In this busy world we have little time for anything other than our work. Leisure from work recharges us. The small break we take in-between our job which may extend from a few minutes to some hour is utilized by us in the task we love and appreciate. It again ranges from – Cracking Jokes, Playing, sleeping or watching daily soaps and Movies.
Watching Movies is liked by most of us. We rely on Television or Various Video Streaming websites (YouTube, Metacafe, etc) to watch movies. In TV we don’t have choice and on Video Streaming website you rarely gets a latest movie. How about something that gives you an interface to watch daily soaps and Movies of your choice of all genres with lots of Language Support?
Here comes a tool ‘Popcorn Time‘ which performs all the above discussed function and the performance of which is out-of-box.
What is Popcorn Time?
Popcorn Time is a Free and Open Source Software released under General Public License and written in programming languages which includes – HTML, JavaScript and CSS, which streams video on-line for free without the need of filling silly forms or adding your credit card details. It is available for all major operating platforms including Linux, Mac OS and Windows.
Features of Popcorn Time
- Great Movies Availability.
- No Restriction and you can watch Movies as many times as you want.
- Awesome Catalog – Automatically finds best version available and starts streaming it.
- Best Quality – Stream HD Movie, Instantaneously.
- Drag-and-Drop subtitles ‘.srt files’.
- Supports 44 Different Languages.
- Icons and Links for ‘About Dialog’ – Better presentation.
- Full Window Supported.
- Added a Help for Key Board Shortcuts.
- Quality Filter for Movies.
- Search box to search movies.
How Popcorn Time Works?
The movies in Popcorn time is streamed using bittorrent Protocol. The Application program streams pirated movies directly from torrent trackers. The User Interface of Popcorn Time enables a user to search movies based upon a huge genre and categories. The film is presented in Thumbnails along with the Film Title, their ratings, Year, a small review and the subtitles availability in various Languages. It has a ‘WATCH IT NOW‘ button which makes it possible to stream the movie instantaneously without any formality.
Popcorn Time is used all around the globe in all the countries including those two countries who does not have INTERNET connection as reported by Popcorn time Official site. In some countries the users were getting legal threats against pirated movies. To FIX this Popcorn Time now has encrypted its BitTorrent Traffic and Included VPN service which ensures the identity of third party users can no longer be traced thus avoiding unnecessary risk.
The other side of the story…
Streaming of pirated movies brought this application in debate if this is legal or illegal. We are not going to discuss if this is legal or not and for a FOSS Enthusiastic it rarely means anything. Well the controversy of streaming illegal pirated movies forced its developers to discontinue the project and as a result on March 14th of 2014, the official website of Popcorn Times and GitHub Repository were removed.
Popcorn Time announced that it was ceasing operations, in a blog post at http://getpopcornti.me/.
“Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives.
Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.
Later the Announcement
The development of Popcorn Time was taken over by two team and since then this project again moved into ‘Active‘ stage. At this point of time both the groups carrying out the development of Popcorn time uses their own and distinct websites. One is popcorntime.io and the other is Time4Popcorn.eu.
Installation of Popcorn Time in Linux
Download Popcorn Time source tarball package (latest version 0.3.7.2) from any of the two developers’ group website.
Alternatively, you may also use wget command to download tarballs directly in your terminal.
Note: You must have ‘xz-utils‘ package installed on the system to extract the ‘xz‘ format tarball. If not, install the package xz-utils using yum or apt package manager.
On 32-Bit Systems
$ wget https://get.popcorntime.io/build/Popcorn-Time-0.3.7.2-Linux32.tar.xz $ tar -xvf Popcorn-Time-0.3.7.2-Linux32.tar.xz # cd Popcorn-Time/ $ chmod 755 Popcorn-Time ./Popcorn-Time
On 64-Bit Systems
$ wget https://get.popcorntime.io/build/Popcorn-Time-0.3.7.2-Linux64.tar.xz $ tar -xvf Popcorn-Time-0.3.7.2-Linux64.tar.xz # cd Popcorn-Time/ $ chmod 755 Popcorn-Time ./Popcorn-Time
Note: In my Debian Jessie (sid/Testing) x86_64 architecture processor. I got the below warning message when I tried running Popcorn-Time.
$ ./Popcorn-Time ./Popcorn-Time: error while loading shared libraries: libudev.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I’ve fixed, by creating a symbolic link tolibudev.so.1 to libudev.so.
$ ln -sf /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
After that fix, I again tried running Popcorn-Time and I run without any glitch.
Testing Popcorn Time
Please accept the terms of service.
The second window says “This Popcorn Time Service will Never be taken Down. Enjoy”.
The Movie Gallery.
Check the effect when I put my mouse over a Movie Thumbnai (2nd row – 4th Column). You can mark “mark as seen” as well as “Add to bookmark”.
The next window upon clicking the Movies Tiles shows Information related to Movie like – Year, Play Time, Genre, No. of starts, A summary of what the movie is all about, Subtitles availability in Languages (see the flags), etc.
In popcorn time or VLC, Watch Trailer, Pixel choice in which you want to watch, subtitles, short description of the movie, magnet link Download and related information like torrent health, number of seeds, ratio, peers, etc.
And here the movie starts.
Watching Movie – Quality is High and i didn’t lagged any time (well my connection speed is good too). You have the option to pause and play movie, anytime.
The subtitles option. You can Import your own Subtitle ‘.srt‘ file just by dragging and droping. Change volume, minimise, maximize or close it (see the X on the Top Right).
TV Series Gallery. Play the same way.
Anime Gallery. Choose what to play
You may watch Movies, TV Series and Anime over a lot of Genre be it comedy or fantasy or fiction.
You also have the option to sort you favourite Movies/ TV Series or Anime by popularity, Year, Update, Name or Rating.
Settings Interface – Though you do not need to edit it unless you really mean it.
About Popcorn Time – Thanks to all the Designers and Developers who contribution make it project a success.
Conclusion
I personally feel this tool very Impressive. The real time torrent download and streaming of movie is brilliant. The tool really is a better alternative to Netflix. It is working out of box and seems promising. You will never let it go if you are a movie-hunter.
The Debate of Piracy has been in debate for long time and a debate topic looks in debate only. At least it rarely means anything in the world of FOSS. Enjoy!
That’s all for now. I’ll be here again with another Interesting Article. Till then Stay Tuned and Connected to Tecmint. Don’t Forget to provide us with your valuable feedback in the comment section below.
