Vuze Blog

Playback on Apple TV, Blackberry, More Android

You asked for it.  As of today’s release, we’re rolling out support for the new Apple TV, Blackberry devices, and a wider range of Android phones.  For those who have been offline since early 2009, Vuze Device Playback enables you to drag-and-drop files you download with Vuze to easily play back on your TV and mobile.  We launched support for Apple devices and a variety of living room favorites early in 2009 (PS3, Xbox, PSP, Tivo, and Samsung TVs).

We tallied your requests for additional supported devices, went shopping, and are happy to announce Device Playback support for:

• Apple TV (the new version from our favorite hobbyists)
• Blackberry Devices
• More Android Devices (beyond the initial devices launched in August):
  • Dell Streak
  • HTC Nexus One
  • LG Ally
  • Motorola Droid 2
  • Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
  • Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini
• WD TV

Click here for the full list of supported devices, which now includes over 25 major device brands.  In addition, many Android phones will work despite not being included on our official support list.  Broad support should now exist for Android phones from Dell, HTC, Motorola, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, as well as all Blackberrys.  Even if you don’t see your Android phone or specific Blackberry on the list of supported devices, try connecting it to your PC or Mac with Vuze open.  If the device works, feel free to verify it as a supported device on the official list.

Apple, Google, and RIM… fight it out!  We love you all, and we’ll gladly play Switzerland in your war games.  As Larry David once said:

Switzerland is a place where they don’t like to fight, so they get people to do their fighting for them while they ski and eat chocolate.

- Larry David

Alas, our version of Switzerland involves more coding and less skiing, but such is life…

Finally, this release includes a large range of optimizations and improvements in the base code for 4.5.

Give Vuze 4.5.1.0 a try, and let us know what you think!

Chris

Android, Faster Downloads, Library Love!

More Devices:  Android and iPhone 4

Among the tens of millions of worldwide Vuze users, almost 5 million of you are actively dragging and dropping videos from your library to enjoy Device Playback on iPhone, iPod, iPad, Xbox, PS3, PSP, Tivo, and Samsung Connected TVs. What are the rest of you waiting for?  More devices, perhaps?

Today we’re launching support for many of the most popular Android phones on the market, including:

• HTC Desire
• HTC Evo
• HTC Hero
• HTC Incredible
• HTC Magic
• HTC Wildfire
• Motorola Cliq
• Motorola Droid
• Motorola Droid X
• Samsung Vibrant (Galaxy S)
• And more coming…

We’re big believers in open platforms, and we’re very happy to see the strong rise of the Android OS. If your Android device didn’t make the list, tell us in the comments and we’ll work to support it in the near future.

In addition to the new burst of Android support, we’re also launching support for the iPhone 4 with 960 x 640 video resolution, so you can take full advantage of your gorgeous new Retina screen. Tired of hearing about the death grip and AntennaGate? Simply drag-and-drop to the iTunes icon in Vuze (bypassing the antenna altogether) and watch HD video on your iPhone 4.

While we’re on the topic of devices, keep in mind that any mobile phone (or tablet) with a web browser can still manage downloads via Vuze Remote.

Feeling a Need for Speed?

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to deliver ever faster download speeds to you.  Vuze 4.5 includes a number of behind-the-scene speed improvements.  For many of you, the ultimate speed constraint is on your local area network. As part of Vuze 4.5 we’ve integrated a new speed test that will automatically optimize your Vuze settings for your network. The speed test will begin immediately after you launch the latest version of Vuze. We can’t make house calls to install faster broadband pipes for all of you, but we can make sure that Vuze adapts to your network and delivers the fastest download speed possible over your internet connection. Many of you should see significant increases in download speed after the speed test.

Multi-file Torrent Support

Bittorrent is one of the most elegant technologies for efficiently distributing huge files over the web (leading to adoption by organizations including NASA, Facebook, and Twitter). One of the killer apps for bittorrent is allowing you to download multi-file torrents (those huge torrents that contain multiple files, or multiple songs within an album).

Bittorrent clients (including Vuze) have typically supported multi-file torrents with significant clunkiness (with separate library panels or pop-up dialogs). With this release, the Vuze team took some time to support multi-file torrents the right way — as an integrated part of your Library.

As a result, you’ll be able to quickly prioritize the specific files you want to download within a multi-file torrent, or the sequence in which you want to download them.

Download Vuze 4.5, and give it a try!

Gilles

@gbianrosa

Vuze Remote and Faster Downloads

Have you ever been out, and realized that you forgot to queue a Vuze download to watch when you get home?  With the new Vuze Remote, you can now securely control your Vuze client from any computer or smartphone with a web browser.  Pretty cool, eh?  Not to mention, very useful for those meetings or classes where your mind has already fast forwarded to Friday night entertainment…

Once you have the latest Vuze release,  simply go to remote.vuze.com from any browser, or download the Vuze Remote toolbar here.  After a one-time pairing of the Vuze client and your browser, you’ll be ready to find and control all your Vuze downloads remotely over the web.

Your remote instructions pass directly and securely between your Vuze client and a web page in your remote browser.  Props to the Transmission team, as we leveraged their original web UI in developing Vuze Remote (open source ftw!).

We’ll continue to expand the functionality of Vuze Remote going forward.  Stay tuned…

Faster Downloads

This release also includes a number of significant performance improvements resulting from our ongoing Olympic training to make Vuze downloads even faster.

You should notice significantly faster torrent start-up times and subsequent download speeds, as a result of :

• Faster initiation of new torrents through “Allowed Fast” support (enabling new peers to quickly start downloading despite their lack of pieces to trade)
• Connecting to more seeds and peers on launch of a new torrent (for Vista SP2+ and Windows 7), and through optimized support of LibTorrent peer exchange
• Quickly switching to better performing peers through faster connection timeouts
• Faster ramp-up of better performing peers.

Bottomline – you should experience significantly faster torrent start-up and download speeds.

Reigning in Mr. Slidey

Finally, remember Microsoft’s infamously reviled Clippy – the animated paperclip in Office 2000 and XP?  For a long period of time, Vuze has had a similarly reviled Slidey that popped up with error messages in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.  With this release, we’ve finally fought Mr. Slidey into a corner, and locked him in the closet.  You can find all your favorite error messages by clicking on the exclamation point in the bottom-right corner of the Vuze client.  Don’t care to be bothered?  Please feel free to ignore.  Sometimes, it’s the small steps forward that count.

Download Vuze 4.3.1.2 and give it a try.  Tell us what you think!

Gilles and the Vuze Team