Popcorn Time – billed as ‘Netflix for pirated movies’ – is now a lean-back experience with Google Chromecast.
The team behind Popcorn Time seem to realise that watching pirate material is a little bit illegal, so they’ve added a free built-in VPN to allow users to stream films and TV shows anonymously.
Chromecast support for PC is now in the mildly wobbly Alpha version, and will be coming to the stable Beta soon, with Android app support to follow soon.
“We enjoyed it, but we hated keeping all of you waiting for so long- so now that it’s out, we’re PHEWWWWWW if you know what we mean!!” reads a blog post from the Popcorn Time Team.
“This is the alpha version, so handle with care and let us know what works, what doesn’t, and if you do find something that’s not working properly (hopefully not!!) let us know in our forum.
“The beta version by the way, will be out and will update automatically in a week or so for those of you who choose to wait.”
Popcorn Time has also launched its first Mac OS X desktop Beta software, with a built-in VPN, and an iOS app is in the pipeline for August.
Mac users who can’t wait for Chromecast support can use the Google Chrome extension for Chromecast, which flings your entire desktop to your TV screen (although the audio’s usually delayed).
The popularity of Popcorn Time lies in the fact that it has a snazzy Netflix-style user interface that makes finding content far easier than looking through torrent sites filled with dodgy ads and even dodgier links.
As it’s an app rather than a website, it’s harder (although not impossible) for ISPs to block file-sharing sites on the orders of M’lud and organisations representing the movie industry who’ve already blocked most of the popular streaming sites (with limited effect due to a proliferation of proxy sites).
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