Vuze Blog

Quick Fixes - Vuze 4.3.0.4

Since Vuze 4.3 launched last week, we’ve been listening to your feedback and working to address any bumps you came across.

The result is Vuze 4.3.0.4, which fixes a number of items, including:

• Code that wasn’t playing nicely with Macs (causing crashes)  @Gene @Angela @anonymous
  
• Some interface bugs that caused Vuze to appear blank for some of you, or disappear after a short period  @Who @Rita
• Problems sorting the Name column in Library  @David
• “Missing n” error message when searching  @Zack
• A search result formatting issue appearing when IE6 is your default browser  @MR

Finally, we’ve expanded support for magnet links in this release.  For those that speak our language, we’ve added the ability to parse hex-encoded magnet URLs and the ability to use both mlDHT and azDHT for magnet-based downloads.  Support is now live for both PCs and Macs in 4.3.0.4.

Regarding Friends and the Vuze HD Network, we’ll follow-up in the next few days with some more detail on our plans in these areas.

Huge thanks to those of you that reached out to us on the issues you were seeing.  We’re a lean team here at Vuze, and its very helpful to get your immediate feedback on new releases.

For additional support with 4.3.0.4, please check out the Vuze Forums.

Chris

Tags: Features/Updates

Vuze Update: Less is more

Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time listening and building the features you wanted us to add.

An equally important question is how we can improve Vuze by delivering less of what you don’t want.  We heard you loud and clear when you asked for less clutter, less bloat, and less memory footprint.

With this release, we focused more time on removing features than adding features.  It’s a useful exercise for any product that’s been around since 2007, and has been downloaded over 70 million times.  As a result, the latest release is faster to start, faster to navigate, and uses significantly less memory (up to 3X less memory!).

Vuze 4.3: Less bloat, more speed

How did we do it?

Redesigned Search

Our first job was to significantly clean up the search experience.  The new search results page is less cluttered, enabling you to find what you’re looking for, as quickly as possible.  You’ll notice two design improvements:

1. Color-coded rank icon: Our goal is to guide you to the best result as quickly as possible (the largest green bar you can find on the search results page).
2. Larger download button: One of the challenges of meta-search is the need to combine the designs of multiple disparate sites.  We’ve added a large download button after clicking a search result to enable you to quickly download the content you want.

More importantly, we’ve optimized the browser integration for search to significantly decrease memory usage.

Faster Network, On Your Terms

You’ll also notice two changes that will significantly improve the performance of the Vuze HD Network:

1. Default Vuze Homepage: Vuze HD Network is no longer the default page when you open Vuze.  Software on your desktop is yours.  If you simply use Vuze as a media manager (or downloader), you shouldn’t have to navigate through the network every time you open Vuze.  From now on, Vuze will open to the last window you had open.  If you only use the Library, you’ll only see the Library.
2. Lighter Weight Network: For those of you who enjoy browsing the Vuze HD Network,  you’ll notice a much simpler, faster, and less bloated design.  The network is now powered by simple RSS feeds from some of the most popular video publishers on the web.  As part of this change, you’ll also notice a change in the programming available on the network.  Publishers that do not offer RSS feeds for their content are no longer available on the Vuze HD Network.

RIP Friends

Finally, you’ll notice that the Friends feature for connecting and sharing content is no longer part of Vuze.  When we asked you last month which features were important to you, Friends ranked dead last (a ranking confirmed by internal Friends usage stats).  While we still believe that sharing has a role in Vuze, the social media landscape has changed significantly since we launched Friends.  Sites like Facebook and Twitter have spread like wild fire around the world.  With this evolution, products like Vuze do not require their own social networking feature.

And for those of you who leveraged Friends to take advantage of faster downloads through FriendBoost, expect to see some alternatives for faster downloads in the not so distant future.  Connecting with Friends should not be a prerequisite to faster download.

This “less is more” philosophy isn’t about a single release.  We plan to continue these efforts over the next several releases (and beyond) to ensure that Vuze has the best possible user experience.  That said, we believe that the “size” argument CAN be taken too far.

a (very) tiny mobile phone

Of course size matters.  However, at a certain point, small size cripples the ability of a software application to have basic functionality like search and device integration.  Let’s face it.  Unless you still have a computer with a floppy drive, your computer’s memory is not likely to be a severe constraint.  The key is to develop functionality that adds value, and to deliver this value in an elegant way (both in terms of user experience and resource usage).  Expect us to walk this line moving forward.

Upgrade timeframe: Vuze 4.3 is a required update due to some significant back-end infrastructure changes that Vuze will be making by the end of November.  As of December 1, Friends will no longer function across all versions of Vuze, and the Vuze HD Network will no longer function in older versions of Vuze.  The back-end changes are required to decrease our costs in providing a free software program to our growing community of users.

We’re excited about the improvements, and hope you will be too.  Take Vuze 4.3 for a spin, and let us know what you think.

UPDATE: The Vuze team just pushed live a series of updates based on your feedback (Vuze 4.3.0.4).  In addition, this latest release includes expanded support for magnet links.  Read more

Chris

Tags: Features/Updates

More Devices: Vuze on Tivo and PSP

In March, Vuze set course to unlock your content and give it the wings to get from your Mac and PC to the other screens in your life: mobile and TV.  At the time, support was added for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and iTunes (iPod, iPhone, Apple TV).  Since launch, millions of you have turned on Vuze device support, transferring an average of more than 18+ videos per user to watch on the screen of your choice.  Today, we’re building on this foundation by adding support for Tivo and PSP.

Our goal is simple:  Empower you to watch your content on any screen you want.

Some other companies have taken a different approach by confining their content to a single screen. We believe this is short-sighted. Companies win by listening to you and delivering the products and services you want.

Technology is increasingly making it possible to view HD entertainment on all the screens in your life: PC /Mac, mobile, and TV. In our research, you’ve expressed a strong desire to watch your entertainment anytime, anywhere, on any screen. Vuze is working to deliver on this vision.

But enough with the vision thing.  The real magic lies in the simplicity of Vuze device support.  Devices simply appear in the Vuze sidebar when they’re available.  All you have to do is drag-and-drop to the device of your choice, and prepare to watch your content anywhere you want.

Our goal is to build support for the devices you already own and love. We’re prioritizing based on a few key criteria:

• Your votes
• Quality of video support
• Total installed base.

At this point, we’ve added support for many of the major devices owned by the 10M+ monthly active users in the Vuze community.

That said, we’re just getting started.  So give it a try by downloading the latest version of Vuze.

Find out what it means to live in an open world where your content flows freely between your computer and all the other screens in your life.  You can read more here.

Let us know what you think!

Gilles

1 Million Vuze Device Users, and Counting

In March, we updated Vuze to include the ability for you to watch your videos on any screen – PC, mobile, or TV. We launched our Device feature in beta to quickly iterate and evolve the features based on your feedback.

A few short months later, the numbers speak for themselves. You’ve made it clear, once again, that the ability to watch videos on any screen is important to you:

• As of today, more than 1 million of you have turned on device support
• Over 14.5 million videos have been transferred to watch on iPhone, iPod, Xbox 360 or PS3
• On average, each of you with active devices has transferred over 14 videos to your devices.

Some companies tout reaching the millionth user as a big milestone. Around here, we’re proud to be thinking bigger with you in surpassing 1 million users of a single (though *infinitely* cool) feature within Vuze.  But don’t take our word for it.  Take theirs…  IGN, Engadget, Joystiq, VideoNuze, one happy user, and another happy user.

Looking forward to announcing the 10 millionth device user.

If you haven’t already tried it, check it out now.

Stay tuned for an update on additional devices and features coming soon…

Chris

Introducing Vuze To Go

Find, Download, Play from any portable drive

We’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about portability of your content. Across our efforts to deliver your videos wherever, whenever you want them, we’ve been focusing on devices that you already care about and own – notably iPhone, iPod , Xbox 360, and PS3 to date.

In addition, there’s another device that most of you own. Based on a recent survey, 72% of you (Vuze users) own a portable hard drive to carry around your media files. Combine this with the fact that you use an average of 2.9 computers on a weekly basis, and we decided to focus some attention on making it easier for you to take your media with you.

Let’s face it, you don’t always have the ability (or desire) to install Vuze on the multiple computers you use at work, in school, or at a friend’s place. With this in mind, we set out to make it possible for you to run Vuze from the same portable drive where you store your media files, anywhere you go.

To do this, Vuze teamed with a company called Ceedo to create a simple, elegant app we’re calling Vuze To Go - a completely portable, self-contained version of Vuze.

Vuze To Go installs on any portable disk drive, like a USB hard drive or a flash thumb drive, rather than on your computer’s hard drive, and enables access to the full functionality of Vuze – anytime and anywhere. Just plug your portable drive (complete with Vuze To Go) into any PC and you’re ready to go. Vuze will run seamlessly from the portable drive, and all of your downloads can also go directly to that drive. And, like Vuze on your main computer, you’ll be able to play all the content in your Vuze Library even when you’re offline.

For you techies, Vuze to Go contains a virtual operating system, plus your familiar Vuze application.

While the core version of Vuze remains free (and always will), we’re offering a PC version of “Vuze to Go” for only $9.99. Try it out free for 2 weeks, and let us know what you think.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Chris

Psst… Quick question for you

Let’s say the Vuze team just happened to be thinking about a top secret project to help you watch downloaded videos on your TV and your mobile devices.  Which device integrations would you want us to elegantly support within Vuze?  We’re strong believers in an open world, and would like to support multiple devices (hypothetically, of course).  Which devices would you like us to prioritize?

› Continue reading

10 Million Strong and Growing

The broadband video space is getting a lot of coverage these days.  Beyond the hype of 2008, we can see the industry getting serious about building real online video businesses in 2009. I’d like to address a couple myths that seem to permeate the industry, and report on some interesting stats about Vuze.

Myth #1 — Consumers won’t download a video application.
According to our internal data (and Google and Quantcast), we’ve just passed the milestone of 10 million monthly uniques to our content portal, the Vuze HD Network.  We’ve been thrilled at the way our community has embraced the new design of Vuze 4.0, and think this disproves the conventional wisdom that people are only willing to stream videos from their web browser.  People do download applications that have compelling value propositions.  It’s the case for iTunes and Skype, and it’s the case for Vuze, which enables our users to Find, Download, and Play great videos – in HD – anytime, anywhere.

Myth #2 — Online video viewers are not engaged.
Well, this might not be a myth for some services, but we were surprised when we read research from TubeMogul, entitled How Much of a Typical Online Video Is Actually Watched?  This piqued our curiosity, so we did some number crunching and found that Vuze HD Network viewers are far less likely to drop off at any point during the video than the average web viewer watching a short-form web video.  This culminates in Vuze viewers being a full four times more likely to watch a five-minute video all the way to the end than the viewer of an average web video.

We suspect that more people watch videos to completion on the Vuze HD Network because they find content that is relevant to them, and because they love the superior picture and sound quality.  Which would you rather watch – grainy pixilated web video streams, or stunning full screen HD videos?

Some Interesting Stats About Vuze:
Here at Vuze, we haven’t been concentrating on industry buzz or PR.  We’ve been quietly focusing all our resources on building features for our growing community of users.   The results speak for themselves:

• Since our Vuze 4.0 launch in mid-October, 1 million unique users have signed up for the new Subscriptions feature, and more than 8 million total subscriptions have been created.
• Total Friend Connections among our users (to share content and get faster downloads) have increased more than 350% since mid-October.
• Search traffic on Vuze has increased more than 700% since June 2008, with our users currently conducting more than 1 million search queries per day.
• In the past 3 months, we’ve gotten more than 45,000 emails from our users with comments, constructive suggestions, and support for the direction we’re headed. In the words of one user (Josh K) who recently reached out to us:

I had this client since its humble beginnings - and I feel compelled to say that I believe Vuze is to other torrent clients as iTunes is to other music players. In my mind, that’s an accomplishment. Keep on in the direction you’re going - it’s awesome!

Thanks, Josh - and thanks to everyone who is using Vuze. We have a bunch of things in the hopper that we think will give the product a whole new dimension.  With our efficient cost structure and amazing technology, we’ll continue to innovate and scale into 2009 and beyond.

Stay tuned,

Gilles

Vuze 4.0 is Here!

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

- Winston Churchill

Over the years, we’ve been working to turn Vuze into the easiest way to find, download, and play high quality and especially HD videos.

On this road, we’re continually coming up with new features and moving as fast as possible to get them into your hands – though neither our speed nor execution lives up to the “perfection” cited by Mr. Churchill.  In fact, our speed occasionally led us to bolt features onto the existing interface in less than optimal ways, and to push core functionality into hard-to-reach back corners of the product (aka “advanced tab”).  As our users, you’ve told us loudly and clearly which changes you’ve loved (which has been great) and which you’ve hated (which we’ve tried to learn from).  With your feedback in mind, we decided a few months back that the time was right to re-think how the various parts of Vuze should fit together to form a great product.

Today, we launch Vuze 4.0, which has been directly inspired by your feedback.  In this release, you’ll find a few key things:

• First, you’ll find a dramatically streamlined and redesigned client.  All the features you know and love are included in the new design.  We’ve simply focused on improving usability and ease-of-use.
• Second, you’ll find new subscriptions functionality.  Now, you can easily find subscriptions related to content in your library, in the Vuze Network, or create your own subscriptions using Vuze Search or RSS.
• Third, those of you who use private trackers will find that our powerful meta-Search functionality now supports logins with user ids and passwords.  (And if you haven’t yet tried our new Search, you should definitely check it out.)
• And finally, we’ve made some major improvements to our emerging content platform, the Vuze HD Network, to make it easier for you to find videos that interest you.

What are you waiting for?  If haven’t done so yet, you can click here to download Vuze 4.0.

We’re really excited about these changes.  Let us know what you think as you dive in and take the newest Vuze out for a spin.  We’ll continue to refine and enhance Vuze for you, based on your comments.

Gilles

Search and you will Find

Some of you have already discovered our new search functionality, but for those of you that haven’t, we want to make sure you don’t miss out on this great new feature.

Now, when you type the name of the video you’re looking for into our search box, you’ll get a list of all the torrents from the Vuze Network and from some of the most popular other sites. If you can’t see the name of your favorite site, you can always search for templates that have been created by members of our community and add it. And for the developers / hackers out there, you can always create your own custom template too, and share it with others on the web.

We’d love to know what you think of this new feature, so please leave your comments here or in our forums.

Happy Finding,

Olivier

More than just a (great) bittorrent client

If you think there have been a few changes around here lately, you’re right. We’ve been busy in Palo Alto. We thought we’d take the time to tell you a bit about why we made these changes, what they are (in case you haven’t spotted them all), and what other changes are on the horizon.

We have a big vision here at Vuze. We don’t want to be just the bittorrent application you came to love. Rather, we want to create the best all-in-one application for finding, playing and sharing great content, especially the high-quality content you’ll discover on the Vuze Network.

Finding torrents: Improved search

We want you to be able to discover great content wherever it lives on the web. Our new search engine lets you search for content on Vuze, as well as sources outside Vuze. Try a search and see what we mean.

Sharing torrents: new Friends feature

Everyone likes to share stuff with their friends. Well, now we’ve made it really easy to share your favorite torrents with friends. All you have to do is to become Friends on Vuze and then you can share any torrent with them, without ever leaving the application. If they’re a good friend, they’ll share what they find with you, too.

Get a Boost

And, you get another added bonus when you create a group of friends on Vuze. Your friends automatically become your own personal swarm where you give each other preferential access to each other’s bandwidth and make downloading faster. It’s what we call a “Friend Boost”. So, the more friends you have, the faster it is to download. So boost and get boosted.

Try out all our new features, leave us comments here or in our forums telling us what you think and what you’d love to see in future releases. If you are curious about what other people think, you can also check out these articles from ZeroPaid, NewTeeVee, Slyck and TorrentFreak. And remember, these changes are only the first step. We have more upgrades in store, so stay tuned.

Gilles and the Vuze Team