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Zona is a Popcorn Time Beater and a Pirate’s Dream

Posted: 26 Apr 2014 02:40 AM PDT

Popcorn Time has had more than its fair share of press since it appeared earlier this year. The tale has enjoyed twists and turns in buckets, not to mention controversy and mystery.

The software was undoubtedly a game changer and the most simple and elegant way of downloading and viewing content using torrents. Nothing came close.

Except all along something else did – and then some.

Let’s not take anything away from it, Popcorn Time is pretty neat, but the software just introduced to TorrentFreak goes much, much further. It’s called Zona and could very well ignite an even bigger storm.

Zona hails from Russia but fear not, its 27mb installer appears in standard English. Getting the thing working is child’s play too, just make sure it’s being allowed through your firewall after setup. If users want it to become their standard torrent downloader that option is available too, but advanced users will probably prefer the flexibility of their regular client.

Once setup is complete, users are presented with the following screen, movies up first. Much of the artwork depicted is pulled from Russian sources, so for non-speakers a reliance on movie covers will be required. If that fails, directly under each movie is the title in clear English.

Click those titles and new page will appear, detailing everything people might want to know about the movie including its date of production, iMDb rating, genre, actors (including photos), runtime, and other sundry details. Here’s the page for the Creative Commons movie, Big Buck Bunny.

When selecting a movie a choice can be made – to stream Popcorn Time-style, or to download to the PC like a regular torrent client. If the former is chosen there is a wait of between a few seconds and a minute while enough buffering takes place. The movie is first presented in a small non-intrusive window in the left corner of the app, but this can be expanded to any size, including full screen.

Eagle-eyed viewers will note the ‘audio and subtitles’ text on the bottom right of the window above. This enables switching between English and often Russian audio, plus the toggling of various subtitles.

While Popcorn Time was restricted to content indexed on YTS, Zona has no such limitation. The app appears to have access to many, many thousands of movies pulled from torrent sites around the web. It is not clear where, but random searches hardly ever fail to turn up the required content although sometimes playback can hesitate, possibly due to lack of seeds. That said, a database of 500,000 torrents should be more than enough.

Zona is no slouch on the movie front, but it isn’t done yet. The software also caters to the TV fan and does it with never-seen-before flair. After selecting ‘TV’ from the list on the left, Zona presents TV shows in the same way as it does movies. However, when clicking through to the details screen one can see how it excels, with options to select any series and any episode. Since it’s topical, here’s how the page looks for Game of Thrones.

Just below the recommended additional viewing graphics, one can see options to select a series and episode. Clicking on those brings up all of the sources, usefully filtered by video quality. Also on offer is a “subscription” feature, which allows people to subscribe to a series ‘Tivo-style’, leave the software running, and have the content appear when a new episode is released.

Another trick up Zona’s sleeve is its ability to steam live TV from a selection of built in channels. While many are Russian, there are plenty of English language channels too. Covering everything from news, to light entertainment to documentaries, it’s also particularly strong in sport, with free access to UK premium channels including all Sky Sports and BT Sport channels.

After ticking every box on the video front, Zona goes one step further by streaming music too. Users need to quickly sign up for a VK.com social networking account first, but after that almost every track one can think of will become available in the software.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s hard to fault Zona. It looks great and works nearly as well. There’s a huge range of content spanning movies, TV shows and music, and no other app that we’re aware of has as many options and features. It’s not open source, at least that we can see, so one up for Popcorn Time there. But it can stream to DLNA-enabled TVs, so that might balance things up a bit.

Oh, and you can filter out the adult content if kids are around. We did mention it does porn as well, didn’t we? No? That means we probably forgot to mention the Android version too.

Zona can be downloaded from its homepage, or directly here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

New Download Ban Won’t Work, Politicians Say

Posted: 25 Apr 2014 09:45 AM PDT

Just like other citizens around the globe, for years the Dutch have enjoyed downloading their favorite music, movies and TV shows from the Internet. However, while people in most other countries do so while breaking the law, residents of the Netherlands had no fear of being fined, or worse.

This position was made possible by the introduction of a levy on writable media such as blank DVDs and CDs, and other storage-capable devices such as hard drives, media players and smart phones. A portion of the sales revenues on these devices went to the rightsholders in an attempt to compensate them for their perceived losses.

But despite years of operation, earlier this month the system came to an abrupt halt. Following complaints from electronics manufacturers upset that their products were being made more expensive by the levy, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice declared the system illegal. The Dutch government responded by declaring that downloading from illegal sources was banned with immediate effect.

But while downloading of copyrighted content was outlawed (uploading was already illegal), few people believed that a handful of words from the government was likely to change the position on the ground. Furthermore, since the ban was hastily introduced on April 10, members of parliament have begun calling for a debate on its consequences.

“We do not want a ban, but would rather have a broad discussion focused on ways to reduce unpaid downloading,” D66 MP Kees Verhoeven told NU.nl.

“The aim of the download ban is to reduce the amount of unpaid material being downloaded, but experience shows that bans do not help in such cases.”

Labour MP Astrid Oosenbrug also called for debate on the download ban, which she first heard about through the media.

“I read about this new measure in the news,” she said, adding that soon after consumers began asking questions about how it would affect the private copying levy.

“Therefore, both MPs and citizens are unclear about the implications of this prohibition,” she said.

Calling for a debate with the Secretary of State in May, D66 MP Kees Verhoeven said that his party doesn’t want prohibition, but would prefer to see entertainment companies work on better legal offerings instead.

“It is important that the legal supply of music, films and series, is both accessible and of a high quality,” he said. “We do not want a ban, but a larger legal offer.”

Separately, in comments reported by Tweakers, Wiebe Alkema, spokesperson for the Ministry of Security and Justice, said the download ban would make it easier for entertainment companies to go after ‘pirate’ sites, since there is no longer a legal gray area.

“The burden of proof is easier,” he said.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.