Stream your entire retro library. Stop downloading it.
Play a whole ROM collection in RetroBat or Batocera, write a ready-made games drive, or grab a few files out of a giant image, all streamed straight from Usenet. No terabytes to download first. No double the disk space. No RAR files.
An infinite games library in RetroBat and Batocera
Point RetroBat or Batocera at a shared library and every system shows up in EmulationStation as normal. Launch a game and only that game streams in, fetched on demand. A 20 TB library is playable on a machine with a tiny disk, because launching a game reads that game, not the whole collection.
An old, cheap Batocera box can stream a giant library while the heavy lifting stays on your main machine. The games box never holds your Usenet login, just a read-only key you can pull at any time.
- A real share of 2.35 million files, 19.6 TB listed all 147 systems in under two seconds.
- Your existing local ROMs stay exactly where they are.
- Games cache as you play, so favourites get quicker.
Write your image straight to a USB or SSD
Take a ready-made games drive or a full system image and write it directly onto a USB stick, SD card or SSD, streamed from Usenet as it writes. The image is never saved as a file first, so you need space on the target drive and only a few GB of working space on your PC. Writing a 500 GB image uses 500 GB on the stick and just a few GB on your PC.
Every write finishes with a check that reads the drive back and confirms it actually holds the data, so you know the drive works before you walk away with it.
Grab just the files you want from a giant image
No more downloading a huge RAR set and then needing double the space to extract it. Open a 512 GB image, browse the files inside it, and pull out only the ones you need. Three config files out of a 512 GB image cost a tiny fraction of it, and the page tells you what a selection will use before you commit.
No spare drive and no extracting, just room for the files you take plus a little working space. Just reach in and take what you came for.
Mount it as a drive
Your whole collection appears as an ordinary drive or folder. Explorer, VLC, Plex, Kodi and Jellyfin all treat it as normal storage, and only the bytes you actually open are fetched.
Private and secure
Files are encrypted before they ever leave the owner's machine. The Usenet provider only ever stores scrambled bytes it cannot read, and there is no server in the middle.
Checked, not hoped
Downloads and drive writes finish with an integrity check, so you get "it actually works", not just "the bytes were sent". Cheap USB sticks fail this more than you would think.
One machine does the work
Your main PC handles the Usenet side. Cheap games boxes and media servers just stream from it with a read-only key you can revoke whenever you like.
Install and activate
Get UsenetShare set up and connected to your Usenet account in a couple of minutes. Watch it once, then you are ready to stream, mount and write straight from Usenet.
A Usenet account is all you need
UsenetShare works with any Usenet provider, but the one we tested it on, top to bottom, with 100% perfect results is Newshosting. Grab their 3 months free offer and you are ready to stream.
Then in the downloads section click Copy Share Link. Depending on your settings UsenetShare should open; if not, paste the link into UsenetShare.
Quick questions
Do I really not download the files?
Right. The library is streamed on demand. Launch a game or open a file and only that content is fetched, so you can use a collection far bigger than your disk.
Do I need a Usenet account?
Yes, one Usenet provider account. We tested on Newshosting and recommend their 3 months free deal.
Will it fill up my drive?
Only with what you actually play or keep. Streaming, mounting or writing uses a small local cache, around 5 GB even for a 20 TB library, which is a massive saving versus storing the lot.
Is it safe to put on my games box?
Yes. That box only gets a read-only key, never your Usenet login, and you can revoke it at any time.