'Netflix for Pirates' Service Popcorn Time Adds Chromecast Support

The service which has become known as 'Netflix for Pirates' now allows users to stream pirated films and TV shows directly to their TVs using Google's streaming dongle Chromecast.

Popcorn Time has set itself up as a user-friendly way of streaming illegal, pirated content online, in a similar way that Netflix allows subscribers to stream legal TV shows and movies.

Popcorn Time's big selling point is its attractive and easy-to-use interface, something typically missing from services which use torrent files.

Now one of the groups developing the service has added the ability to stream the pirated torrent files from your PC directly to your TV using Google's Chromecast streaming dongle.

The feature is only available for Windows users in an alpha build of Popcorn Time at the moment, but a beta version should be available in a couple of weeks and support for the Mac and Android clients is also in the works.

Anonymous

Popcorn Time was first launched in March by a group of developers in Buenos Aires, but it soon ran into problems with Mega - the cloud-storage company - removing the file soon after the service launched.

However the Argentinian developers have made the Popcorn Time code open source uploading it to GitHub, and allowing anyone interested to develop on the platform. It has so far been localised into 44 languages.

After the original team decided to end their involvement in the project, core development was taken over by two other groups, both carrying on the name Popcorn Time. The groups used different websites - one at Popcorntime.io, and the other at Time4Popcorn.eu

The latter group is the one which has now added Chromecast support for their build of Popcorn Time.

As well as adding Chromecast support, the same development team has reacted to reports of users in Germany receiving legal threats by encrypting its BitTorrent traffic as well as offering an option to enable a VPN service, meaning users can anonymously use the service.