Just checked my usage since connecting last night at 6pm

18,541Mb ... which beats current record of 10gig in a day ...lol

I think the most I've done is 12 gigs.... I restrict my upload speed to around 3 Kbs though.

Woulda done more if the main torrent went a bit quicker.

I used to find my DL speeds went fastest with my UL restricted to 10 or under, but I open it up once complete and seed. Been tryin to get my UKNova rating up above 90 and UL heaps of recent. Got one 400mb file that i've UL over 6GB ...lol

God I hate torrents - and if I was on a package that included uploads in my metered allowance there's no way I'd use 'em. They're slow, easily traced and unreliable. Nasty things ...

Other options?

Newsgroups every time.

I get a free news feed thrown in by Internode (who I think you just left), but the company they use is called Astraweb and they offer an $11 all-you-can-eat option so if I was going to get that bad-ass Telstra combo deal I'd ditch the T-Box and put the $11 to the newsgroups.

Advantages of downloading from newsgroups:
1) No sharing - you just get what you want and you're done. Don't forget to wipe your knob on the curtains on your way out.
2) It's as fast as your connection - you're not beholden to the 'seeding' speed of anyone else you just get everything at full speed. I'm only on a standard ADSL line (with ADSL fast I connect at about 12Mb) and I can get a 2.6Gb AC3 DVD Rip off the news groups in under half an hour. In fact it's so quick we often don't decide what we're going to watch that evening until one of us has started cooking the evening meal.
3) Nobody but your ISP knows what you're downloading. Absolutely anyone can connect to a torrent and enjoy a feast of IPs that reveal exactly who else is downloading or seeding a torrent. This is how agencies working on behalf of the movie/music industry find people to send them legal letters - in fact they often produce bait torrents themselves which are 750Mb of static and released only to harvest IP addresses. With the newsgroups only the ISP knows and in my particular case they have gone on the record as saying they are not keeping this information.
4) ISPs (particularly large telcos) will throttle torrent traffic on connections if it looks like you're a heavy torrent user because they have a finite amount of bandwidth to be shared around the 30 or so other people on the same switch as you at the telephone exchange. Telstra are clearly in a land-grab to get as many punters on long contracts *before* the NBN hits town and they'll probably play nice for a while, but I'm not convinced it'll last.
5) It's every bit as easy to download from the newsgroups these days as people have started using NZB files. These are indexes of all the segments that make up a download - so you just click on the single NZB file (handily indexed at sites like NZBMatrix and Newzbin) and it grabs it for you.
6) They're just as comprehensive as the torrents - in fact most stuff appears on the newsgroups before the torrent sites get hold of it.

Dis-Advantages of downloading from newsgroups:
1) Downloads are about 5-10% larger than torrent equivalent as they include PAR files which are used to repair segments should part of an upload not go through correctly.
2) Very easy to get greedy.
3) There's no equivalent of UK Nova. That said, most of it gets uploaded to the newsgroups - I just checked and at least three different uploading groups have punted Big Brother UK online.

A mate at work spears by these too, but he also PAYS a subscription ...

I need to T-Box anyway as currently have no method of recording all the wonderful TV they have on here ... ... but there HAS been the 'odd' occasion where we've wanted to record summat so will be worth having I reckon.

I doubt the newsgroup thingy has Big Brother as quick as UKNova does. The torrent sites have the odd bit here and there, but only UKNova seems to be sharing the lot, and mostly 1 day behind ...

I think you'd be surprised mate. Most UK and American telly is on the groups in about two hours of their air-time. And no ratios to worry about.

The things is - the newsgroups are where it all began. It's the source and the motherlode.

Ok let's check one out. Can you give us a link?

To an indexing site?

To one of these newsgroup thingey's. Wanna go have a look around, see what's what.

I was surprised with Telstra too. We've moved back to the UK and had to disconnect all of our services. I assumed we'd be hit with a massive bill as we were under contract but all they wanted was $140!

Good stuff.

"To one of these newsgroup thingey's. Wanna go have a look around, see what's what."

http://www.newzbin.com - register and get 24 hours free - used to be invitation only.

Been using them for more than 5 years, I agree with everything hutch says + more, I never use torrents. Binary newsgroups seem to have almost everything TV, Movies, Music etc. No peers, no uploading, you can encrypt the traffic so ever your ISP doesn't see what you're downloading.

The downsides are only that you need different software (I like Sabnzbd) to manage the downloads, you pay for the indexer (newsbin is UK 30p per week) and you need a news service, iNode includes one, I use newshosting from the US at about USD $11 per month.

Another is nzbmatrix which I used for a while when Newzbin where experiencing "legal difficulties".

I have been with Telstra since being here (march 06) and i have never had problems with them so i must be one of the lucky ones

I have moved serveral times over the years and they have always sorted things quickly and not messed me about.
I pay $98 a month plus $5 for uk calls at 2 cents a min i think it is,also local calls are free.
I have the home bundle which is 12GB unlimited with ADSL 2 the only time i have problems is when i go onto there website bigpond and its really slow...we use about 7gb a month

I'll PM you mate.