PopcornTime.io, the most popular fork of the Popcorn Time project, has been shut down. In case you've been living under a rock Popcorn Time is an application that allows you to stream TV shows and movies from popular torrent trackers, from a particularly user-friendly and functional UI.

PopcornTime.io developer Wally informs TF that he has shut down the fork’s servers. This likely marks the end of the most-used Popcorn Time variant.

“I shutdown all the servers, there is nothing I can do anymore. I deleted any logs that can be harmful for any other dev,” Wally says.

The reasons behind the death of PopcornTime.io are complex, read the source article for further information. What do you think about this? Did you use Popcorntime.io yourself?

Source: TorrentFreak article

 

[Eren]

Nooooooo but why ?

 

[DjoeN]

Anyway, Kodi has that function to with the correct plugin.

I never like torrents (and never will), still oldfashion for my movies, watch them in theather or buy them on DVD/BR (but mostly i don't have time to watch movies anyway)
But for my Anime and some TV shows i have my RPi2 setup with sickrage, sabnzbd, autosub and KODI, a fully automated usenet solution

 

[DaFixer]

Anyway, Kodi has that function to with the correct plugin.

I never like torrents (and never will), still oldfashion for my movies, watch them in theather or buy them on DVD/BR (but mostly i don't have time to watch movies anyway)
But for my Anime and some TV shows i have my RPi2 setup with sickrage, sabnzbd, autosub and KODI, a fully automated usenet solution

Same here, I have 2 Kodi RP2/MiniPC setups,one in the livingroom and second one in the bedroom and Qnap 419 Pro (fully loaded).
Becase I love movies and my wife love to see her stuff (GTST,Flikken Maastricht). Best thing is that my wife can easy watch movies in bed.
And me playing games/drinking beer in the livingroom on the big screen

 

[link6155]

Nice UI, but poor protection. It was basically a torrent streaming client wrapped in a pretty interface. The look and feel of the application gave a false sense of trustworthiness for those who are not so tech savvy. As a result a lot of people found themselves in lawsuit from big Hollywood studios.

 

[LightyKD]

I disliked it, It just didn't seem very user friendly to me. There was also talks of them installing stuff without your knowledge by flixanity etc. Never worked properly for iOS (even jailbroke ones)

If you're phone is jailbroke download Movie Box 3, only thing you'll ever need.

I agree. I have it on my OUYA and I just wanted to stream easily, not download the files locally to my console for playback. I hope whatever comes out next has a better, controller friendly UI.

 

[elm]

Apparently I've been living under a rock.

Yeah me too.. never heard of it either

 

[Hielkenator]

Kodi and fusion installer is all I say.....

 

[Doran754]

Kodi is alright, still needs alot of work. The best things currently you have to pay for like SportsDonkey etc. It's good for watching TV/Movies though.

 

[pastaconsumer]

rip.
In the world we live in, those who used it will soon find alternatives. I personally never used it (due to my lack of interest in film piracy) but it looked like a cool little app. Damn shame it now joins Napster and Limewire.

 

[Apache Thunder]

I would need god tier internet to stream things from torrents...I have never had a internet connection fast enough for that, so I've always just done it the old fashioned way.....Going to a torrent site and downloading the torrent and waiting for it to finish downloading.

I don't really like streaming things because for the most part I've watched everything offline predownloaded. Even though a lot of the anime I watch I can probably stream reliably now as my internet is better then it used to be, old habits die hard apparently and I still prefer to go the long way around to obtain something. I'm aware of sites like Crunchyroll and Fundimation, but I just don't really use them. Mainly because everything is behind paywalls. If they had latest episodes that I didn't have to wait a week for, I'd consider it. I don't have the income to spend on subscriptions to sites like that. So I go to less then legal alternatives.

So this literally makes no difference for me. I never used Popcorn Time. Torrents never download fast enough to be streamed. Much less in a large enough continuous block that would be useful. I guess Popcorn time managed to actually get seeders to send you the beginning of the file and in order. Because right now it's just random chunks of the files coming in when they feel like it. Can't really stream files if there's a thousand tiny gaps in the file. So it's interesting there's a "torrent client" that downloads files in order. Perhaps it finds the fastest seeder and only uses that seeder because using multiple download chunks works great for downloading something fast, but not so much if you want to "stream" it and watch it as it downloads. There would be too many holes in the file due to all the concurrent connections.

I guess a consequence of having poor internet speeds relative to everyone else is that I fall behind the times.

Though in this instance I probably wouldn't have used it anyway. I have always just searched for a specific thing I wanted and didn't really "channel surf" in the way that people still like to do. Having all those movies and shows being presented to me in a neat GUI so I have options is nice. But for me that's information overload and I steer away from sites like Chrunchyroll or the less legal places like Popcorn Time. I figure out what shows I want to watch, then I go and snag them up which usually involves downloading them. I don't really stream much. YouTube is really the only place I go for when I want to watch random assorted content and it's mainly user generated content. Whole different category and that's the only reason YouTube has caught on with me. But for mainstream shows and movies, I don't stream them.

 

[yodamerlin]

SNIP

Part of the BitTorrent... I don't know... framework? Specification? Well, anyway, part of it includes downloading from peers in order, so you request which chunks of the file to download. Some movie formats don't work like this though.

 

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah. But I assume bittorrent works like any download manager. Multiple file chunks are downloaded at the same time. So if one's internet isn't fast enough or the peers being used can't upload fast enough, the holes in the files in the part you are trying to view won't get filled in quick enough. Thus streaming it wouldn't be practical. I guess I'd either need much faster internet then I have now or something like Popcorn Time does something more fancy with how it prioritizes peer traffic that might have made it work for me. But either way I probably wouldn't have used it even if it did work correctly for me.

 

[CalebW]

Apparently, the project is being continued in a copyright free, stripped down version of PT. https://butterproject.github.io/

 

[Xzi]

Haha, I must've been living under a rock then.
Then again, I have very little interest in TV series most of the time.

This is the old way of things. Now we have shows like Fargo and Rick and Morty and Game of Thrones which must be watched, for they are the new gods.

 

[Kayot]

I've been living under a rock.

Also, torrents aren't used for just illegal activities. I download Linux distro's with it. Though honestly, with how broadly copy right laws are written, I'm sure downloading Linux is somehow punishable by law.

 

[shaunj66]

Loved the idea but connecting to public trackers is a big no-no

 

[Xzi]

Count me among those who did not know what Popcorn Time was. Then again, I get Hulu and Netflix and HBO GO and Xfinity On-Demand. Some of them leeched, but that pretty much covers everything I want to watch. I go to friends' houses or my parents' place for NFL games.

 

[TobiasAmaranth]

Out of interest: Does someone happen to know any jurisdiction where the downloading (as opposed to the uploading) part of unlicensed (or license breaking) P2P data transfers gets actively prosecuted?

Saw a story of 11 in Oregon from Popcorn Time also posted on Torrent Freak. Movies seem to be far more dangerous to leech than TV shows, and TV shows likely more dangerous than games currently, and then games more dangerous than anime.

Amusingly enough I only heard about Popcorn Time a few days ago. Read up on it, and the dangers, and decided not to use it. It would be nice to know of a few additional options with torrent pooling sites starting to become less populated (getting harder to find certain new stuff on KAT for example), but hell, eventually we'll have to all switch back to transfers on mIRC servers, lol.

 

[NostalgicMillennial]

popcorn time will NEVER be shut down..

....my ass

 

[HaloEffect17]

I personally don't have anything against rocks... but, you know, to each their own.