EntertainmentTechnology

Popcorn Time Acquired by Netflix for $11.5M

Popcorn Time, the clever piece of software that allows you to stream Torrents has been officially bought by Netflix, the company a lot of people thought would try to get them banned because of their less-than-legal ways of doing things.

However, today it has been announced that Popcorn Time has been bought for $11.5 million by the streaming behemoth Netflix. The acquisition was said to be made out of fear from Netflix that the company could offer people content that they couldn’t due to the workarounds that Popcorn Time offered to getting this content to people.

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What Is Popcorn Time?

For those of you who are sitting there wondering what the heck Popcorn Time is then we recommend you visit their website and check it out as it’s an intriguing piece of software. For those of you who want to carry on reading we’ll explain it here.

Popcorn Time has been around for over a year and offers people the ability to watch torrents right from their computer or Android device. Simply put, Popcorn Time is a piece of software you can download for your Mac, Windows, Linux or Android device that then works in a very similar way to Netflix. It will show you a list of films that you can then stream. It allows you to categorise them, search and even have a look at the most popular at the moment, making it a brilliant piece of software for film discovery and watching the latest flicks. However, where Popcorn Time differs is that these movies are torrents that the company offers, the torrents are uploaded by the company and then whilst users watch the content, they are seeding the torrents for others to watch. So it’s effectively a community-based programme that means the more people who watch it, the better the experience will become for people.

Popcorn Time has on their site that they wouldn’t have grown and become the piece of solid software they are today without the help of the community. Not only people who seed the films but those that help with bug fixes, those that report problems and even those that submit torrents. It’s a community-based company that is non-profit and is run by a group of people who love to get the best content out to people as they can.

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Will Anything Change Now?

Obviously there are going to be a lot of questions from fans and users of Popcorn Time as to whether the company will change and begin offering only legal content. Popcorn Time has stated “Popcorn Time itself won’t change to the users, it will still be the same app you’ve all come to love over the last year. However working with Netflix means we can develop updates and fixes faster and bring you new features more regularly.” This is great news for those users and fans that were worried that the acquisition would have Popcorn Time turning into some sort of Netflix clone or maybe even having all their content taken down due to Netflix’s copyright agreements with other companies.

The reason Popcorn Time will still be able to offer Torrents is because they exercise extreme caution to users who know their country don’t allow torrents legally and are suggesting that it’s for the countries that allow torrents or are less strict on the subject. It’s a clever scapegoat for the company and the reason that they’ve been allowed to stay around for so long. In addition, it’s a community-based programme that means a lot of people are involved and everybody helps everybody so it would be hard to pin it down to a select group of people.

Summary

If you’ve not yet checked out Popcorn Time, we’d highly recommend having a look at software and seeing if it’s the right thing for you. It offers a great way to check out the latest movies without having to buy the DVD and it’s actually a really smooth and solid piece of software encompassing it. We obviously wish to exercise that you run your own risk by using the software and we do not suggest it for use in those countries where downloading/streaming torrents for free is illegal.

The company has stated that they will release more information on the acquisition by Netflix tomorrow and will let us all know more details about the acquisition itself and more details on the future and development of the service as a whole.

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