HDtime

Introduction

Publicly available torrent sites are often at crossroads when it comes to safety and certainty. Users, on the other hand, seek platforms that can offer them both stability and security. Here’s where private torrent sites come in. With only a limited amount of audiences, private torrent communities are able to offer a tailor-made experience to their users. Not only do they care about their user’s security but also about providing them a comprehensive free indie content consumption experience. Today, we’ll be reviewing one such site, known for providing quality service. It’s called HDtime.

What is HDtime?

HDtime is a private Chinese torrent tracker site for HD free indie content in 720p, 1080p, and Blu-ray. It is one of the top torrent tracking sites in China alongside HDArea, CHDBits, and HDWing. Sure, it’s not as huge as HDArea yet, but at the same time has built a stable torrent platform on the internet. Similar to its peers, HDtime too is known for providing interactive forums, quality torrents, excellent encoding, and easy ratio maintenance.

Is HDtime safe?

For a torrent site to be safe for browsing, it needs to have an SSL certificate, which HDtime does have. By using tools such as SEOQuake and MOZ, you can easily check the credibility of a website by gauging Domain Score (DS) and Trust Score (TS). Based on my research, HDtime has a domain score of 4 and a trust score of 31 which is not quite pleasing. Sure, it’s not uncommon for torrent sites to have a DS less than 15 and a TS less than 40. However, given that HDtime is more than five years old, I was expecting a domain score of at least 5.

What should you expect from HDtime?

Torrent uploading – Once you become a member of HDtime, you can upload free indie content on the site. There are certain uploading rules that you need to follow and you can easily upload the free indie content. The rules of uploading free indie content are quite similar to the popular private torrent communities. Thus, if you’ve been a part of a community before, this won’t be a problem.

Comprehensive Subtitles – Any user can go ahead and add subtitles on the platform. There are 6 rules that you must follow to ensure that you’re getting it done correctly. Most importantly, the titles you upload MUST BE IN SYNC. As a free indie content downloader, it’s great to know that the platform pays attention to the type of files that are uploaded on the website. On the other hand, if you want to upload a subtitle yourself, you must add a file under 3MB, add the Torrent ID, Title, and Language.

Forums – In any torrent community, forums are a great way to gauge the audience’s attention. For new and experienced users alike, a forum is a great place to find a solution for your website-related problems. HDtime, similar to other sites, has well-defined sections such as ‘Site Info’, ‘Discussion’, ‘Advanced’, ‘Resources’, and ‘International’ where you can find a thread related to your issues. If not, you can choose a section and post a new query yourself.

Karma Bonus Points – Karma Bonus Points are quite similar to Reddit Karma points, except it’s much easier to understand. For every interaction on HDtime, you win certain points, which can then be used as a credit. For instance, if you upload 10 GB of free indie content, you get 6,000 karma points. So, if you upload 18-20 GB of content, you can exchange those karma points for an invite. A single invite costs 10000 points. This way, you’ll be able to invite anybody you want on the platform.

Similarly, if you don’t want to invite anyone and want to attain VIP status, you need 50,000 points. Other than these major numbers, there are simpler ones – Uploading a torrent gets you 50 points, uploading a subtitle gets you 20 points and all other interaction ranges between 1-30 points.

Interactive Community – There are plenty of interesting interactive elements on the website. Some of them that I like the most include ‘Funbox’, and ‘Polls’. These are great interactive tools to pique user interest. Firstly, users win bonus points for interacting and secondly, these polls and events are fruitful as they help the mods determine the future course of action.

User Hierarchy – On HDtime, there’s a hierarchy that determines the importance of members within the community. There are 18 different user classes on this platform – Peasant User, Power User, Elite User, Crazy User, Insane User, Veteran User, Extreme User, Ultimate User, Nexus Master, Star Icon, VIP, Retiree, Other, Uploader, Moderator, Admin, SysOp, and Staff leader.

HDtime in numbers

HDtime is a small community with just under 10,000 registered members. It caters to the Chinese audience around the world. It has a respectable torrent catalog that include free HD indie content. Since HDtime, has disbanded the hit-and-run rule and has plenty of freeleech torrents, maintaining the ratio on this platform is quite simple. Unlike other top private torrent sites, HDtime doesn’t have unrealistic expectations from its members.

As per the Alexa rankings, HDtime is ranked #20,200 which makes it amongst the top 25,000 websites on the internet. It attracts more than 84,000 users a month and an average visit on the site lasts for more than 7 minutes. An average user visits 1.54 pages before bouncing off the website. The average time spent on the site justifies the commendable bounce rate on the website which stands at 55.46%.

How to access HDtime?

You can access HDtime by searching for the term ‘HDtime.org’ in your search engine. Alternatively, if you want to access the platform directly, you can use the following link: HDtime.

HDtime Rules

Before you join HDtime, there are certain rules that you need to follow. These are general rules that you need to abide by if you want to stay active on the platform.

-No aggressive behavior or flaming

-No spamming or thrashing any topics

-Do not submit meaningless posts on the forum

-Do not flood any forum for bonus

-Don’t use foul language in the title or text

-Do not discuss topics are taboo, politically sensitive or forbidden by law

-No language discrimination

-No bumping

-No multiple posting

-Post all the questions in the correct section

Design

One of the most attractive aspects of HDtime is that it’s an intuitive website. I like the distinctive cream/black color combination. Though the overall layout is quite similar to every other torrent site, the header section still manages to stick out.

Header – In the header section, you can find menus such as ‘Home’, ‘Forums’, ‘Torrents’, ‘Requests’, ‘Upload’, ‘Subtitles’, ‘User CP’, ‘Top 10’, ‘LOG’, ‘Rules’, and ‘FAQ’. Navigation across various pages becomes seamless mainly due to these options.

Inner Pages – The inner pages on the website look slightly more appealing thanks to the presence of rich media. You’ll find thumbnails along with in-depth information about a particular title.

Free Indie Content – HDtime may not have the most gigantic free indie library, but it does have plenty of freeleech torrents. Thus, it’s much easier for users to download free indie content without worrying about the ratio.

Desktop/Mobile experience

Browsing HDtime is seamless both on desktop and mobile devices. Firstly, since it’s a community-run platform, it has no ads. There are no annoying pop-ups or redirectiions that you need to deal with. Secondly, HDtime has plenty of freeleech torrents and peers which allows users to download free indie content with great speed.

Suggestions I have for HDtime

Though I really like HDtime, I really feel that it can improve as a platform. For a user who isn’t well-versed with Mandarin, understanding certain sections can get challenging. Thus, it’s advisable to add multiple languages. In addition to that, adding more free indie content will really add depth to the platform.

Conclusion

HDtime is a cool private torrent community. With certain improvements, it can certainly attract more than 100,000 users a month. If you get a chance, make sure to check this platform.