What Am I Watching Right now?

SeawaySensFan wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:Whoa, sounds fancy nerd.

Its not fancy at all. The extent of what I understand about it is I set up network sharing on Windows, I downloaded this Popcorn Time and it plays movies on my TV for free!

WP Rager got me thinking about the android box thing and theres an Android Emulator for Windows so I can have these media box apps on my PC. ShowBox seems to be the one the kids like.

Slow down with the techno-babble, point dexter.

Popcorn Time is available on the Google Play Store (i.e. for Android). But it doesn't play torrent files without dowloading them first. It streams content from some servers. Right now they say they have 700 movies to chose fro without any subscription. So I'll just go ahead and assume selection is very limited. Then you can probably subscribe to a premium service for more content.

Netflix will let you try everything for 2 weeks for free. After 2 weeks if you are cheap you can probably just get another e-mail and do another 2 weeks for free.

One more new show for the hopper. Mr. Robot, on USA Network (not sure, do we get that here?) will be premiering on June 24th. It's been shown at two movie festivals and won the Audience Award at one of them. Full pilot is apparently available online. Here's the extended trailer:



The lead has been in a few things -- I remember him as the miniature Pharaoh from the Night at the Museum movies.

wprager wrote:Popcorn Time is available on the Google Play Store (i.e. for Android).  But it doesn't play torrent files without dowloading them first.  It streams content from some servers.  Right now they say they have 700 movies to chose fro without any subscription.  So I'll just go ahead and assume selection is very limited.  Then you can probably subscribe to a premium service for more content.

Netflix will let you try everything for 2 weeks for free.  After 2 weeks if you are cheap you can probably just get another e-mail and do another 2 weeks for free.

Well, I got it from their site for my PC and it does stream torrents. I don't see anything about subscription and, without counting the movies, the content they do have is appealing. I think Ex-Machina is the most recent movie on there but I haven't checked this morning. Plus there's a lot of recent home video releases like Taken 3, Equalizer, Birdman...

What I meant by "not streaming torrents" is that you can't arbitrarily choose a torrent from any torrent site -- i.e. you are limited to streaming what's in their library.

And you really are streaming for free? They don't make you watch an ad first?

Hmm, just read the wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time

The original Popcorn Time software was a multi-platform, open source BitTorrent client which included an integrated media player. The program and its forks of the same name are free alternatives to subscription-based video streaming services (such as Netflix). Popcorn Time used sequential downloading to play copies of films listed by the website yts.to (earlier yify-torrents.com & yts.re), also known as YIFY (although other trackers can be added and used manually).[4]

Following its inception, Popcorn Time quickly received positive media attention, with some[5] comparing the app to Netflix due to its ease of use. After this increase in popularity, the program was abruptly taken down by its original developers on March 14, 2014 due to pressure from the MPAA.[6] Since then, Popcorn Time has been forked by several other development teams to maintain the program and produce new features.

So it started out as a bittorrent client with an integrated media player but then was taken down by the MPAA.

I was wrong, it actually does play torrents (and even read in the wiki page that you can even use torrent trackers from other sites). This would work for recent stuff because you'll have lots of seeders. With older/rarer stuff it would be more difficult to get the bits in chronological order in real-time.

Did they try to get around the legal aspects of pirating by only keeping enough of the torrent to play it (and then getting rid of the parts it finished playing)? Interesting concept. In Canada the downloading is not illegal but uploading is (or at least that's how it used to be) so if they use sequential downloading (only asking for bit X+1 after receiving bit X) and discarding that bit right after playing it then I suppose that would be "legal"? But we all know it's illegal.

http://www.cultofmac.com/298976/qa-Diddle-popcorn-time/

EDIT: The URL had a nasty word and it got filtered.  Hopefully this works:

qa-Diddle-popcorn-time

EDIT2: Nope, it filters things even inside a URL tag. Just replace "Diddle" in that link with, you know.

wprager wrote:What I meant by "not streaming torrents" is that you can't arbitrarily choose a torrent from any torrent site -- i.e. you are limited to streaming what's in their library.

And you really are streaming for free?  They don't make you watch an ad first?

Right, they post posters of movies that you click on. Basically it's very much like NETFLIX in that respect.

I'm only guessing but their movie selection is probably picked on the basis that they know the torrents are going to come through and that the quality is high? So far all I've seen is DVD quality. Maybe that changes but so far so good and I haven't read any user reviews that say this will happen.

wprager wrote:Hmm, just read the wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time

The original Popcorn Time software was a multi-platform, open source BitTorrent client which included an integrated media player. The program and its forks of the same name are free alternatives to subscription-based video streaming services (such as Netflix). Popcorn Time used sequential downloading to play copies of films listed by the website yts.to (earlier yify-torrents.com & yts.re), also known as YIFY (although other trackers can be added and used manually).[4]

Following its inception, Popcorn Time quickly received positive media attention, with some[5] comparing the app to Netflix due to its ease of use. After this increase in popularity, the program was abruptly taken down by its original developers on March 14, 2014 due to pressure from the MPAA.[6] Since then, Popcorn Time has been forked by several other development teams to maintain the program and produce new features.

So it started out as a bittorrent client with an integrated media player but then was taken down by the MPAA.

I was wrong, it actually does play torrents (and even read in the wiki page that you can even use torrent trackers from other sites).  This would work for recent stuff because you'll have lots of seeders.  With older/rarer stuff it would be more difficult to get the bits in chronological order in real-time.  

Did they try to get around the legal aspects of pirating by only keeping enough of the torrent to play it (and then getting rid of the parts it finished playing)?  Interesting concept.  In Canada the downloading is not illegal but uploading is (or at least that's how it used to be) so if they use sequential downloading (only asking for bit X+1 after receiving bit X) and discarding that bit right after playing it then  I suppose that would be "legal"?  But we all know it's illegal.

I pay for Netflix, I pay for cable and I send my daughter to the movies at least once a week and often twice so I sleep pretty good.

By the way, "DVD quality" is really pretty bad. Surprisingly, Netflix is very good, and I don't even have a very good connection (advertized as 10M, sometimes gets to 17, sometimes way less). And Netflix has a few 4K titles but I think you need a minimum of 15 or 20 Mbps. They might have to implement some buffering ability in the Netflix apps because not everyone has access to those speeds.

But back to the PQ, saw a 4K TV at the store and it was phenomenal.

wprager wrote:By the way, "DVD quality" is really pretty bad.  Surprisingly, Netflix is very good, and I don't even have a very good connection (advertized as 10M, sometimes gets to 17, sometimes way less).  And Netflix has a few 4K titles but I think you need a minimum of 15 or 20 Mbps.  They might have to implement some buffering ability in the Netflix apps because not everyone has access to those speeds.

But back to the PQ, saw a 4K TV at the store and it was phenomenal.  

I said DVD quality not to overstate the picture quality which is probably bluray quality and then have you nitpick how it's slightly below bluray.

Anywho. It's free movies. Enjoy. Or don't. I will.

Not nit picking at all. DVD is 480p which, back in its day, was a tremendous improvement over 480i. I remember my first progressive scan TV when I flipped by DVD player to output a progressive scan picture -- WHOA! I don't remember getting that same impression switching from DVD to blu ray but that was (as I found out later) because by TV automatically switched to 720p and not 1080i or 1080p. And up to that point I had been using a good upscaling (Faroudja) player, so the difference was somewhat minor.

However now that I have a true 1080p set the difference between DVD and either blu ray or Netflix HD is striking.

It's 2015, hoverboards are real, and the Cubs will win the World Series!

If you want to see the RedBlacks' pre-season game, Hamilton is streaming it:
http://ticats.ca/watchlive

Fan hit in the head by a foul-back, taken off on a stretcher.



Where the hell is the backstop?

And just a couple days earlier, I think, another woman gets hit in the face with a broken bat, suffering "life threatening injuries":

Hah! The Real Housewives of Westeros:

http://tvline.com/2015/06/12/game-of-thrones-parody-video-real-housewives-of-westeros/

The Game of Thrones season 5 finale was intense, brutal, and disturbing! All the things that make the show great!

"SHAME!"