Sickrage/Medusa vs Sonarr and Couchpotato vs Radarr

[hernandito]

Hi Guys,

 

Let the games begin. Why do you like one vs the other between SR/Medusa vs Sonarr and CP vs Radarr?

 

I have switched back and forth between SB and Sonar various times. Currently I am on Medusa (SB port) and Couchpotato. I have tried Radarr as well. But the ONLY reason I stick with these is because I need the "Subtitle Download" features of both of these. I don't hear too well, and the subtitles help.

 

I know Medusa now handles the error detection from nzbGet using NZBtoMedia script.

 

Couch does OK finding releases for me. But I also monitor all my indexers for new releases.

 

 

[ashman70]

I haven't used CP since I was running it in a Windows VM long before I started using unRAID and dockers which is when I switched to sonarr and I tried sickrage. I liked Sonarr however I started having weird problems with it when I wanted to setup automation in terms of copying new downloads to another server, Medusa does this for me nicely and so I am happy with that. Although I tried updating Medusa a few weeks back and it borked so I am stuck on release 29 for now. What is this error detection you are talking about with  nzbGet, I used SABnzb however I did try nzbGET for awhile and liked it.

[jrd680]

Radarr is fantastic and hopefully Sonarr has fixed the issues by now. Put in a request if not. Radarr is growing steadily unlike CP.

[MrCrispy]

I switched from Sabnzbd + Sickrage to Nzbget + Sonarr, its a much better combo.

[mrow]

I use SickGear, which is another fork of SB. It was the only one that downloaded episodes the way I wanted to. I like to download every quality copy of a show that comes out, from 720p HDTV on up through 1080p bluray. That way I'm assured I have the best quality copy that's out there. SickRage will download 2 qualities then just stop, regardless of whether you have it set to download higher qualities. Apparently this is a known issue with no plans for it to be fixed. I've thought about trying out Sonarr but SickGear works so well for me that I've never bothered to.

 

I did however make the jump from CP to Radarr after using CP for over 5 years. CP was really finicky and would often not download things on my watch list or it would download some weird/shitty copy of whatever movie. Radarr just works.

[bnevets27]

Was on Sickbeard from day one. Then SickRage, now Medusa which is the natural progression. But a little while ago installed Sonarr and have it running also. Each has their pros and cons. Hopefully both will improve on the cons, at that point there might be little difference. From what I can tell most of the features that are on one and missing from the other are already added to the list of features that will be added in the future to their respective projects.

 

The major difference is episode quality management. 

Medusa allows you to set allowed and preferred. It will try to always get the preferred and won't stop trying till it does. But with the way Medusa works you can't work your way up the quality ladder. So if you set the following as allowed, HDTV 720p , WEBDL 720p and bluray 720p as preferred. Medusa will download HDTV 720p first (if its the first it sees available). If a WEBDL 720p is released it won't download it as its just allowed like HDTV 720p is. It will however download and overwrite the file if it finds bluray 720p.

 

Sonarr will upgrade to each quality. So from HDTV 720p to WEBDL 720p then to bluray 720p.

 

Quality control:

Sonarr allows you to set the size limits (minimums and maximums) of each quality. For example. you can set bluray 720p to have a min size of 2GB and max size of 4GB.

(Medusa doesn't have this feature)

 

Sonarr has "Must include" and "Must not include" in file/release name. This can be used to block subs or certain release groups or force subs/groups, can be used for many other things also.

Soanrr also has tags but I'm not well versed in how they really work.

 

Medusa has "Must include" and "Must not include" in file/release name, same as sonarr.

Medusa also have "Preferred" and "Undesired". (Sonarr doesn't have this feature)

Which is really helpful. For example you can prefer 5.1/DD etc for audio. If Medusa finds a release with 5.1/DD audio in the name it will prefer that over one that does not. Since its preferred then if it can't find a file with 5.1/DD it will download a release with 2.0. If one was to put 5.1/DD in "Must include" then if no files are found with 5.1/DD then any 2.0 release is blocked and you might end up with getting episodes.

 

Torrent/newsgroups

Both support Torrent/newsgroups. I know in Sonarr you can prefer one method over the other. In Medusa you can set the order in which trackers/indexers are searched.

No experience as to how each do this in practice.

 

Manual searching:

Both Medusa and Sonarr allow you to search manually and see all releases that match the show. Looks like SickGear should be able to do this also. SickRage can't do this.

 

Post processing:

Both do failed download handling, renaming and moving. Sickrage/gear/Medusa use nzbtomedia script. Sonarr does have better integration with sabnzbd/nzbget (no experience with nzbget). Sonarr shows download progress from the client to sonarr. Setup of post processing on sonarr is extremely simple. Though both get the job done.

 

GUI

Both of course have different GUI's. I find both have their strengths. Medusa allows a bit of customizing what you see inside a show. Summary of the two:

Sonarr:

Nice looking, simple not too much info in shown at once (pro or con depending). I find it has no less info then Medusa but requires more clicking around to get it.

 

Medusa:

In some ways isn't as pretty. But I actually prefer this GUI possibly due to starting way back on sickbeard. I do find it better for actually managing shows due to the amount of detail displayed without having popups and tabs which are used in sonarr. Simple things also like going to the details of each show without having to go back to the show list, like you have to in sonarr.

 

CP vs Radarr

That's easy CP was working pretty poorly. Radarr is working well and is very actively being developed. Not every feature from CP is in or work in Radarr yet but for the most part its all there.

Edited May 16, 2017 by bnevets27

[Nyghthawk]

Does medusa or sickrage allow you to use a different "Season" naming scheme? I noticed that sonarr uses TheTVDB is it? and sometimes the season is named by the year, while sick rage uses the standard seasons that the TV shows itself say.

 

This causes a lot of conflicts when trying to find the correct episode, as sometimes TheTVDB will say its season 11 episode 2 but sick rage will say its season 10 episode 22 or whatever. Then they will change it up and say season 2017, season 2016, and the searches through the nzb links and such do not find these episodes so you have to manually go and find the episode, manually download and sometimes manually rename just to get it on the right place. 

[strike]

Both sickrage and medusa have "scene exceptions" and "scene numbering". Scene exception is for when you want to add an alternative name to the show other than the name used on the indexer.  If you add a show from the tvdb/tvmaze as "ShowName 2017" but the show gets released as just "Showname" If you add an exception ("Showname") it will append to the original show name, as in it will search for both. It also works the other way, indexer says "showname" but the show gets released as "showname 2017", same with shows with "US, UK" etc. Just add an exception and your good to go.

 

Scene numbering is for when "the scene" and the indexers disagree on the order of the episodes. Scene releases it as s01e01 but the indexer says s01e02. When scene numbering is enabled it will query TheXEM database (which is a database who links the scene releases and the indexers together) so sickrage/medusa can get the right order in the eps.

 

Both also have options to enable "air by date" useful for talk shows etc..

 

I would go for medusa over sickrage tho, as medusa have more features and are the most actively developed fork of the two. 

[cpshoemake]

After development ceased on SickBeard I used Sonarr and SickRage together for awhile, splitting my shows between them. I prefer the interface of Sonarr but they work equally well. I think Sonarr has a small edge in usability, but not much. If you need subtitle handling, SickRage is the way to go.

 

Couchpotato is garbage in my opinion. I could never get it to do what I wanted, and preferred manual searching and download vs. logging into CP and making it download a specific release. I haven't tried Radarr, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try when I get time.