I talked about NZB files and using the usenet the other day and I mentioned using clients to retrieve files from the usenet but I didn’t mention any clients in particular to use. After reading about NZB files and the usenet. I started looking into clients and there are several. Many of the files do different things, some you have to pay for, some are free. There’s one client that I found that I thought was pretty interesting.

SabNZBD

SABNZBD is a NZB client written in Python that I tried out for a few days and while it has a little bit of a learning curve, it seems to do everything that is needed to get you started. SABnzbd isn’t a usenet client, its more of a NZB client. To use SABnzbd, you still need to get your own access to the usenet, and you still need a way to find NZB files. Im not going to go into that on this blog as some of it (like bittorrent) can wander into the same type of files you would find at a bittorrent website.

So what does SABnzbd do?

SABnzb runs on your PC in the background, and instead of having a piece of software that list and organize your files, you have a web interface that handles all of your interface options. If you find a NZB of a file you want to download from the usenet, you can load it up in SABnzbd and SABnzbd will connect to the usenet (using your access information) download the files and categories them is folders you specify. It will also extract and files that are in RAR or ZIP format automatically.

Another good feature is the RSS feature. You can create RSS feeds with your favorite media, and SABnzbd will retrieve those files for you, without you having to search for those particular NZB files. I haven’t figured out how to create the RSS feeds myself but if you search the forums over at the SABnzbd website, you will find a lot of information to help you get on your way.

Like I said, there is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to getting SABnzbd set up on your PC but once you get all of the configuration settings like you want it, the program pretty much runs itself.

For more information about SABNzbd, check out the website.