edit @ friday, july 9^th: video​cluster​.net is BACK, but cur­rently under main­ten­ance. their server prob­ably fried due to the spike in traffic.

if you haven’t heard, quite pos­sibly the best and most reli­able divx streaming site — ninjavideo​.net — was taken down by the feds. you can read about it here.

other sites that got raided and taken down include:

• TVShack​.net
• Movies​-Links​.TV
• FilesPump​.com
• Now​-Movies​.com
• Plan​et​Moviez​.com
• ThePir​ate​City​.org
• ZML​.com

so what does this mean for everyone who depended on ninjavideo for their tv and movie fix?

i hate you break it to you, but there was really no other site as reli­able and as ded­ic­ated as the people who ran ninjavideo​.net. the web­site itself was always updated nightly with new tv shows, doc­u­ment­aries, and movies, the moment they were released by the ‘scene’ — closely keeping pace with sites like rlslog​.net to stay on top of all the new releases. regard­less of how you per­son­ally felt about the people who ran ninjavideo (if you ever go onto the forums, as an out­sider looking in, they really did — prob­ably acci­dent­ally — foster a cult-​like men­tality. if you go against any admin, you were met with some severe rep­rim­ands. though, they prob­ably dealt with count­less retards on the internet, so i don’t really blame them), the site itself was a main­stay for a lot of people — espe­cially people like me who work most even­ings and cannot catch prime time shows. most tv chan­nels now offer streaming on their web­site, but they gen­er­ally don’t put these streams up until days and some­times weeks after they aired. ninjavideo was video-​on-​demand the way it was meant to be.

what are the altern­at­ives to ninjavideo​.net?

there are a few, but if you really want the ninjavideo exper­i­ence… with it’s timely updates, organ­isa­tion, and reli­ab­ility, i’m sorry to say, but those sites are far and few between. due to the nature of divx streaming, the band­width costs are pro­hib­itive, so most sites rely on flash streams. i have come across a few sites that share many of the qual­ities of ninjavideo (and part of me wants to keep it to myself because i don’t want these sites get­ting shut down either… but i have a feeling whether i write this or not, everyone will be looking for altern­at­ives, and these sites will have more and more exposure as people get over the loss of their beloved ninjavideo site.)

i will do my best to update this art­icle reg­u­larly as i find other reli­able streaming sites.

www​.video​cluster​.net — clean, well organ­ised, and is rel­at­ively new. by far, the most reli­able divx streamer out there, but unlike ninjavideo, they do not have the band­width capa­city to stream to count­less people, so they have a queuing system with a rotating number of ‘free slots’, where you’ll need to refresh to get your stream. how­ever, if you pay a small fee, you can always get access whenever you want. as the site grows, i have a feeling that these free slots will become more and more rare. we’ll see how this exper­i­ment goes, but if you loved ninjavideo, this may be the closest sur­rogate avail­able at the moment. UNDER MAINTENANCE 07/​10/​10).

www​.re1ease​.net — upstarts ham­mering twitter right now, advert­ising them­selves as the première replace­ment for ninjavideo​.net — that remains t0 be seen. at first glance, looks like they’re updating very reg­u­larly, and i would not be sur­prised if the same people behind ninjavideo are behind this one. (as it turns out, VOD, the admin has told me they are not at all related to ninjavideo.) def­in­itely worth checking out. very nicely organ­ised and provides altern­ative links where pos­sible. run by people who clearly care about what they’re doing.

www​.ice​films​.info — ice­films has been around for a while. influ­enced by ninjavideo, they’ve started to come out with ‘daily lineups’, so it’s a great place to check out reg­u­larly as they will post shows as quickly as pos­sible after they’ve aired. the site’s well organ­ised, though a little cluttered. unfor­tu­nately, all videos are hosted on megaup­load. you’ll need to either install a grease­monkey script or use their book­marklet to watch most videos. click here for instruc­tions.

www​.tv​-dome​.net — reg­u­larly updated with a clean, wordpress-​driven inter­face. unfor­tu­nately, they mostly only carry flash streams… and all videos are hosted off­site, so they stand a much better chance of sur­viving the mpaa onslaught.

www​.tvshack​.cc — a clone of tvshack​.net. basic­ally, these crafty people just backed up their data­base, and moved the site onto an entirely new domain. it’s the internet. you can’t stop it.

www​.sidereel​.com — a social net­working site where links can be added to epis­odes to shows for free streaming. it can be some­what unre­li­able because streaming sites go up and down all the time, but if you’re looking for a place to find alternate streaming links, this is prob­ably the best site out there. it’s towing the fine line between legal and illegal many links are to legit­imate broad­casters and their ser­vices, while most user-​submitted links are pir­ated copies.

www​.ovguide​.com — and if you get really des­perate, ovguide is pretty much the google of streaming video. organ­ised into cat­egories. and a col­lec­tion of pretty much every streaming video site on the internet. go here to keep up to date on all the streaming sites avail­able on the internet.

if you have other favourite sites, please share them in the com­ments sec­tion below.