Brickfrog

Yes, that’s why qBittorrent’s “Download first and last pieces first” option exists. You’ll be able to stream that .mp4 with its moov atom at the end of the file as long as you download that last piece during the beginning of the download. In some ways that makes qBittorrent a better streamer for .mp4 files vs other methods.

Maybe the other commenter is referring to some other media file type that can’t be streamed.

EDIT - Haven’t checked but am guessing torrentio also downloads first/last pieces first otherwise it’d be a terrible torrent streamer.

Hmm, having checked “Download first and last pieces first” usually fixes that. e.g. a .mp4 with its moov atom at the end of the file won’t stream unless you make sure to download the last part of the file starting out. Just curious which media file type are you referring to that won’t stream regardless of having the first/last pieces downloaded?

But either way OP using Stremio + torrentio won’t fix that, that’s just another torrent client doing a torrent stream. If it won’t play mid-stream via qBittorrent it won’t play mid-stream in torrentio either.

Since you’re just streaming torrents you could just use a torrent client to download the torrent(s) in sequential mode.

e.g. Load the torrent in qBittorrent and make sure to enable “Download in sequential order” and “Download first and last pieces first”. When the torrent is about 5-10% downloaded you can start playing the incomplete file while the torrent continues to download in the background. Load the file in your preferred media player (VLC or whatever) and play.

They are slightly different, I think people are kind of asking if you are specifically looking for a VPS vs a seedbox. Some people do want a VPS so it’s a fair question.

A VPS implies that you’ll be renting a server and installing/setting up all the software on your own. You’ll probably have some sort of SSH + root access to install things there since you’re doing all that on your own.

A seedbox is more like a pre-configured shared VPS so it’ll already have torrent clients pre-installed along with other software commonly used with torrent clients. Depending on the vendor and type of seedbox you often won’t have root access and/or SSH access, usually the vendor won’t want you to randomly install software system-wide that might disrupt other users on that seedbox server.

PS - !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com also exists, a bit quieter there but it’s specific to the topic.

If I create a new torrent, does CGNAT (carrier-grade network address translation) prevent me from being an initial seeder of that torrent?

It’s not ideal, you won’t be able to seed/upload to any other firewalled (non port forwarded) peers.

But technically any connectable (port forwarded) peers connecting to you will still be able to download from you, so you’d still be able to seed in that sense. That does mean you’re only initial seeding to peers that have their own ports open/forwarded.

I can download and upload in my torrent client just fine, so I know my ISP isn’t (intentionally) blocking and firewalling torrents.

Yup that would work fine, you can participate in torrent swarms that contain other connectable peers and that’s usually how most torrent swarms are. You’ll probably have trouble with the random low seed torrents e.g. a torrent with one lone seed who also has no ports open, that seed won’t be able to send you any torrent data.