Popcorn Time adds support for dubbed movies

Popcorn Time, an app for streaming video torrents, added a new feature to its arsenal today: dubbing support. English content is now available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Portuguese as well.

Popcorn Time automates the whole torrenting process for movies and TV shows. Many torrents contain pirated content, and so the tool essentially makes pirating easier.

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Dubbed movies are now available in Popcorn Time 5.6 beta for desktop (Windows and Mac). Popcorn Time’s developers told VentureBeat that the app supports “thousands” of dubbed movies in the five aforementioned languages. They are promising TV shows will soon follow, as will support for the feature in the Android version. The next languages to be added include Dutch, Greek, Estonian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Arabic.

Popcorn Time’s developers explained their motivation for adding dubbing:

It’s certainly good for children’s shows. The little ones can’t read yet. So work is done to provide dubbed movies in more languages.

It’s good for millions of people that just recently discovered the vast choice of entertainment found easily on Popcorn-Time.to but do not properly understand the language of the film.

Every human being should be able to enjoy the most popular part of modern culture in his spare time. Any improvement of Popcorn Time serves this purpose. It is common knowledge that words alone are insufficient.

Sometimes referred to as the “Netflix for Torrents” or even the “Netflix for Pirates,” Popcorn Time is viewed as a major threat to Netflix, and to Hollywood in general. The project started as an open-source BitTorrent client with an included media player. Popcorn Time gained a lot of fame a few years ago, but was abruptly taken down by its developers on March 14, 2014 due to pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). That was just the beginning.

The project has been forked multiple times by several development teams eager not just to keep the program alive, but to add new features. Popcorntime.io, one of the most popular forks, was shut down by the MPAA on November 3, 2015. Another popular fork, Popcorn-Time.to (notice the dash), which had previously been available under the time4popcorn.eu and pocorn-time.se domains, offers apps for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS. It also has VPN support, and even works with Chromecast and the Apple TV. Because of the frequent improvements and updates, and because other forks have died, it is viewed as the most popular solution.

Adding support for dubbing is no easy feat and shows just how much time and effort the developers behind the project are dedicating to improving Popcorn Time. Because they release the source code with every new update, and let anyone create their own Popcorn Time via Torrents Time, the project isn’t likely to ever go away.