Torrent vs News Servers
The question is kind of like PC or Mac -- well, without all the nasty fanboy stuff.
Torrents:
Torrents are popular because they are relatively easy to use and the installed base is large enough now that popular movies/music/appz are readily available. I use a program called utorrent and it seems sufficient. The problem with torrents, of course, is that you are limited a bit more in transfer speed. Torrents are basically shared on hundreds of computers around the world and these computers are subject to slow bandwidth available in those areas, limited transfer dedicated to the application handling the torrent, and regular ol' internet bottlenecks. Sometimes you can get great download rates and other times, not so good. This is dependent not only on the bandwidth that the hosting computer has access to, but also the availability of complete download sets. That is, as you are downloading a file, you are also uploading to others: this allows more access, but gives you a false sense of the likelihood of getting files quickly. This is important when discussing movies in particular - as most movies are over 4 GB . Getting a partial download after having waited 24-36 hours or more for the file is not only annoying, it's a tremendous waste of resources. I have not had great success with torrents and dvd movie files, but then, I don't download movies using torrents unless they are compressed AVI/MPG/WMV files. These compressed files are maybe 500mb to 1gb and seem to be more readily available.
News Servers:
News Servers are an excellent resource for downloading huge files sets because the files reside on servers not on individual computers as is the case with torrents. Because these files sit on servers, complete uploads take a bit longer to become available (individuals upload them at whatever speed their ISP offers - so it can take a few days to get the files up). The flip-side benefit of files sitting on the server is that they are available to download for far longer and with much greater stability than torrents. Additionally, News Servers generally have very fast connections so download is basically up to the speed your ISP offers. At 10-12mb/s a 4 gb download takes less than 90 mins. My DSL connection is limited to 3mb/s and it takes about 4 hours to get a complete file set. Still, I believe that this is better than relying on torrents.
Accessing News Servers
News Servers are a little like email. News Servers require specialized programs to access the info - not a terrible problem, but it does take some self-training. Also, not all news servers are created equal. In all likelihood you will be disappointed in the offering that comes *free* with your connection.
Most ISPs are not too keen on feeding high-bandwidth use, so they make no real effort to guarantee that the news server that they offer gets all the posts and there is no guarantee how long they will retain these posts. I have never had a good experience trying to use the included news server provided by ISPs in this area, but perhaps your experience will be different. (more on this in a sec).
Back to connecting to the news server: I use a program called NewsRover. You can get a 30 day trial here ( www.newsrover.com ). The program costs $30 or so. The reason that I use this program is that it has a Search feature that makes finding the files you want pretty easy. Most News Server programs (called News Readers) do not have this function which means you have to not only download all the headers (headers are subject lines in the posts that indicate what the actual message is about) but you will have to actually skim through them (there were 28 million headers in one of the main dvd groups recently. Not only does it take a while to download that list, but you better have lots of ram and plenty of processing power in your computer, because that's a lot of data to access.
Choosing a News Server Provider
I suggest that anyone serious about getting movies subscribe to a Premium News Server package. I would also suggest you spring for the unlimited account for the first month or two because you will likely exceed the 20-30GB offered on limited accounts. each movie is 4 GB so its not so hard to understand why. You can see a review of Premium Servers here: ( http://www.newsgroupservers.net/ ). I can vouch for Giganews ( I used them for over 2 years without complaint). I recently switched to PowerUsenet.com because they resell the Giganews service at about 1/2 the price (approx $12-15 / month for an unlimited account). You should also check with your ISP about who provides their News Server access and how long they store messages. Giganews retention is about 120 days for all binary files which is best in the industry. This kind of retention allows you to download a file that was posted three or four months ago - something that is very difficult to do in torrrents because people are more apt to delete files from their computers over a few weeks time. News servers really answer all the calls for the dvd downloader because they are fast, available and with a little instruction, trouble free.
A couple of programs you should familiarize yourself with are WinRar (http://www.rarlab.com/) and QuickPar (http://www.quickpar.org.uk/) and the occassional file join with a program called HJSplit (http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/).
While I wrote this off the top of my head, I will add some reference sites that may explain things a little better for you. I know I got a little carried away.