1. Download and install the SopCast Android app from the SopCast website. You will need to enable the “Allow installation of non-market apps” option before you can install the apk.

2. Once installed, open the SopCast app. The first screen will prompt you to sign in. If you have a device ID or a user account, you can sign in with your username and password. If not, just select the option “Sign in as anonymous”.

3. Choose the “Default Server”.

4. That’s it. You have the full list of TV channels to choose from.

Simply tap on your favorite channel to watch the streaming. The streaming speed will depend on your Internet connection and the number of peers streaming.

Other than watching online TV, you can also use it as a media player to watch the video that you stored locally. In addition, if you have the URL to the streaming server, you can also add custom URL to the app.

Lastly, sit back and enjoy!

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However, to be able to watch P2P video, you will need to install a custom player. Sopcast is the most popular among all P2P players. Sopcast is available for Windows and Linux. The installation in Windows is pretty straightforward, but it can be very tricky in Linux. Let’s see how you can get it install in Ubuntu.

Download the dependencies

Download libstdc++5.deb (for x86) or libstdc++5.deb (for amd64)

Double click the deb file to install.

Install Sopcast

Open a terminal. Add the following repository and install the app.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jason-scheunemann/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install sp-auth sopcast-player

That’s it. You should be able to find the Sopcast Player in Applications -> Sound & Video.

Configure Firefox

To configure your Firefox to open “sop://” link automatically in Sopcast Player:

1. Type about:config in the address bar.

2. Click the button “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

3. Right click anywhere on the screen and select “New -> String”

4. Enter “network.protocol-handler.app.sop” (without the quote) in the preferences name

5. Enter “/usr/bin/sopcast-player” as the value.

6. If you are using Firefox 3.6 and above, you need to change the value of “network.protocol-handler.expose-all” to “false”

Now, when you click on the sop:// link, a window will open and prompt you for the application to open the link. Navigate to /usr/bin/sopcast-player. remember to check the box “remember my choice for sop link”.

Whenever you open a sopcast link, it will automatically open in sopcast player.

Update: After you have associated the sop link with Sopcast player, go back to the about:config page and change the value of “network.protocol-handler.expose-all” back to “true“, else you won’t be able to open any links.

What other means do you use to watch World Cup in your computer?

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1. Transmission

As a baseline for comparison, we’ll start with Transmission, the default client in Ubuntu. It’s reasonably fast and powerful, but it does not include some of the fancier features like web content browsing or support for non-torrent filesharing. If you don’t need anything fancy, Transmission gets the job done.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

2. KTorrent

As the name implies, KTorrent is a Bittorrent client for KDE. We’ve covered it in detail previously, as it’s a very capable client, and one of the few that include browseable web content. In this case, there’s a small browser window inside the program and a search box to go with it. A particular useful feature of KTorrent is that instead of manually prioritizing files as High, Medium, Low, you can put them in a simple list of the order you’d like them to download.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: Yes

3. BitTornado

While apparently no longer under active development, BitTornado is a very simple, lightweight client for CLI and GUI that can still get your files fast. It’s missing some of the fancier features of newer clients, but its speed and small footprint keep it a good option for many.

• DHT Support: No
• Magnet Support: No
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: No
• CLI Client: No
• Web Content: No

4. OneSwarm

OneSwarm fills a particular niche in the world of torrent clients. It emphasizes the use of the OneSwarm network of peers instead of the standard torrent model. With it, you can create encrypted connections to people of your choice to browse and share files securely. It’s built on Azureus so it remains a perfectly capable torrent client as well. We’ve covered this useful application before and it remains a favorite.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

5. Deluge

Deluge is a very lightweight and flexible torrent client. It’s intended to blend in with any desktop scheme and generally stay out of your way. Deluge makes a great option for those who want all the power of a full-featured torrent client without unnecessary bells & whistles.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: Yes
• CLI Client: Yes
• Web Content: No

6. FrostWire

To add in a little bit of Gnutella P2P with our torrents, we’ve got Frostwire. It’s open source and built on Limewire so you have access to Gnutella search as well as torrents. This is another one that we’ve checked out in detail previously and it still stands out as a great tool to handle two of the most popular sharing mediums simultaneously and seamlessly.

• DHT Support: Yes
• Magnet Support: Yes
• Torrent Prioritizing: Yes
• File Prioritizing: Yes
• Web Client: No
• CLI Client: No
• Web Content: Yes

7. Vuze

Vuze is a powerful bittorent client cum media player that allows you to search, browse, download, share torrents and playback media files. It has a great library of HD stuffs that you can download for free. We have also covered it previously in great detail. Feature-wise, it is one of the powerhouse, but it does take up lot of memory and system resources which doesn’t make it suitable for old machine.

These examples are some of the best among the dozens of clients out there. If there’s a quality client you’d like to see on the list, let us know in the comments.

Related Posts:

• How to Share Files Securely with OneSwarm
• How to Secure Your Torrent Downloads
• How to Remotely Control KTorrent
• Smarter P2P with FrostWire

Getting FrostWire

Windows, Mac, and Linux packages are available from the FrostWire download page. Depending on your platform, the package may include the Java runtime as well.

Linux users can run the package by double-clicking the .deb file from within your file manager.

Configuring FrostWire

Once installed, FrostWire should show up in the appropriate menu location. On first run, you’ll be asked to set the locations for incoming files and outgoing shares.

Downloaded files do not necessarily need to be shared to everyone else, and incoming files are often in an incomplete state, so it’s recommended to use two separate locations.

Next we have a few additional settings to get things tweaked just right.

Most people should be fine leaving the connection type at Broadband. The nickname section near the bottom will come into play if you decide to participate in the community chat feature.

Next, we choose exactly which type of files FrostWire will include and which to ignore when creating shares. This is an important feature, as it allows you to only share things like audio and video files while keeping documents, programs, and other potentially sensitive files private.

After a checkbox agreement that you will not use FrostWire for copyright infringement, you’ll get the main screen.

Getting Content

Chances are, the first thing you’ll want to do is get some files. The Search tab will perform a standard Gnutella network search, and results will trickle in as they’re found.

You can search for specific types of files (including torrents) and you’ve got plenty of filtering and sorting options to choose from. The panes on the left side will allow you to filter the results by different sets of criteria, based on what you’re searching for.

If you’re not in to the Gnutella side of things, Bittorrent is fully supported in FrostWire. While LimeWire may be the Gnutella backend, Azureus is the core of FrostWire’s torrent capabilities. The program itself shows little difference between the two download methods as they show up more or less identically in searches and the download pane.

FrostClick

FrostWire’s content site, FrostClick.com, doesn’t so much host content as collect it. Of the multiple categories available (audio, video, software, e-books, etc) you’ll find the most content in Audio. That’s not to say there’s a whole lot there, but the current count of 287 legal, DRM-free music torrents could make for a nice treasure for those who like to experiment with their music.

The software section is full of a fair amount of games, as well as a lot of free (open and closed source) applications like Hydrogen, GNU Solfege, and Paint.NET. All of which are, of course, available elsewhere. All this seems to make FrostClick less about providing something unique and more about having a single place to browse for interesting content. This would be better if there was more content overall, but as the popularity grows, the content usually comes along with it.

Have you ever used FrostWire? How does it stack up to LimeWire or other GNutella or Bittorrent clients? Let us know in the comments below.

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What does it do?

There are two aspects to OneSwarm – the private, secure, friend-based OneSwarm network, and the standard P2P. The developers took an existing Bittorrent client (Azureus) and heavily modified it to include support for their private network. They added a web client (you can control your file transfers through a web browser, even remotely) and included software for finding and inviting friends into your swarm.

Even if you have no interest in the secure swarm aspect, OneSwarm makes a great torrent client. It’s built on the Azureus classic UI which is a high quality mature torrent client. All the P2P benefits of Azureus matched with the extra functionality of the web client gives OneSwarm a very powerful feature base.

How does it work?

There are two methods of using OneSwarm, a web client and a desktop client. Both are usable immediately after installation, but the developers seem to encourage use of the web client. That’s where I’ve found most of OneSwarm’s unique features. The desktop client is more or less a standard Bittorrent client. So far, I’ve found the web client to be the way to go when working with OneSwarm friend-based transfers, but the classic desktop client gives more options for standard torrent downloads.

Windows users who’d like to use the desktop client instead of web can do so by right-clicking the OneSwarm icon in their system tray and choosing Show Classic UI. Linux users – access to the desktop client could vary widely based on your choice of desktop environment. Because of this, and to highlight the unique features of OneSwarm, this article will focus on the web client.

Getting Started

If your system didn’t take you to the web client automatically, you should be able to access it by opening your browser of choice to http://127.0.0.1:29615/. There you’ll find the opening screen for the OneSwarm web client.

For those who aren’t networking geeks – 127.0.0.1 is the address a computer uses to identify itself. By putting that into your browser you’re telling it “open the web page running on this computer”. The OneSwarm web client runs a small webserver on your machine so you can access the web client.

Finding Friends

The main concept behind OneSwarm is Friend-To-Friend transfers. When you first connect to OneSwarm, you’ll be asked to add friends. The first, and easiest way to do that is to choose “Use Default Settings”. This will connect you to the OneSwarm community server. Within a minute or two, you’ll see names pop into your Friends list. Users of the community server can all see each other, but cannot, by default, see each other’s files. Everyone on the community server is a “limited” friend by default and cannot trade files.

There are multiple other ways to add friends, all of which can be found by using the Add friends button below your contacts list on the left. For me, the GMail/Google Talk option would normally be a great way to add my friends, but as of the time of this writing, that feature does not appear to be working correctly. I have settled for using email invites through the Redeem/Create/View Invitations option.

When my friends get the invitation in their email, they can install OneSwarm and click the link included in the invite to become a OneSwarm friend. For example, I sent an invite to Tara, who has named her computer “Hank”. She downloaded the OneSwarm client, clicked the link in the invite, and now OneSwarm sees us as friends. She shows up on my Friends list as well as the community server with which she’s registered.

Friend Access

As noted earlier, friends by default are set to “limited” status. They cannot see each other’s files or initiate any transfers. Fortunately, removing that limitation is quick and painless. You simply choose Friends from the navigation panel on the left, and you will have the full list of friends. Click the one you want to share with, and remove the check for “Limited”.

From now on, Tara can browse through all the files that I have shared and choose whatever she’d like to download. Speaking of sharing…

Sharing Files

At the heart of any P2P app is the sharing of files. There’s not much point otherwise. To allow certain files to be shared over OneSwarm, you just add those files or directories to your Shared list. On any section of the OneSwarm web client you’ll find the Share button near the top of the screen. This will let you choose what to share. Here, for example, is one user’s files that they’ve chosen to open to the OneSwarm network.

I can download whichever of these files I like and choose where to save them. In addition, OneSwarm appears to have read the ID3 tag information for the music files, and added the album art to the thumbnail view. A nice touch.

I’ve found OneSwarm to be a very elegant, well-designed system. I’ve often looked for (and written about) ways to securely transfer files over the Internet. Some of them are simpler than OneSwarm, but not nearly as friendly and versatile. I’ll be sticking with OneSwarm for a while.

What about you?

Related Posts:

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