The rise of torrent streaming apps continues: IsoPlex launches
There have always been two options available when it comes to watching movies and videos made available as torrents. You could either download them to your system using a torrent client or start to stream them right away without saving them to the computer's hard drive.
When Popcorn Time came along, it catapulted the second method to a whole new level. While it did not change the streaming at all, it made the whole process more comfortable and easy to use.
Instead of having to browse third-party websites to find contents of interest, it allowed you to do so from within its interface in an elegant professional manner.
The original application was pulled quickly but spin-offs emerged that continued its legacy.
Isoplex is a new application by Isohunt which appears to be largely based on Popcorn Time as well. The application is available for Windows, Linux and Mac systems. It appears to be closed source though as the source code is not being made available at the time of writing.
The program displays a search form on start which is different from Popcorn Time which displayed a list of recent movies to start watching right away.
According to the website it is hosted on, it is powered by a database of more than one million movies. The search accepts titles only which you can filter by genre on the results page.
One thing that feels rather strange is that the year is always listed as 2014 regardless of the actual year the movie has been released.
When you hover the mouse over a cover it will display options to play the movie in various qualities or open the details page in the app for additional information about it.
A plot summary, playing time and category are displayed here among other things. Here you can also click on the watch trailer button to play a trailer if available, and start playback of the movie after you have selected the desired quality.
The movie database is not as extensive as the 1 million title figure makes it appear to be. If you search for Star Wars for instance, you only get Episode III and V returned while the remaining four episodes are not available.
The same is true for Star Trek which only lists one movie or Lord of the Rings which does not list a single result (unless you search exactly for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring).
The search lacks in other regards as well. If you search for godfather you do not get a result, but if you search for the godfather, you get a result.
The application is made available as an early alpha release -- version 0.0.2 hints at that -- which may mean that it will be improved in the future to address these issues.
For now, it is more of a proof of concept than something that you can really make use of unless you are lucky and enter the right search terms.
Note: Depending on where you live, using the application to watch movie streams or using it at all may or may not be illegal.
The rating will be adjusted if future versions improve the functionality of the software.
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?