Yify Torrents - Some Alternatives To This Once Great Movie Encoding Group

Have you hear of yify torrents before? If you are not a regular user of BitTorrent software then you will be aware of their legendary status.

Yify torrents was a p2p encoding group that released movie torrents online, mostly in English. They were famed for producing files that are much smaller in size than the Bluray source, but without a huge reduction in video quality that can be seen from other torrents. The audio also tended to be recorded to 2 channel stereo.

They were one of the most famous groups out there.

The yify torrents collective made it easier to watch the latest blockbusters than almost any other group. They focused one small file size, quality rips and speed which made them very popular.

Yify Torrents: Free Movies

When did yify torrents begin?

The yify torrents collective started out in a big way in 2010. Yify began to publish dozens of movies to popular torrent sites. Not long after this they set up their own website called YTS. Hundreds and soon thousands of quality torrents began appearing on this site.

Are yify torrents still available?

In 2016 Hollywood managed to track down the founder of yify. It was a 23 year old app and website developer named Yiftach Swery from New Zealand. The Hollywood lawyers then filed a milti-million dollar lawsuit in New Zealand. Strangely, the case never made court, but both parties agreed to an out of court settlement. So the name then - Yify is likely derived from the leaders own name Yiftach!

The original YTS site and the YIFY torrents release group are gone. The site was shut down due to legal pressure, and it isn’t coming back. What happened after this is that it left a gap for other impostors to fill. YTS.ag was one of the most successful of these - posing as the original release group when in fact they were unrelated.

Alternatives p2p encoding groups to yify torrents

RARBG

The movie quality of this group is said to be decent, however file size is a little larger than some others.

ShAnNiG

The movies here are apparently ripped from the iTunes store. For a 720p rip, the typical file size tends to be within 800 mb and for 1080p you are talking around 2 GB.

ETRG (megaradon)

This group has been uploading movies for a long time. The audio and video are reportedly decent in quality. This group was very famous on Kickass Torrents.

MkvCage

This is another highly reputed uploader. The sound is average enough, but video quality tends to be good.

UTR

This particular group specializes in very small file sizes for movies.

The decline of torrents.

For me, the days of downloading film torrents is coming to a close.

First of all, over time the movie industry has been successful at making it more difficult to access public torrent trackers.

Last year, Kickass torrents was completely taken down for a long time. As of December of last year, it had a comeback and can be accessed at katcr.co, but who knows how long this will last?  The Pirate bay has also faced problems in the past and faced shutdowns. It is becoming harder for these public trackers to operate.

In the UK for instance, many of their domains are completely blocked. The Draft Communications Data bill in the UK also means that the government can track your web usage. Visiting public torrent trackers is becoming less wise in this climate. Many people won’t be bothered getting VPNs or using proxy servers to protect themselves.

Streaming Sites

Why are people less likely to use torrents? Well, the quality of streaming sites has vastly improved in recent years. Just recently, we reviewed yesmovies.to.  Movies here load fast. The selection is massive and you don’t need a VPN to access the site. Even better, it is advert and pop-up free - something you certainly can’t say about the like of thepiratebay or kickasstorrents which tend to be rife with pop-ups and adverts which are often pornographic and intrusive.

Downloading torrents just becomes too much hassle when streaming is so easy and the quality is so good.

5 years ago I would have largely been against streaming. The streaming websites were clunky, loaded with pop-ups, invasive and horrible adverts, website redirects etc. The streams themselves where also poor and tended to take a long time to load. It is an absolute bug bear for me when a stream stops and starts erratically - it really spoils the viewing experience. Streams also tended to be low quality and pixelated with poor black areas in the image giving a compromised viewing experience.

This is no longer an issue. Streams are now up to standard with torrents in terms of the quality of the viewing experience. Furthermore, the ease of use of streaming sites is vastly superior. As torrents have become more and more inconvenient and risky, streams have become more manageable.

Choice

My final argument against streaming was a lack of choice. I have a slightly esoteric taste in films - and aside from enjoying the big American blockbusters, I also enjoy small independent and artistic films.

In the past, the streaming sites were not likely to have these. Now, however, you are just as likely to find a stream of an arty film as a torrent. For instance, one of my favorite film directors ins Wim Wenders. A quick search on yesmovies.to and I am able to find “Alice in the Cities” - a black and white, German language film from the 1970s - which is available to stream in excellent quality with subtitles included. Now, this film isn’t exactly a hollywood blockbuster, which is why I am so impressed that yesmovies.to has it available to stream.

Verdict

Yify torrents were a legendary uploading group in their day, but sadly they are no more. Their torrents live on however on many public trackers.

If you are looking for other alternative quality encoding groups, I hope today’s post has been useful for you. I’ve also pointed out why I think that movie torrents in general are being surpassed by streaming for the average user.

Let us know what you think below. Do you prefer to download films by torrent or do you stream?