Popcorn Time Joins Android Mobile App Marketplace: Movie Torrent Streaming Software Now Also Works on Windows XP
Popular torrent application Popcorn Time has joined the mobile app marketplace. The movie torrent downloader and streaming software was abandoned by its original developers, but it has been carried on by two other groups of developers. The teams have taken advantage of its open-source nature to build their own parallel versions of the service without requiring support from the original developers. One of these two, based out of Time4Popcorn.eu, has taken it to the next platform, making it usable on Android devices.
As torrent software, the legality of the app is always at least a little murky. Simply sharing files via torrents is perfectly legal in most places, but it is in many places illegal to share any copyrighted files that way. Due to its contested nature and the question of which jurisdiction's definition of copyright to use on Internet-based platforms, few were surprised to see the original team fold under presumable pressure from the American media industry.
Using Popcorn Time is easy, but not without risk. The app uses a centralized server which runs its code remotely, making it susceptible to backdoors, takedowns and other types of malware. To date, no dangerous code has been found in Popcorn Time, but nothing prevents it from being inserted later.
For the first time, it will function on Windows XP. The creators also said that they are also building Chromecast support and a smart TV version.
Since the previous Popcorn Time, which was created on NodeWebkit, was unable to support the creators' idea, they created a new version utilizing Javascript, Delphi, and C++. The new version is more powerful and will consist of a new video player that can support multiple video formats. The makers have announced that these improvements will be used globally and is set for release as an open source project under GPL V3 license.
You can directly watch an assortment of series on the Popcorn Time updated version from Time4Popcorn.eu that is accessible for download on the operating systems of Windows only. However, extra support for subtitles in the series has not been added yet.