Usenet

AIOStreams has first-class Usenet support: addons that search your indexers, and playback services — including a fully built-in NNTP streaming engine — that turn the results into streams on any device.

This guide is organised as a journey: understand how it works, pick a playback service and set it up, add your indexers, then make playback resilient and get familiar with NZB grabs and indexer rules.

How Usenet Streaming Works

Usenet in AIOStreams is built on a simple foundation with two halves:

1. Addons find content — they search your indexers and return NZB results.
2. A service plays it — it turns an NZB into a video stream your player can handle.

Every setup in this guide is some combination of the two: pick a playback service, then feed it results from one or more addons.

Usenet in 60 Seconds

Skip ahead if you already know your backbones from your indexers.

• Providers sell access to Usenet servers (spoken to over the NNTP protocol). Content is stored as millions of small articles (segments), and each provider sits on a backbone — providers on the same backbone share the same underlying storage.
• Indexers catalogue that content and hand out NZB files. An NZB is essentially a map: it lists the articles that make up a release.
• Retention and takedowns differ per backbone, so a release can be complete on one backbone while missing articles on another. Adding a provider from a different backbone gives you a second chance at finding every article.

The Usenet Tree shows which providers sit on which backbone, and the same site tracks current provider deals.

1. Pick a Playback Service

There are three flavours of Usenet playback in AIOStreams:

1. NNTP streaming — something downloads articles from your provider and converts them into an HTTP stream on the fly. That something is either AIOStreams itself (the built-in engine), an external self-hosted tool (NzbDAV, AltMount, StremThru Newz), or — uniquely — the Stremio client itself (Stremio NNTP). You bring your own provider account(s) and indexers.
2. Easynews — a provider with its own web search whose results are direct HTTP URLs served from Easynews' servers. No extra software, no hosting; accessed through the Easynews Search addon.
3. TorBox — AIOStreams hands TorBox an NZB URL; TorBox downloads the whole release to their servers, after which it is "cached" and plays back instantly from them, on any device. See TorBox.

All of the NNTP streamers pull articles straight from your provider — the difference is which piece of software does the streaming, and therefore where it has to run:

2. Set Up Your Service

Jump straight to the service you picked. Every path ends the same way: once the service is configured, continue to Add Your Indexers.

The Built-In Engine (AIOStreams)

AIOStreams ships its own NNTP streaming engine: give it your provider details and it downloads, unpacks and serves releases as HTTP streams directly from your instance — no NzbDAV, AltMount or any other companion software.

It appears in your configuration as the AIOStreams service (results tagged AIO), and requires your own instance — self-hosted, or a private ElfHosted instance.

Dashboard Setup (once per instance)

User Setup (configuration page)

Streams are served directly from your instance under your BASE_URL — there is no separate WebDAV server to expose, no credentials embedded in URLs, and no proxy configuration needed.

Stremio NNTP

The one NNTP option that needs no server at all: here, the tool that converts Usenet articles into video is the Stremio client itself. AIOStreams sends your provider details and the NZB location with the stream, and Stremio connects to your provider and streams natively.

Setup:

Drawbacks:

• Limited to the two clients above.
• Harder to debug — streaming happens entirely inside Stremio.
• Failover cannot protect these streams, since playback never touches AIOStreams.

TorBox

TorBox works differently from the NNTP streamers: AIOStreams passes an NZB URL to TorBox, TorBox downloads the entire release to their servers, and once complete it becomes cached — from then on it plays back instantly from TorBox, on any device. Usenet downloads on TorBox are generally fast and reliable compared to torrents.

Usenet on TorBox requires their Pro plan, which also bundles internal indexers (via TorBox Search) and an NNTP server — so it can be a zero-hosting, all-in-one option.

Setup:

Cache and Play

Because TorBox must finish downloading before playback, an uncached result normally returns a short "downloading, come back later" video — you'd retry once it's cached. Cache and Play (under Services → Built-in → Cache and Play) changes that: AIOStreams polls TorBox until the download completes, then serves the playback link directly, so your player just buffers a little longer and starts on its own.

(The setting also applies to uncached debrid downloads, but it shines with Usenet since downloads usually finish quickly.)

TorBox Search Caveats

TorBox's Search API returns both torrent and Usenet results. You can use it through the dedicated TorBox Search addon, or point the built-in Newznab/Torznab addons at its Newznab/Torznab endpoints. Two important caveats either way:

The TorBox NNTP Server

TorBox Pro also includes access to a TorBox NNTP server. That makes it usable as a regular provider with any NNTP-based service — the built-in engine, NzbDAV, AltMount, StremThru Newz or Stremio NNTP. It appears to sit on the Abavia backbone, so pairing it with an Omicron provider follows the two-backbone advice from the primer.

NzbDAV, AltMount and StremThru Newz

Before the built-in engine existed, streaming NNTP through AIOStreams meant self-hosting a companion tool, and these remain fully supported:

• NzbDAV
• AltMount
• StremThru (the StremThru Newz service)

Like the built-in engine, these stream over NNTP straight from your provider — they mount NZBs as a virtual filesystem and expose a WebDAV server (or equivalent) that AIOStreams wraps into streamable URLs. The stream URL your player hits is served by the tool itself (unless you proxy it through AIOStreams). Choose one of these over the built-in engine if you already run it for other tooling, or want the Usenet machinery on a separate box from AIOStreams.

Set Up the Tool

Add the Service in AIOStreams

URL vs. Public URL

This is the most critical configuration step for NzbDAV and AltMount.

Proxying Streams Through AIOStreams

The NzbDAV and AltMount service configs have an optional AIOStreams Auth Token field (a username:password pair from your instance's AIOSTREAMS_AUTH). Providing it makes AIOStreams proxy the tool's stream URLs instead of handing them to your player directly. That helps in three ways:

• Player compatibility — NzbDAV/AltMount playback URLs are WebDAV URLs with embedded credentials, which some players refuse. The proxy produces a "normal" URL.
• Keep the tool private — only AIOStreams needs to reach NzbDAV/AltMount, so you can leave them on your local network and expose just AIOStreams.
• No protocol mismatches — mixed HTTP/HTTPS setups are a common cause of failed playback; the proxy sidesteps them entirely.

Note that this only changes the URL your player sees. It has no effect on what your Usenet provider or indexer sees — the tool still downloads the articles and grabs the NZB exactly as before.

Easynews

Easynews is a Usenet provider with its own web search, and its results are plain HTTP URLs served from Easynews' servers — no hosting, no companion software, works on every device.

Using Easynews Results with Other Services

The Easynews Search addon can also obtain real NZB files for its web search results. That means those results can be played through any of the traditional NZB-accepting services too — the built-in engine, NzbDAV, AltMount, StremThru Newz, Stremio NNTP or TorBox — not just the Easynews service.

Since your AIOStreams instance is what generates and serves those NZBs, this requires the addon's AIOStreams Auth option (a username:password pair from AIOSTREAMS_AUTH) — so using Easynews Search with any service other than Easynews means running your own instance (self-hosted or a private ElfHosted one). Using it purely with the Easynews service needs no auth and works on any instance.

Zero Setup: The ElfHosted Bundle

Don't want to host anything yourself? A private ElfHosted instance (ElfHosted is a project sponsor) is the managed alternative anywhere this guide says self-host: paid, private, pre-configured, no server administration — see the deployment guide. Note that ElfHosted also runs a public AIOStreams instance; anything here that needs AIOSTREAMS_AUTH or the dashboard requires a private instance of your own, not the public one.

For Usenet specifically, their pre-configured AIOStreams + NzbDAV bundle includes:

• A private AIOStreams instance (yours to manage)
• NzbDAV, secured behind ElfHosted SSO
• A bundled indexer to get started (you can add more of your own later)
• 150 Mbps proxy bandwidth (boostable), enough to happily stream a 4K REMUX (also usable for proxying debrid streams)

Pre-configured, fully supported, available in 5 minutes — the same software stack as the self-hosted method, just hosted and pre-wired, so the configuration steps in this guide apply unchanged.

3. Add Your Indexers

With a playback service in place, add addons to feed it results. AIOStreams provides several built-in addons that return Usenet results:

These addons need at least one Usenet-capable service configured — each result is tagged with the service that will play it (e.g. AIO, SN, TB).

You are not limited to a single Newznab addon: add it once per indexer, each with that indexer's API URL and key. A handful of Newznab addon instances side by side is the normal setup.

If you already manage your indexers through NZBHydra2 or Prowlarr, their addons connect all of them at once — but be aware their NZB-grab behaviour differs; see Indexer Managers.

4. Make It Resilient: Failover

Missing articles are the most common way a Usenet stream fails to play — and normally that means a "Something went wrong" error video. Failover fixes this: when the result you clicked fails, AIOStreams automatically tries the next result in your sorted list and redirects your player there instead, so playback works instead of failing.

Enable it under Services → Built-in → Failover on the configuration page.

Where It Works

Failover can only act where AIOStreams controls playback — where your player's first request goes to an AIOStreams URL, letting AIOStreams resolve a healthy target and redirect. That covers:

• Built-in addons (marked with a Built-in ribbon in the addon marketplace), and
• service-wrapped addons (external addons whose results AIOStreams resolves through your debrid service).

Stremio NNTP results are excluded — playback happens entirely inside Stremio. Additionally, the Include External Addon Targets option lets failover fall over to results from external addons (e.g. a Comet debrid link) even though a direct click on those can't trigger failover; such targets are health-checked by probing before your player is redirected.

Key Settings

• Failover Content Types — whether Usenet and/or debrid results may be used as targets.
• Allow Cross-Type Failover — let a failed Usenet result fall through to a debrid result (or vice versa) if that's what's next in the list. Off keeps failover within the clicked result's own kind.
• Include External Addon Targets — see above.
• Max Failover Attempts — how many fallback results to try before giving up.
• Same-Release Failover Attempts — see below.
• Parallel Attempts and its timing knobs (backup delay, preferred-item grace, …) — advanced: race several attempts and take the first healthy one.

Same-Release Variants (Deduplicator Merging)

The deduplicator (Filters → Deduplicator) removes duplicate copies of the same release from your list. Two settings turn those discarded copies into failover ammunition instead of waste:

• Merge Duplicates — rather than just discarding duplicates, their info is folded into the surviving result (e.g. a runtime that only one addon reported is kept on the winner).
• Harvest Failover Variants — additionally retains the duplicates' playback URLs on the winner as same-release failover targets: the same release from a different indexer or addon.

With variants harvested, the Same-Release Failover Attempts setting (in the Failover card) controls how many alternative copies of the same release are tried before failover moves on to a different release — often the ideal behaviour, since another indexer's NZB of the same release may be complete where the first wasn't.

Failover Position

The last stages of the result pipeline are the required/excluded stream expression filters (Filters → Stream Expression) followed by result limits (Filters → Result Limits) — and depending on your configuration, both can remove a lot of results. Failover Position picks the point (always after sorting) from which the fallback chain is built:

Earlier positions give failover a larger pool to draw from, at the cost of possibly landing on a result your filters would have removed. The default is WYSIWYG.

5. NZB Grabs and Indexer Rules

Streaming is a contentious use of Usenet, and some indexers actively restrict it: blocking the user agents of known streaming tools (AIOStreams, NzbDAV, …), blocking datacenter/VPS IP ranges, or — as Treasure Maps (formerly SceneNZBs) is known to — serving decoy NZBs to suspected streamers. Others flag a mismatch between the IP that searched and the IP that grabbed the NZB as a TOS violation.

This section covers how NZBs actually travel from your indexer to your playback service — and the options AIOStreams gives you around it. Always check your indexer's rules.

Search IP vs. Grab IP

Searches always come from your AIOStreams instance. Who performs the NZB grab depends on the playback service:

This table assumes the Newznab addon pointed directly at your indexers. If you go through an indexer manager (NZBHydra2, Prowlarr), the search still originates from AIOStreams but goes to the manager, which then queries the indexer — so the indexer sees the manager's IP for searches.

Proxying NZB Grabs Through AIOStreams

The Newznab addon has an AIOStreams Proxy Auth option (a username:password pair from AIOSTREAMS_AUTH). With it set, AIOStreams hands the playback service a proxied AIOStreams URL instead of the indexer's raw NZB URL — so the grab is performed by AIOStreams itself, and the indexer sees the same IP for search and grab.

When it helps:

• Stremio NNTP and TorBox — the grab would otherwise come from your Stremio device or TorBox's servers. (Some indexers block TorBox's servers outright; proxying means the indexer only ever sees your AIOStreams instance.)

When it's usually unnecessary:

• The built-in engine — AIOStreams already grabs the NZB itself.
• NzbDAV / AltMount / StremThru Newz co-hosted with AIOStreams — the tool most likely shares AIOStreams' IP anyway, so proxying just adds a hop. The only reasons to still enable it here are to reuse AIOStreams' NZB grab cache or to centrally apply the outbound request controls (header overrides, HTTP proxies) when the tool doesn't support them itself.

The NZB Grab Cache

AIOStreams keeps grabbed .nzb files in a two-tier cache (in-memory plus on-disk) so the same NZB is never fetched from an indexer twice. It applies both to proxied grabs and to grabs made by the built-in Usenet engine. The sizes are configurable in the dashboard under Settings → Built-in → Grab — the defaults (64 MB memory, 1 GB disk) are reasonably sized and rarely need changing.

Indexer Managers

• NZBHydra2 proxies grabs by default, so search and grab both come from Hydra. Note that Hydra force-disables proxying for certain indexers at those indexers' request, so this is not guaranteed for every indexer.
• Prowlarr only redirects NZB grabs — the downloading service hits the indexer directly, so the IP mismatch remains.

ElfHosted & Zyclops

When running an ElfHosted AIOStreams instance, your search IP and grab IP are always the same, routed through a built-in NZBHydra/SABnzbd proxy on your instance, so usage patterns are identical to traditional Usenet access. ElfHosted also offers managed NZBHydra2 and Prowlarr instances ($1 trial) for augmenting an existing setup.

The public Zyclops NewzNab Healthcheck Proxy (an ElfHosted project) is another way to keep your search and grab IPs aligned, and Zyclops health checks are built into the AIOStreams Newznab addon. Review the highlighted implications regarding credential/NZB sharing and your indexer's TOS before enabling it.

Outbound Request Controls

The dashboard has two settings (Settings → HTTP) that shape every outbound request your instance makes. Whether a given configuration complies with your indexer's or provider's terms is between you and them.

• Request header overrides — per-key User-Agent/header overrides. A key is a hostname (host, *.host, *) or a [context] label for a request purpose ([nzb_grabs], [torrent_grabs], [newznab], [torznab]). A value is a literal User-Agent (supports the {version} / {random} placeholders) or a {preset} reference to a built-in header set: {sabnzbd}, {nzbget}, {sonarr}, {radarr}, {prowlarr}, {nzbhydra2}, {chrome}. When several keys match, the most specific wins — exact host, then wildcard host, then [context], then global *. Example: [nzb_grabs]:{sabnzbd},indexer.com:{prowlarr}.
• Addon proxy URL(s) and Addon proxy config — route outbound requests through one or more HTTP proxies (e.g. a gluetun container for VPN routing). The config map uses the same key scheme as above, with true/false to enable/disable per key, or a 0-based index to pick a specific proxy from the list. Example: [newznab]:true.

Both are also settable via environment variables (REQUEST_HEADER_OVERRIDES, ADDON_PROXY, ADDON_PROXY_CONFIG) — see the environment variable reference.