In order to encode to a specific format without unintentionally losing quality, doesn’t the initial file have to be a remux?

Rapidgator is a file hosting website often used by DDL sites. It makes money by slowing downloads down to a crawl unless you have a premium subscription, as well as only allowing one download at a time for free users. As this is problematic for downloading multiple movies at a time, let alone TV shows, debrid services serve as a middleman by downloading files from file hosts such as Rapidgator to their own servers and caching them for their own subscribers to download for a set amount of time.

I think HDEncode and ReleaseBB are among the best DDL websites, though there’s other options listed on the FMHY and Megathread lists. To make practical use of them though, you either need an expensive Rapidgator subscription or a more affordable debrid subscription (i.e. RealDebrid). If you use RealDebrid or AllDebrid, one method of finding releases is using Debrid Media Manager, which searches for cached releases that other users have already submitted to the debrid service you’re subscribed to. As debrid downloads, in my experience at least, are often corrupted (resulting in errors either when extracting files from an archive or re-encoding a video in MKVToolNix), the best use of debrid services is to use it with an app like Stremio to have an all-in-one streaming service.

The other paid solution is usenet, which requires a NZB download program (i.e. NZBGet), a usenet indexer, and a usenet provider. The latter two usually require yearly subscriptions, but often have better results than can be found on DDL sites or public torrent trackers. While some usenet indexers are private, there are enough that are not to make waiting for open signups for those indexers optional. The public ones include altHUB, Miatrix, and NZB Finder, the private ones include DrunkenSlug and Tabula Rasa, while NZBGeek is public but is only free during a limited trial period, after which a subscription is needed. The free ones usually have a 5 downloads per day limit without a subscription. Note that Jdownloader is not a NZB download program, but rather one for regular downloads, and would instead be used for DDL site downloads.

For torrenting you need access to torrent trackers and a torrent download program. qBittorrent can do both if you add the Jackett plugin to it, though the best seeded (available for download) releases are often on semi-private and private torrent trackers. The best semi-private to start out with is TorrentLeech, given its lax seeding requirements compared to other private trackers. Keeping releases seeded on TorrentLeech gives you points over time that you can use to boost your ratio.

While I’d recommend using a paid VPN if you choose to go the route of torrenting, it’s not essential if you instead use debrid and/or usenet subscriptions as in those cases you’re not re-uploading downloaded releases to other users. If you’d rather not pay for any services, I’d recommend just using a site like MovieWeb to stream releases compiled from free streaming websites. While the quality is not always as good as can be had with the three options above, it works well for most use cases.

While the cheapest reliable option is probably Frugal Usenet, I switched to Eweka while their Black Friday sale was active since its retention goes further back. I also use a Newsdemon block plan as a secondary usenet provider for releases that Eweka is missing portions of.

My idea was to just put several external hard drives into a RAID enclosure and connect it to my computer via USB. Wouldn’t that function similarly to a typical external hard drive?

I’m not interested in accessing the hard drives remotely, so a NAS would probably be unnecessary for my use case.

I keep missing my chance to join AlphaRatio, so hopefully they don’t end up closing…