1. Get a usenet account
Go to Usenet-News.net and click the "Get It!" link.
Decide how much you want to download/spend to try it out, then click on the "click here to create a block account now" link.
Input your information into the form to create your account
Once you account has been created, click on the "to buy gigs, click here" link. The numbers should all be zeros for a new account. You will have to go through another website to do the purchase. Once you have purchased more gigs, you should get an email within minutes and the quota should increase when your usage page is refreshed.
2. Configure Newsleecher
Start up newsleecher and click the options menu in the title bar. Click the download tab on the left and configure it like you see below. You can set the default download directory and pause on low disk space values to whatever you would like.
Click on the NZB Files tab on the left and make sure the two options shown below are checked. This associates and opens newsleecher when you double-click on an nzb file. Note:NZB Files are like torrent files for newsgroups; they just contain enough information about the file to be able to download it.
Click on the PAR2 Files tab on the left and make sure all the options are checked like they are below. This ensures newsleecher has the right download behavior for par files. You can click the OK button to exit the options. I believe all the other options will be fine set to their default values.
To set up the server that newsleecher will download from, click the manager tab in the main window and the add button on the toolbar.
In the dialog that pops up, fill in the fields like below, except put in the username to your account and your password. The "@Usenet-News.net" part of your user name is important, so don't forget it. *If you paid for you account with Paypal the last part of your account name will be different.
3. Search for something
Go to http://binsearch.info and type in something to search for. I recommend setting the options like those below so that it won't return you results that are too old. EDIT: Usenet-News.net now has about a 200-day retention and they are working towards 400 days, so you can set it to the maximum and be fine.
You should now see some results at the bottom of the page. I used "colbert report" as an example, but it can be anything you want. You can see the poster, what group the file(s) were posted to and the age of the post. (If you are having trouble getting results you can try another usenet search engine, although I'm only covering how to use binsearch.info here.)
Use the checkboxes to the right to check which posts you want to download on this results page. When you have selected all you want, click the "create NZB" button. Save the NZB somewhere you can remember.
4. Download the file
Now it is actually time to download the file! Browse to where you saved the NZB file in the previous step.
Double-click it and newsleecher should open it and present you with the queue window with the parts of your download in the queue.
Click the Connect button in the upper left corner of the toolbar and newsleecher should connect to the usenet server (using 8 connections) and start downloading. if it doesn't connect, there might be a problem with you account or settings.
Now you can watch the speed increase as your download keeps running. This speed is average for me.
When the download is done, all that will be left are PAR2 files. Just leave those in the queue for now. You will need to download them if the download is inomplete.
5. Unpacking the download
Now that the archives are done downloading, it is time to unpack them. First browse to the download directory. The files will be under a new directory named ater the newsgroup that the files were posted in (if you configured the options as I did above). Seprerating downloads into directories named for newsgroups makes it easier to see what's what when you are downloading lots of things.
You can now try to extract the archive with WinRAR. Be sure to extract the first part and the others will be found automatically.
If all went well, you should have a good copy of the show or whatever you downloaded to use. How to play them is beyond the scope of this tutorial. If the RAR file failed to extract, read on.
6. Repairing broken downloads with QuickPar
If newsleecher couldn't download all the pieces of a file, it capitalizes the filename to make it stand out. If you see this, you will most likely need to recover your download.
Another telltale sign of downloads being incomplete is when WinRAR returns an error like this:
This is where QuickPar comes in! Assuming you already have it installed, double-click on the par2 file. This will bring up QuickPar and it will begin checking the files. Double-clicking on the SFV file will tell you if one of the files is corrupt/incomplete but it won't allow you to recover it.
If a file is incomplete, you will see something like this:
This is what you get if everything is OK. If you got an error extracting and QuickPar says recovery is not needed, you probably tried to extract one of the pieces instead of the first RAR archive, which is usually named *.RAR (others *.R01, etc) or *.part01.rar (others *.part02.rar, etc).
Remeber how many blocks you need, then go back to newsleecher and unpause (right click the file and select "pause/unpause") the par2 file with the least amount of blocks, but enough to get what you need. Par recovery volumes are named such that the + says how many blocks there are in the recovery file (*.vol00+1.PAR2 has 1 block, *.vol00+2.PAR2 has 2, etc). More blocks means a bigger file and more download time so download only the par files you need.
When that is finished, QuickPar should update to a screen like this. Make sure the monitor checkbox is checked and wait about 30 seconds after the download finishes.
Now just press the recover button and it will use the extra data in the PAR2 file to fill in the holes of the other files.
When it finishes recovering, QuickPar looks something like this:
Now you can extract the archive just as above and it should finish with no errors. Then you can delete all the files you don't want or need.
And all you have left to do is watch/listen to/read/enjoy what you were looking for!
