Show HN: I made a site that lets you stream any torrent | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made a site that lets you stream any torrent

myplay.meetchopra.com

71 pointscodecors76 comments

I hope you registered that domain anonymously. And the hosting too.

Also related: Popcorn Time

Any suggestions on how to do that? Asking for a friend

Use a cryptocurrency.

Obviously do not do anything with US based companies. Find registrars and hosts that accept bitcoin. Find hosts that do not have to comply with DMCA and do not do so voluntarily.

Have a backup plan ready for when you get taken down.

Even the popular registrars accept Bitcoin payments and offer free whois protection. All that is left is a temporary email address and not using your own IP.

I'd call that reasonably anonymous. Pay attention to the TLD, because it might be against ToS to register some of them anonymously (mostly ccTLDs). There's plenty that don't have such restrictions.

You probably want a registrar that accepts cash by mail.

https://njal.la/

A bit more detail: https://njal.la/ accepts cryptocurrency.

I like njalla. Would be nice to see some others taking their approach. Anyone know of others that embrace the idea that one should be able to register a domain name anonymously?

Buy with cryptocurrency, make sure your coins are not traceable to you.

Domains can be bought on njal.la, NameCheap, EasyDNS and many others.

Hosting can be bought on Simafri, Accu, and many many others.

Make sure you use Tor and VPN and NoScript throughout.

I had not heard of Simafri. Looks good actually.

It's true that you need a hosting provider in addition to a domain name. It's good to discuss privacy-enhancing domain name registrars and privacy-enhancing VPS providers in the same breath.

I'll just wait for the indictment and story to pop up on ARS.

Why? He's not promoting the pirating of any particular movie like Popcorn Time was.

I keep getting "Sorry the file format is not supported!" Could you provide some examples? And also, will my browser be streaming or is your server acting as a proxy?

Solved! Server Acting as Proxy

In that case, how do plan to offset the cost of the bandwidth if this service becomes popular?

Not solved. Still getting the error.

Same for me. Some examples would be nice.

https://ferrolho.github.io/magnet-player/

Are you using webtorrent?

I guess this is a js torrent client?

Europeans beware :)

Because?

I've never gotten a single letter here in glorious central Europe. The ISP probably just bins them right away since there is no legal obligation to do anything with them.

exactly. actually most VPN providers which people regularly use to torrent through them are located in northern europe.

depends on the country. If I remember correctly france is worst with some 3-strike law.

Ah, I thought you had something special to add about the use of JS based torrent tools in Europe; yes, using tools for unlawful purposes is unlawful.

actually torrenting is fine in most of Europe

I'm getting the following error [1]

[1] https://screenshots.firefox.com/A85ypFuksubObOYZ/myplay.meet...

You also need to add support for https, I had to disable the HTTPS Everywhere addon.

Solved

Does anyone have a convenient example to test this with?

I tried Big Buck Bunny (info hash a3fbda1961fbc908026ec7cc4569d5fbef840c1e) but got "Sorry the file format is not supported!".

EDIT: And a few minutes later, Firefox locked up and crashed. I hope this isn't malware.

solved! Server went down

This still isn't solved. Why do you keep saying it's solved?

Tried top movies from The Pirate Bay and I get "Sorry the file format is not supported!".

Also your main input is a textarea instead of just an input type=text.

clearly: is this a torrent client, will your IP be exposed over the torrent network, will you have outbound data sharing?

Similar: https://instant.io/

You cannot stream many torrent on https://instant.io because it use web leechers.

What does meetchopra.com use?

When I explored something like this, there was webtorrent but that only allowed you to peer with other webtorrent clients.

Can you explain a little bit more about the tech stack behind it and how you got around this limitation? Are you connecting to other regular bittorrent users?

There are literally many open source libraries that do this such as: https://github.com/asapach/peerflix-server

So, why would you stream something that is designed to be downloaded? How is that better in any way? The whole advantage of streaming is from the publishers' point of view.

Streaming lets you watch immediately, rather than wait for the whole thing to download before you can watch it.

Not having to wait 5 to 10 minutes to download it first? Is the user interface easier for non-technical people?

The difference is only in what you do with the data. A stream is also a download, you just don't save it to a more permanent storage.

Could please provide a demo link as default demonstrate this function, because I don't how to use it. I tried post a magnet uri but not working.

How am I supposed to work this? I am using Firefox 60 and when I input a magnet or torrent link and press the play button... nothing happens?

I would suggest adding a warning to connect to a VPN before using the service. You could even add proxy detection to warn if they aren't.

OT: Guess I am missing something but who is actually watching torrents (or has the time) in times of Netflix, Twitch, Youtube, Fortnite?

people who enjoy quality movies

Not all good shows and movies are legally available around the world, so even if you had the money to pay you can't. Youtube and twitch are limited, you can;t watch a good SciFi movie on youtube .

Yeah I know but is it really all the hassle? There's tons of great stuff on Netflix. If you are really into video then all those monthly subs won't kill you. Plus amenities like where did I stop watching, great clients for any platform, always top-notch quality up to 4K, multiple languages incl. subtitles.

A decade ago torrents made sense. Then, official offerings were rare/poor/expensive but now? The current most expensive productions come from Netflix and Amazon and cost you few bucks a month...

Edit: You changed your post, so my reply above doesn't fit anymore. However, in which countries is Netflix not available?

what hassle?

During the day:

go to torrent site click link

watch film that evening. Browse video review sites of new releases, find a film to watch. No more hassle that finding a film on netflix.

Only extra hassle is, you have to click a link a few hours before you want to watch it.

I have not used US netflix, but torrents have more content than the netflix I have seen (UK and Latin America)

In some countries, torrent consumers' IPs are tracked and they get sued => hassle.

Besides, I have all Netflix, Amazon Prime, Twitch Prime. The last time I watched any of them is months ago, I am too busy with life to watch some random torrents I have to download hours before.

also it would appear that some isps tend to analyze network traffic looking for certain content hashes over dht, and automatically reporting them to content owners.

source: lol me three times :^)

Literally no one ever gets sued where I'm from.

The highest video quality that Netflix offers is worse than even a bad rip, since their demographics don't care.

I don't think people are watching random torrents. Well, I am not.

I see a film review, or someone will tell me about a program / film / documentary / series. I will grab the torrent and watch it at the weekend once the kids are in bed and have a couple of beers

> Besides, I have all Netflix, Amazon Prime, Twitch Prime.

Sounds like it would be more hassle for you to find out which service has the content you wanted to watch, then just going to a torrent site that is 99% sure of having it ;)

Around here gigabit-internet is quite common, so on a decent tracker it would be enough to start the download before making the popcorn.

Even easier go to the piratebay and stream as you go.

only if your connection can handle it. Mine can not

Yeah, there is — if you live in a western state.

There's mostly just originals everywhere else. While some of them are fun to watch, I find it increasingly difficult to justify its price.

What else is there? Hulu is US-only, YouTube Red/Premium is only available in about two dozens of countries, and you end up paying for Prime for nothing since most titles will appear as unavailable.

Music streaming... can be done, but video streaming is far from a viable option for the majority of the world.

> Yeah I know but is it really all the hassle? There's tons of great stuff on Netflix.

If i want to watch a specific movie, then i want to watch that specific movie, not some random other item of "great stuff".

I think this is the difference between what some people are saying (us) and the others.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I guess I am older than most here, have kids and not much spare time. I don't just sit down and consume media for the sake of it.

There will be something that I want to watch, so I download it and specifically watch that program / film / whatever. Torrents meet this need perfectly. I can always find what I want. Good quality, no streaming issues (I have crappy internet).

If I had all evening, every evening as my own, to do as I wish, how I wish, then perhaps all these new services would be better, as you could just find "something" to waste a few hours watching. But I don't. I have a few specific hours where I want to watch something I have specifically chosen.

There is also the case where you don't watch the Netflix or HBO popular series, like you remember some how from 25 years ago when you were a kid but you did not see all the episodes and or want to see it again, if you are lucky you can find it on a torrent.

There are also websites where you just search what you want and click on play.

Probably people who don't want to watch the same movies/shows over and over.

netflix content is crap in a lot of countries outside major western countries.

youtube doesn't have films / series

twitch, I don't really know what this is, I thought it is where you watch people play games? Why the hell would I want to watch this?

fortnite, I think is a game? Again, why would I want to watch this?

Also, a lot of places connection speeds make streaming difficult, so downloading a torrent to watch later that evening makes sense

"youtube doesn't have films / series"

Yes, it does, if you pay. It works the same as Google Play Movies.

but it cost 5 euros for only one movie, so nobody use it.

Netflix doesn't have much content outside of US.

So torrents are still a huge thing

well there's also youtube premium that has premium content by well known creators, both episodic and cinematic in nature.

This is world wide? I have never seen it advertised, or have any idea of what content they have

It now has free original series as well. Just search for YouTube originals

What I meant: nowadays, there is such a huge and great offering for your media consumption needs and all of the above are competing for your airtime. All are so good that it got quite tough for all the market players. The urge to watch some stellar movie as a torrent is not that big anymore as years ago because of the good competition.

ok fair enough. I don't play games and have no desire to watch people play games.

> The urge to watch some stellar movie as a torrent is not that big anymore as years ago because of the good competition.

Maybe for some (younger generations), but watching films is still a huge activity for vast numbers of people

After 12 hours are work, I want to watch a film. I could buy legal DVDs in this country with a lot of effort (3 hour trip to the city) probably could find legal DVDs in an upmarket mall.

Yes there is netflix, but the content here is terrible, I couldn't watch a film I wanted to, just have to watch "something" that is on offer.

End of the day, if I want to watch a film / documentary / series I have chosen, I have no choice but for torrents. They work. They are simple. All I have to do is click a link by early afternoon.

> netflix content is crap in a lot of countries outside major western countries.

It's crap inside a lot of them too.

Isn’t that how “fire sticks” get their content? Lots of people talk about using those for free.

If you need help with English, I‘d be glad to assist :) There are some errors.

The Buy Me Coffee-button does not work.

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