[tills13]

Having figured it out myself, I agree. And it's not obvious that you need both a Usenet _indexer_ (who tells you what content is available) and a Usenet provider (who actually serves you the content).

FWIW, and I'm not sure if this is against terms here, but I use newsgeek for the former and giganews for the latter. Both are paid services but reasonably priced imo. When I can find something on Usenet, it typically downloads with speeds > 10MBps vs. torrenting which can exceed that but is usually much slower.

You can use whatever client you want. I have the *arr stack mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well and SABnzbd is the recommended option there.

[issafram]

Are the downloads through http/tcp or some other protocol?

[RevEng]

Between you and your provider the downloads are over HTTP. The distribution of content between the Usenet providers is over the Usenet protocol which predates HTTP and the WWW.