BitTorrent set-top box

The BBK BitTorrent box is a €90 set-top Android box that can stream content downloaded over BitTorrent directly to your TV; it can pull programming from the wider Internet, or from computers on your local network:

The first ever certified Android-powered BitTorrent box aims to change this. After the initial December launch was delayed, the BBK BitTorrent box officially goes up for sale today.

While we have seen devices that support BitTorrent downloads before, this is the first one that can can also stream content downloaded through uTorrent and BitTorrent clients on the local network.

This means that users can play content downloaded by uTorrent and BitTorrent directly on their TV. Below is a screenshot of the user interface, displaying the various BitTorrent clients the device can connect to wirelessly.

Since the device supports DLNA, users can also access other media libraries including the one from rival BitTorrent client Vuze and Apple’s iTunes.

Certified BitTorrent Box Brings uTorrent to Your TV [TorrentFreak]

(via O'Reilly Radar)

• [Michael Best]

  I think I may just wait to see if they Ouya is any good first.

• [robuluz]

  Couldn’t you just install TVersity on your desktop, Bubble UPNP on any android box, and watch your torrents on TV that way?

  If you were into that sort of thing, of course.

  • [nowimnothing]

    Even easier, you could just save your files on a NAS and stream through a DLNA capable Blu Ray player or other device.

• [wobinidan]

   Wow, I can’t wait to watch all those free, legal movies on bittorrent over my TV.   Oh wait, there aren’t any.   What is the point of this stupid invention?

  • [Dr P Fenderson]

    What’s that? I can’t hear the question. You’re asking where there are free, legal movies on bittorrent? Also, music. There are many more sites if you Google around. Also, utorrent has built-in search, as does Vuze, for legal torrents.

    • [EggyToast]

      OK, so ClearBits has 4 mere pages of movies, most of which are just recordings of live music performances.  LegitTorrents consists of Linux Distros and a podcast about how awesome torrenting is. At least publicdomaintorrents contains actual public domain torrents, although the most well-seeded movie is seeded by all of 9 people.

      Not really seeing the point of this device if this is really all the movie content available. You’d have to really, really love watching old, low-budget B-movies.

      I bet you dollars to donuts that anyone interested in buying this device is going to use it to watch illegally downloaded movies and TV shows first and foremost.

      • [Dr P Fenderson]

        While your last statement may be true, there are also plenty of “illegal” reasons for downloading TV and movies and using this box. Like if you already own the material, but want archival copies of it – but don’t have the know-how or tech to make your own backups (which are still in a legal grey-area).

• [EH]

  The biggest issues I have with BT is not how to watch it, but the quite-crappy metadata/filenaming problem, as well as filesystem organization. It all works great as long as you don’t mind having everything dumped into a “Media” directory, with names like Dorf.on.Golf.Part.3.1991.mp4.aac.128bit.640×300.L4ym3.WATZUP.JOHNNY-cr3w.go.ravins

  • [Max]

    If you want to sort your library into pretty filenames without breaking seeding, and without making any changes to the software, one very simple way to do it is to create an “index” directory full of symlinks pointing to the real files.

    But arguably, this is a limitation of the operating system, as such a directory could very well be generated automatically from whatever metadata is available.

    • [Stephan J. Müller]

      XBMC has a pretty robust algorithm to identify the media based on the filename. It is open source, so feel free to use it in your own applications. 

• [Stephan J. Müller]

  One can also write a bit torrent client that only downloads and never seeds. The reason normal clients don’t do things like live streaming is that torrents don’t work if all the clients do it. No client should do this until there is a way to do this in a standardised way. 

  • [EH]

    Current clients can already do that, and in many places it will get you banned for leeching.

• [Kevin Pierce]

  I think I’ll just continue to schlep my 64GB usb thumbdrive between PC and Blu-ray player.

• [TacoChuck]

  Raspberry Pi + XBMC does exactly the same thing but for only 35-50 bucks and a much smaller footprint. The main difference being the storage space probably.

• [IndexMe]

  If you have a phone with a good enough lens you could use it as an assistive reading device. Many haters (because the filenames are in Chinese?), but this is amazing watch the videos. They seem to have spent a lot of money and done a lot of software development. The functionality is way beyond anything mentioned in this thread. You can mirror your device on a screen, show your photos, video and music (with karaoke display) in swiping them in real time, you can stream from your phone/tablet to your tv, and you could even set up a random bunch of computers and tvs to stream anything anywhere. This could enable a conference center or .. an airplane. (Of course it won’t, but the sheer power of any media, any direction, instant teleoperation is cool. Your next household robot will stream to a bittorrent enabled mirror to allow unlimited viewers without ddossing your dog. And it’s only 90 euros? Cheap.

• [Don Clark]

  I can see this progressing into a NETFLIX killer (illegal).
  Imagine a GUI like netflix on top of a utorrent client.

• [Giovanni Maccioni]

  Did you think subtitles in .sub or .srt file can work with this Box?