Many of us, most without even noticing, have switched to accessing their content via streaming rather than downloading. For music, this is either via YouTube, Spotify, Last.fm, Grooveshark or a similar service, because it’s a time and cost effective method. Not only that, but it’s easy and reliable.
For TV Shows, you may be a fan of the BBC iPlayer, ITVplayer or 4OD? The content that you have missed can be watched again online, at your convenience via the Internet.
So, what about Movies? Usually, with the introduction of Blu-Ray or HDTV, people prefer to see their Movies in Hi-Definition, something that Streaming usually struggles with due to bandwidth/speed limitations. To counter this, many (rogue) movie streaming sites over sub standard quality releases of movies – some of which don’t play correctly or require some obscure flash player that you wouldn’t even install on your worst enemies PC. So what’s available for online Movies? Netflix? Or how about using XMBC??
Step in Ice Films plugin for XMBC!
If you’re not all ready familiar with xmbc, it is an open source, cross platform media player that has the functionality to “scrape” the Internet to provide your media libray with information such as synopsis, runtime, cast, rating etc. It’s a very attractive, easy to use app. Check it out here:
1: http://xbmc.org/
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC
XMBC allows you to install 3rd party applications known as Add-Ons. This is where IceFilms steps in. Ice Films populates your media library with on line streamable content.
From the original creator: “Icefilms & Megupload is the perfect combination for XBMC, many links in very good quality. ”
IceFilms offers DvDRiP quality and 720p HD quality movies, that are streamed from online filehosts.
DVD’s are usually single link, while the HD movies are split into parts due to their size and file host limitations. It does make streaming HD a little less convenient as you will have to start the next part manually, but the roadmap of the plugin stats that “playlist” is in the works, that will hopefully allow for the subsequent parts to follow on from each other automatically.
The benefit of streaming rather than downloading is of course the space it saves. You don’t have to worry about finding “alive” links or seeded torrents – or finding the hard drive space. If you have a laptop with a hdmi-out port, you can out put to your TV for family enjoyment.
The downsides to IceFilms are having to keep the plugin updated. The auto-update from xmbc may not always work correctly, and you have to manually install the latest plugin again. In addition, “quality” enthusiasts may not like the DVD/720p options. Low speed Internet users may also be discouraged at speeds – but this day and age, many people have adequate broadband for streaming.
Check out this guide for installing the add-on:
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Agreed Rich, many people do now stream content, seen as most people are gaining access to faster internet speeds – this is a good way of accessing legal files…
One thing that will be interesting with more 3D devices coming to the market is will streaming 3D content be the next big thing?