The point of archived(.rar) vids on torrent sites???

[Chewie]

Also, isn't kind of a carry-over from the lower bandwidth/propogation days when people would need to be able to download it in pieces? I think it's pretty much obsolete, or maybe obs37173? I believe it makes one hardcore if they can figure out how to RAR something up into multiple files.

It gets really annoying when you download a single RAR file, which contains 100 ZIPs, each of which contains one of the (.000-.100) RAR pieces. It smacks of robbing a horse to call the kettle before they hatch.

RAR archives can also contain recovery data that was used to help with CRC errors. This has become obsolete due to PAR/PAR2 recovery systems.

The relevance of split archives such as RAR and ACE is still not in question. OK, in days gone by people on dialup would be spending al night downloading 100MB warez releases of the day but the increase in internet access speed has only recently begun to catch up with release sizes - I bet you'd be a little more than upset if a connection crapped out after 3GB of a single-file DVD5 release.

Personally, I use WinRAR for all archiving - it handles everything I've come across with the exception of a few early WinACE v2 archives.

[hirudinea]

you guys are bottom feeding the actual people who produce the releases, being so removed from the top - it might seem strange to you that releases are packaged in 15mb or 50mb rars.

The reason for this is, as stated above is partially because of corruption -- files are all parity checked in a .sfv file - and un-corrupting a release is as simple as redownloading a corrupt file.

But the main reason for rars is to aid in FTP transfers between release sites. Rars allow multiple people to upload a release to an FTP simultaneously, speeding the overall transmission and because of the SFV, preventing anyone from tieing up the FTP with a potentially corrupt transfer.

Additionally, a release in rars can travel down a chain of FTPs as fast as the first rar hits the first site, as there is no need to wait for the entire release to completed to start uploading it to other sites.

The people who produce these releases would rather people not talk about them broadly or even receive their releases, although the secrets of the release scene are still surprisingly well kept, the releases themselves aren't so much.

[Sissoko]

I always thought they where in rar files due to coming from newsgroups, and then just being uploaded to torrent sites witout being 'unrarred'