Anyone that says £50 is a lot has never had access to a scene server.
If that is non-rented/private lines, the peering can be far superior than any filehoster which may rent servers from OVH or LW or any other hosting provider people bitch about; I remember reading that one of the top scene servers was hosted in Ebay's HQ, and I'm willing to bet the private peering and routing there would be far superior than with OVH.
Secondly you forget these sites have archives, and usually the larger the better. I've been on sites with a full BD archive, another with about 40 or so TV Series, and another with every mainstream movie and then some. All this instantly available to you: no slow 1 seeder torrents, no dead links. Not to mention that fact that the incoming/racing part of the site will have every current release going out before torrents, newzbins or one click hosters.
But yes ofcourse there are risks. Many private sites, such as the ebay one, are simply a tech admin taking advantage of his position, and if the main firm starts notices their BW costs are increased they'll start looking into it. I know Brit police often try to match bandwidth peaks of individual servers with release times. Ofcoure the person running the site is at the greatest risk, so before you buy you should be obliged for the sake of your own security to ask what precautions he has in place, such as truecrypt.
Whilst NZBs seem like a far cheaper alternative, wasn't an entire provider just taken down as any topsite admin would?
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