, etc. There are now only a handful private mobile trackers left, such as PMTorrents, PODTropolis, JAF, etc. DDL forums on the other hand have gained huge popularity in this niche. However, if StB does come back as a DDL forum, it’ll still have to face competition from existing mobile communities such as DOTSiS, IPMart-Forum, PDA4X, etc who are established players in this arena. Anyways R.I.P. – let’s hope the site returns, in one form or the other.

Related Articles

• Sites to download full Mobile applications, Games Themes and Ringtones for free – Part 1
• Sites to download cracked mobile applications, games, themes and ringtones for free – Part 2
• PDA4x – DDL Forum For Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, PocketPC, Palm & Symbian Apps
• JAF Torrent Tracker – Download Mobile Software, Service Manuals, Unlockers and Flashing Tools
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Windows Live Messenger, Writer 2011 Beta Build 15.4.3002.810 Standalone, Offline Installer

If you use any of Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta applications on your machine (Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery or Movie Maker) you might want to check this out. Microsoft recently released a beta refresh (aka beta 2) of Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Wave 4) which included significant updates to almost all applications in the suite. This updated Windows Live Messenger (WLM), probably the most popular app in the bunch, to build 15.4.3002.810. Microsoft promises faster connectivity, improved video chat and improved Facebook integration in this new build. Other applications too have been improved, for example with better facial recognition in Photo Gallery, support for larger uploads in Movie Maker, etc. If you are looking for the full standalone, offline, redistributable installer of the latest Windows Live Suite, we have the download link below.

If you try to download Windows Live Essentials suite from it’s official download location, you will by default be provided with the web installer. This is good if you want to download selected applications and install them only once. However, the web setup will blow when there are multiple computers – you’ll have to run it on all PCs separately. Although not exposed to the public, Microsoft hosts a redistributable installer of the live suite on their download servers. This includes all files required for the installation of full Windows Live Essentials suite on your PC and it can be used multiple times on multiple computers, even on those without an internet connection. Since the setup package includes all Live apps, it weighs around 135MB in file size – you can however select and install only the components you need during setup.

Download

[Click Here] to download Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta 2 Full Redistributable, Standalone, Offline Installer

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iTN Is Back Online – Ratio Free Private Tracker

Long time readers of this blog may remember the name iTN (short for InspireThe.Net). iTN was a ratio free private torrent tracker which was quite popular back in 2009. Although the site was off to a good start, it unfortunately shut down after a few months, citing bad financial situation and internal disputes among top ranking members. There’ve been rumors of a possible iTN resurrection for some time and now, after almost a year since the shut down, the tracker has finally returned. Although the new version is dubbed iTN v2, this is a completely new project started under a different owner. Site has been rebuilt from scratch some similarities do exist between old iTN and v2, for example the ratio free bonus system based on total traffic. In addition, new iTN is armed with an automatic uploader bot and seems to be faster in indexing new torrents than its predecessor.

A formal announcement on the sites return has been posted on homepage:

Dear members , after couple of long months ITN is back. Current staff and lots of users have put a lot of work to make iTN rise once again. We have prepared for you a lot of surprises and pleasures that you will know soon. The site is equipped with AutoUpload system that fills our site with scene torrents. But we have also our uploaders and dedicated encoder group. We hope you enjoy your stay on iTN. If you have any questions or problems just join our main channel #itn or if u need come to #support. Staff is here to help you.

We first announced the impending launch of iTN v2 almost 5 months ago, when we were contacted by the site’s new owner. In his E-mail, he promised several new features for the upcoming site, some of which are quoted below (you can view the full article here):

• Old account will not be restored
• There will be no more credits - only total traffic
• New kick-ass bonus system
• New layouts (+ old layout)
• Tracker will be translated full in English
• New iTN will allow: scene, non-scene and homemade torrents

Almost all of these promises have been upheld in v2 apart from one minor glitch. The category icons set ‘Old iTN’ does not seem to be working. Anyways this is a non-issue, given the site has two fully functional visual styles.

Image: Part of iTN’s new torrent index, sporting the ‘Feel The Inspiration’ visual theme

Speaking of visual layout, you’ll notice that there are now two browse buttons on the main toolbar. However, clicking on either of these will show you the same list of torrents. At first, I though this was a mistake on the part of iTN coders but later I learned that this was indeed a feature. You can customize and map any specific category of torrents to the two browse buttons. For example, you can have browse 2 to open movies only while the first button showed all torrents. This can easily be set up from the profile page.

Just like the old site, iTN v2 remains to be a ratio free tracker – users do not have to maintain a minimum global upload:download ratio to survive here:

We don't have any kind of ratio system. We have total traffic system which means your upload and download amounts are counted as one. This definitely means the more you leech , seed and upload the more your position get better and higher.

However, this does not mean you can hit and run on torrents. According to site rules “You have to seed to a 1:1 ratio or for at least 48 hours within 11 days after you finish the download”. Leeching/Seeding a torrent will increase your total traffic amount.  You can convert upload traffic into points through the bonus shop and spend the points to unlock upgrades for your account. Some of the unlockable options such as the permanent 2X and 3X upload multipliers are actually pretty cool. Note that you can directly earn bonus points too - Seeding will generate bonus points at the rate of 0.25 points per torrent, per hour. Idling on the IRC channel will generate 1.25 points every hour.

If you are wondering how to get into iTN, it is currently closed for signup. However, it does have official invites IRC channel open, through which you can request for a free invite. You will have to go through a short interview process and those who pass it will gain entry into this promising tracker. Channel details are as follows – do as the channel topic says once you are in:

Server: irc.inspirethe.net
Channel: #itn-interview
Direct Link: irc://irc.inspirethe.net/itn-interview
Help: If you are a newbie to IRC, please read this brief tutorial on how to join channels.

Special thanks to iTN staff for the support provided.

Related Articles

• Review on iTN v1
• iTN Tracker Set To Return
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PTN Invite Applications Open For The First Time Since v2 Launch

Several weeks ago we posted an article on the launch of PTN v2, the latest major site overhaul of the popular ratio free movie torrent tracker. PTN v2 added lots of new features to the site, at the same time upgrading its visual styles to the next level. However, the tracker was closed to the public at the time we made the post – potential new members who wanted to get a taste of the new user interface, enhancements and features had no way of getting in. If you were one of them, good news is that PTN has opened invite applications for the first time since v2 launch. Sitewide 2X gold raid (something similar to double upload) has also been activated and there couldn’t be a better time to join if you haven’t done so already.

After handing out invites to existing members in their ‘Invite-A-Friend’ weekend, PTN have gone ahead and opened the invite applications to the public for a week. They are clearly in a mode of recruitment and expansion (which is a good thing). Quoted below is part of the news item posted on homepage:

I just like to keep you all informed as to what is going on in our Pirate City.
The Invite a Friend weekend is officially over.  Well what a huge success it was and we would like to give all our new members a huge welcome to PtN and we hope your stay is an enjoyable one
For those arriving late, we opened Invite Apps for a week, so get your friends over to the invite app page if you missed the invite last weekend, it will be open till Sunday night, then the doors shut for housekeeping after that.

PTN currently tracks 13000+ torrents and has an active user base of ~3500 members. If you still haven’t seen what changes and new features were introduced in PTN v2, we strongly recommend you read this article. It includes screenshots and a summarized list of new additions introduced in v2.

In the meantime, you can apply for an invite by filling in the online application form. If your request is accepted, you will be invited in to the tracker by staff. During the current phase, invite apps will remain open till Sunday (22nd).

Site Name: PTN

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

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

Related Articles

• PTN v2 Goes Live With A New Look And New Features
• PTN Torrent Tracker – Invites Now Available Via Online Application

ScienceHD IRC Weekend – Invites, Credits, VIP Accounts & More

Some quick info for existing ScienceHD members and would be members. ScienceHD is hosting one of their IRC weekends from the 27th Friday and 29th Sunday. Everyone who logs into their IRC channel during this time stand the chance to win Sci-HD invites, VIP accounts, bonus credits and more. For those of you who haven’t heard about this tracker before, SHD is a specialized tracker for documentaries and science fiction TV shows. From premium documentary series aired on The History Channel, Discovery, Animal Planet, etc to latest Sci-Fi entertainment series such as LOST, this tracker indexes quite a lot of torrents, most not found on other torrent sites. In case you still haven’t become a member, ScienceHD is partially open to the public via invite applications.

Coming back to the topic at hand, the full announcement regarding the IRC weekend is posted blow (quoted from site homepage):

It's time for another IRC Weekend! Think of it like a big SciHD party in IRC! There'll be prizes, competitions, and cake! Here are the details:

• Starting noon GMT, Friday August 27, and running until midnight GMT, Sunday August 29.
• If we reach 100 users in IRC: global freeleech for two days, plus everyone gets credits just for being there!
• If we reach 200 users in IRC: global freeleech for a week, plus everyone gets even more credits!
• Live trivia
• Poker
• UNO
• Random giveaways and drawings
• SciHD Radio contests

We have literally millions of credits to give out over the weekend. Not only that, but we've decided to give out invitations and VIP slots as well! Some will be given out by us, but others will be left up to you to vote on! So save the date, and come hang out!

IRC channel details and the secret key for the channel can be obtained from the news post on ScienceHD homepage.

ScienceHD currently tracks over 5300 active torrents and is home to 2000+ registered users. If you seek more information on SHD, the nature of the content it tracks or screenshots, we suggest you read our previous reviews located here and here. Everything there’s to be said about this tracker has already been mentioned on those articles. On the other hand if you are seeking to becoming a new member, you can apply for an invite via the online invite application – use the link below (more info on invite apps may be found here)

Site Name: ScienceHD (http://sciencehd.info)
Invite Application URL: http://sciencehd.info/applications.php
Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/sciencehd

Special thanks to DeeSeven and Shoomer for the heads up.

SceneExpress Tracker Beta Ends, v1 Launched

Some of you might remember the launch of SceneExpress (commonly known as ‘The X’ ) about four months ago. This tracker caused quite a stir back then for a number of reasons. First, it was the successor to the now defunct SceneLife (ScL) – although not a direct resurrection of ScL, The X was started by more or less the same crew behind ScL. Second, it was the first ever torrent site to be based on SCTBDEV tracker script - SCTBDEV is a codebase developed by SceneTorrents (ScT')’s coders and is currently unreleased to the public. Finally, The X was probably the only tracker to start off its operations with over 15000 torrents in the main index. Four months have now passed since the celebrated launch and SceneExpress has just reached yet another important milestone. The site’s prolonged beta period has now ended and SeX v1 has been officially launched with several new features.

An announcement on the site homepage reads:

Dear SeX Members!
With SeX v1 pending, our coder has been working overtime making sure everything is ready. Unfortunate for us but, great for our members, he got over excited and pre-released it for everyone to see! So, without any other choice v1 is now open..Welcome to SeX v1!!!
A quick mention of some sexy new features:
Seedbonus System
How this works:
The system checks once(1 time) every hour for torrents seeded, it gets the total combined size of those torrents and gives you 1 point for every GB you're seeding with a max of 100 points per 1 hour.
To find it look at the top of the page where it says:
Welcome back, blah | Invites (0) | Bookmarks | Bonus: 0 | Betting | Logout
Check out the BONUS SHOP to see what goodies you can get!
New Torrent Details Page
Just when you thought it couldn't get any sexier!
And it's not stopping at v1! We've got more fun and unique things on the way so, stay posted.

Out of the new features launched with v1, most notable is probably the seed bonus system. The new system should help users maintain a healthy global ratio even with torrents without leechers. It will also reward the more active members through the number of cool unlockable features in the bonus shop (a screenshot capturing some of the available options may be found below):

New torrent description pages also look a lot better with thanks to the additional information embedded in them. For example, movies now have links to subtitles (if available) and IMDB pages from the description page itself. Additionally, you now have the ability to bookmark torrents. Layout has also been improved and these pages now sport a much cleaner, organized look.

Although v1 is the first major revision of SceneExpress, a number of improvements to the tracker were made prior to v1 itself – a summarized list can be found below:

• Snatch policy system - Every month (every 30 days) users MUST download and fully seed at least 2 torrents above 100 MB.
• Turning FreeLeech off/on – Users are now able to turn free leech off/on whenever they want
• New login page – A new disguised login page to keep SeX off limits to noobs
• The Spam Section – A separate browse page for spam scene releases
• Thanks button

Speaking of site statistics, SeX’s uploaders have managed to keep up with the head start the site had with 15000 torrents during launch. The site now tracks nearly 40000 torrents including over 400 unique packs. Registered user base hovers somewhere around 4000 – this is an area where SeX can improve a lot. The site could do with some more leechers and it’d definitely help keep those new torrents alive for a longer period of time.

There probably will be an open signup simultaneous to v1 launch but this is not confirmed as of yet. We asked one of their SysOps if there were plans to open registrations anytime soon and here’s the response we got: 

we still don't know.. but probably yes.

If you are interested in joining The X, right now all you can do is to wait for staff to open signups or the invites channel. Right now both remain closed – if there are updates, we will post a new article on homepage.

eBookVortex, ElbitZ & Free The Textbooks – 3 E-Learning Trackers Open For Signup

It’s been a while since we featured an E-Learning torrent tracker on this blog. Most trackers in this niche such as BitMe and BitSpyder are almost always closed to public signups. However, that doesn't mean E-learning trackers that have open signups are non existent. This article summarizes information about three such sites that are currently accepting new members without the need for invite codes. One of these sites, ElbitZ, is a pretty large tracker which indexes almost 10000 torrents – content on ElbitZ ranges from electronic books to test engines, test kits and even video tutorials for a number of different subjects. eBookVortex and FreeTheTextbooks on the other hand are smaller sites but track a lot of Ebooks (including text books) that aren’t found elsewhere.

ElbitZ
 
Site Name: ElbitZ (http://elbitz.net/)
Signup URL: http://elbitz.net/signup.php
Stats: ~9900 torrents
Description: A long standing E-learning tracker, ElbitZ tracks everything from Ebooks to complete test kits, video tutorials, etc. Note that this tracker is not all about tech stuff; there is even content related to music, dating and languages as well as many other ‘general’ categories. Signups are usually open once a month.
Full Review: [Click Here]

eBookVortex

Site Name: eBookVortex ( http://www.ebookvortex.com )
Signup URL: eBookVortex ( http://www.ebookvortex.com )
Stats: 31000+ users and 1650+ torrents
Description: This one used to be one of the best Elearning trackers back in 2008. However, several long downtimes and URL changes has set this site back but this by no means is a dead tracker. Although the daily influx of new torrents as somewhat stemmed, EBV still lives and tracks a considerable number of Ebooks. Read full review for more information.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Free The Textbooks
 
Site Name: Free the Textbooks (http://www.freeetextbooks.com)
Signup URL: http://www.freeetextbooks.com/account-signup.php
Stats: ~1200 torrents
Description: Now that PureTorrents has disappeared without a trace, Free The Textbooks is one of the very few textbook trackers that are online. However, it doesn't look like this tracker has a bright future ahead of it either – only a handful new torrents are added every month and activity is not that great. Read full review for more information.
Full Review: [Click Here]