In parallel to the use of trackers, I am a regular user of direct downloads, and I see, for all releases, the use of Winrar to split in various parts the (video) file.
But why should someone employ a compressor when you can't compress big files?
Out there there are better alternatives, one of this is HJSplit, that is free and also available on almost every platform. It is faster in splitting and faster in joining. There is FFSJ (even faster but only for Windows), JFSplit and many more.
Why people use Winrar so much?