Well I asked in the Super User thread and gazza-9115410 finally gave me the solution.

You have to use an older URL search structure for it to work again:

KAT|https://kat.ph/torrents/usearch/?q=

put that in the search provider list and it will work again.

Or rather, it will work again as long as they don't remove that older search option...

Hi, using KAT from uTorrent search engine list isn't working properly anymore. The reason is that using the format for search "kat.ph/usearch/searchterm" throws out a 404 error on the site, and THAT is because KAT search within the site is now of the format "kat.ph/usearch/searchterm/" (notice the last slash), and that is breaking the uTorrent search. Apparently utorrent requires the very last part of the URL to be the search term or it will fail. Or, I am not aware of how to bypass this and put the search term inside the URL rather than at the end. Either way, help is appreciated.

Well, it seems that the feeds are now working 100% A-OK no problems, at least for me. I'm going to mark this thread as solved now. If other people are still having problems with their feeds, I recommend you play around with the smart episode filter, or start a new thread with your problem. :)

Thanks for your help, KAT people!

There's definitely been progress in fixing this. I've been watching my feeds this past days to see if they all worked properly again. For what I can tell, some feeds work automatically again, and some still don't. None of them throw the bencoding error anymore, so I just don't know why the ones that work, work and the ones that don't work, don't.

I thought that it had something to do with the smart episode filter option, but I swear some feeds with smart episode filter on are downloading automatically, while others aren't.

Apparently setting the filter off does make the feeds download automatically, but of course that makes it annoying to have several torrents of the same episode download automatically when they pop up. So that is an issue still to be fixed.

I'll keep watching the behavior of the feeds, but good job so far dealing with the issue KAT guys. :)

I want to report what happened for a few days in case it helps somehow.

The KAT RSS feeds started loading torrents automatically for a few days, while they were linking with Torrage instead of Torcache. However, they did so erratically; it loaded torrents that weren't necessarily new. Maybe they weren't loading new torrents at all, but I can't confirm this 100% since it was only for a few days, and indeed Torrage was not up all the time.

Downloading manually from the right-click menu still didn't work, but instead of showing the bencoding error, it showed either a timeout error or a HTTP code error that I forget. Selecting "open URL in browser" opened the torrage.com link page (which is how I know it switched to Torrage at that time).

Right now it's back to Torcache and thus has the exact same problems as before.

Maybe the KAT team was trying to test the behavior of the site with Torrage. If this is the case, I think it's nice that they're trying alternatives that may end up solving the issue. Even if it didn't work 100% OK, it still worked better than what Torcache does now.

Erm this is a hoax. In the movies they only travel from 1985, 30 years into the past (1955), and 30 years into the future, 2015, not 2012. (Plus 100 years into the past by accident, 1885, in Part III.) The exact date they go to in Part II in fact is October 21 2015.

http://mashable.com/2012/06/27/back-to-the-future-hoax/

Okay. I strongly suspect that the problem is similar to the Torcache bug causing problems with uTorrent (as described here: http://kat.ph/community/show/6298/ and here: http://kat.ph/community/show/23718/?page=2#9442325 ) since two years ago.

The difference is that with this old problem, it only happens sometimes, and you only need to use the magnet link instead of the torrent link to fix it (or change the address from torcache to torrage). However, the RSS problem happens with all torrents in a feed, and a user cannot use the same fix with RSS feeds, because feeds are automated, and have nothing to do with magnet links as they work right now.

Since the bug problem with Torcache is still present since two years ago, I would like to ask if there is work being done to solve the issues with Torcache or not.

I know from a non-RSS user perspective there's no true motivation to fix the issue when you have magnet links that solve everything. But I would like KAT to consider people like me who depend on RSS feeds to use KAT. Since you're offering RSS feeds here, then you should make sure they are working correctly with the most popular and recommended torrent program out there, right?

Maybe there's even a way to have RSS feeds with magnet links instead of torrent links, and that would solve it. But I'm no expert, so it's just an idea.

Anyway, r00tH4cK3r asked for screenshots, but since he didn't specify of what, I'm gonna post some images that describe the issue and the filters he was asking about.

First the status of a regular KAT RSS feed on uTorrent. Notice the "Status" column, it simply says "RSS" which means it hasn't downloaded any of the torrents on the list:



Compare with the ShowRSS feed, which has managed to automatically download all of its torrents without problem:



Now, trying to manually download any torrent on a KAT RSS feed throws the "bencoding" error:



And, selecting the "Open URL in browser" option opens a browser page of Torcache, after which it starts downloading the torrent proper in uTorrent:



Next the "Edit Feed..." dialog. Having the "smart episode filter" on or off for KAT RSS feeds makes no difference, no automatic downloads whatsoever.



Finally, the RSS Downloader filter options. They are empty/default. (I don't use this at all. I had never even noticed this option before I was made aware of it here):



Again, any help or ideas are on this are appreciated.

Thanks for your attention KAT team.

Thanks for your help. Here is the case for me:

1. I am using the latest stable version (3.1.3 build 27207 32-bit). uTorrent automatically asks me to update to the most recent (stable) version as soon as a new one is available. It seems the problem started right after updating a month ago (there have been a few other updates since then too).

2. I don't know what filters you're referring to exactly. If you're talking about the filter settings you get from the RSS Downloader option when you right-click a feed in uTorrent, I don't use these. They're all empty. The only filter I use is the "Smart Episode Filter" option you get in the "Edit Feed" window. BUT I have feeds with the smart episode filter option off, and these don't download torrents automatically anymore either.

3. I don't understand what you're referring to. If it has to do with something other than the filters I mentioned, then please tell me how I should crosscheck settings like you say.

I can post screenshots, but I'm not sure of what you'd want screenshots of. A feed, or the feed options, the RSS Downloader...

I'm not a torrent expert, so I don't understand what you're talking about. Googling "Utorrent bin coding errors" frankly didn't help.
What do you mean trying magnet link? The problem is with the RSS feeds, not individual torrents. Obviously single torrents and magnet links still work with uTorrent. It's the RSS feeds that are failing.

Dude, people have said this before: we have already tried going to older versions. The problem persists.
I would like to know, and I have asked this several times before, if KAT has changed the way it indexes (or whatever it's called) torrents with torcache in the last weeks. That's what the people at the utorrent forums are saying caused the problem.