Vuze - an indie-friendly video distribution platform
by Steve O'Hear, editorJune 29th, 2007 | Posted in Net TV, Review |
34 Comments
Vuze is an application for Mac or PC that allows users to search, browse, and download ‘near DVD’ and HD quality video content, using the peer-to-peer protocol, BitTorrent. In particular the company is pitching the platform as a way for independent video and film producers to distribute their content to millions of users — at no cost — and with a higher picture quality than other competing services. In addition to being an open platform where anybody can publish their content, Vuze has signed licensing deals with a number of larger players, such as the BBC, A&E, and Showtime, who are offering paid-for content (rental and to-own). Curiously, Vuze is also being used to distribute music and computer games.
This first thing you’ll notice about the software, compared with most other BitTorrent clients, is its ease-of-use and polished interface. Browsing and downloading content is very straight forward, and in addition, Vuze has a number of social features including rating and commenting on content, as well offering ‘magnet’ links which can be embedded on blogs and social networking profiles. The idea here is to encourage Vuze content to be promoted elsewhere on the web, even if users will need to download the application in order to access that content.
One drawback is that download speeds aren’t guaranteed, and being based on the BitTorrent protocol, will depend on how many other users are sharing and downloading the same content, and with what available bandwidth. In my own testing this varied somewhat, and at times Vuze was slower than other download services. Having said that, the pay off is really for content producers, as the technology means that most of the required bandwidth is provided by users. Another thing that was slightly disappointing is that although Vuse manages your download library, the application doesn’t have its own media player. That’s because Vuze is format agnostic, so content producers are free to upload their video in any number of formats, making it simpler to let playback be handled outside of the application (using QuickTime or Windows Media Player, for example).
Verdict
Vuze will appeal to independent producers who want to distribute their content at zero-cost and up-to HD-quality. While the option to charge for content is only currently available to those who’ve signed formal licensing deals, an upcoming version of the software will enable all content creators to set their own prices, select a business model (rental, to-own or ad supported), manage territories, and choose whether to use DRM or not.
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Vuze blows the cock. All it is: An annoying piece of nagware that is fucking with my Azureus experience.
Vuze is amazing. Friggin’ amazing. I’d say 90% of the stuff is free and over half HD. No crashes. I have a 10mbps internet connection (1024 kb/s) and it has been downloading at about 300-500kb/s for each torrent - very fast, considering its bittorrent.
Very polished look and overall 11/10.
I was a very (!!!) satisfied Azureus user. Yes was ! The move towards Vuze might be interesting for sort of users, I need a good decent fast torrent-client, to download torrents, nothing else.
Vuze isn’t anymore what I need, a pitty but looking for a replacement.
…and the developers seem not to understand that many of us only need the torrent-functionality and that a split-up of Azureus and Vuze bus both based upon the same Azureus-download-engine would have been a better choice.
So, regretfully, bye bye Azureus
@ CROGERS, From when’s 1024 Kbps=10 Mbps??? If you have a 1Mbps connection and are getting 500Kbms max down, I’d say your settings are not optimized or you’re using a torrent with an average swarm speed around 300Kbps.. If you have a 10Mbps connects and are downloading at 300Kbps-500Kbps, the torrent client or your machine or your ‘net connection’s seriously screwed up!! 11/10??? Hell no!! Even the original Azureus gets only 9/10.. Vuze probably gets 7/10 and that’s just coz it has the Azureus name attached!!
@ nerdspot, lol if ur gnna argue with someone at least get your facts right. when C Rogers said he had a 10Mbps speed he was meaning MEGABITS per second not MEGABITES. megabits is the format in which internet speed is recorded. To convert megabits into megabites and kilobites (kb) you roughly divide the number of megabits by 8. so, nerdspot you were wrong.
@ whoever it was above. duh all you guys were wrong.
kb/s = kilobits per second with a small b
kB/s = kilobytes (spelled with a ‘y’) per second with a BIG B.
i don’t know what C Rogers meant but 300-500 kbps is rather slow (only 40-80 MB/s)
so I guess he meant 1024 kilobytes (kB/s), but then that should make only 8 Mb/s not 10 Mb/s.
Anyway, Vuze is stupid, the download is slow. I had to change back to azureus 2.5.
Whatever videos they have on Vuze you can get them by normal bittorrent.
Awful.
1. Lost at least 5 lines off my screen for the honor of being able to see their logo bar in my face.
2. Slower than ever. (Do they think I run downloads 24/7 on my P4 4GHz 4GB ram machine or perhaps on my old laptop that sits in the corner?)
3. Nice big brother upgrade trick: 2.5.0.4 will still have the existing interface… wrong. I’m sure they love it when MS does that to them.
4. System restore won’t take me back to the old version, have to do it by reloading.
Can’t figure out who they wrote “Luze” for. Certainly not anyone I know.
is it normal for Vuze to run at 3.5 kbs? cause i’m not gonna wait for 14 days for my download to get completed…
I’ve always used Azureus on my PC, just had to get a Mac for work, put Azureus on it, and this Vuze thing loads up. Hang on, I think, this isn’t Azureus, it must be some kind of spyware. I download the other version on their website and see the old familiar interface, but then it tells me it needs an update, and five minutes later I’m back to this stupid Vuze thing trying to get me to download the latest Green Day video.
I just want a fairly simple BitTorrent client that allows me some custom options like selective dowloading. I don’t want this stupid webstore loading up every time I use a torrent.
Absolutely ridiculous, I’m appalled that they’ve done this and I will be looking for a replacement.
To all you people crying about the lost of the good old azureus, it’s still there, just with a lot of extra bell and whistles (which I for one welcome)
To get the old interface, just go in preference/interface/start (might have to run the wizard to go in advance mode first) and then just click the “display Azureus UI chooser” bingo, you can set it back to be a normal Bittorrent client.
My only MAJOR problem with it myself is the HUGE oversight with the DRM scheme. Azureus as we all know is or was, a Java based application, so it worked on PC, Mac and linux. Yet they went and choose a PC only DRM (wmv based I guess).
So here I was all excited at the prospect this opened up (since I just installed a mac mini to my tv) only to realise that every show I wanted to buy was telling me that I can’t because of my OS.
Think about this… I’m about to buy a show, me a costumer, but CAN’T because of DRM, but someone that pirates the same show as now problem ?!
When will these Damn companies learn that DRM only hurts their costumers! It’s time they switch to watermarks (with client number and such) this way it plays anywhere, but if the costumer shares it they can trace it back to him easily. This way it Punishes the pirates, not the honest costumers.
Yes you can use the old UI when you select it specifically in VUZE.
It is said that no VUZE code will be used after that.
So next time you startup Azureus VUZE only the Azureus UI should be there.
I’ve never ever seen a company include segregated code that can be omitted. I refuse therefore to believe that it is optional. And then the DRM thing…
FOSS or not, the fact that no poll has been made amongst users about this software distribution makes me very susceptible. No matter what the developers say.
I smell a rat in the kitchen.
So use at your own risk. I for one am gonne stick to 2.5 without upgrades. If they try to nag me about updates, I’ll abandon Azureus alltogether.
Be fair and sensible, buy good software you use. I do.
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Legally available content from bittorrent that uses advertising to pay the bills.
I’ve held off buying an HDTV tuner for my PC for the longest time. Reason: I just don’t think I should have to use 19th century technology, when my 21st century PC can stream movies from Netflix on demand.
Broadcast TV is kaput, but they are trying to squeeze every last nickel out of it.
Hey, there’s always time to be spent gaming until they get it now that Ut3 is out!
Listen 2 Me Now and Believe Me after-you’ve-had-2-clean-your-whole-system-and-reboot-2-times -and-find-some-obscure-site The VUSE NAZI’s haven’t found yet! DO NOT GET VUSE! My Lord I have the old one at My Office, the version that is apparently invisible from the annoying updates! I trIed VUSE Thinking this will be great…. WRONG!!! I knew they had to make money sometime BUT NOT LIKE THIS! It’s too bad they wasted all their time and money so some guy at Harvard by Mid-Spring [2008] will have made a better downloading tool! Sorry Berkley according to My Source hovering around Me. Anyone who says this is a BETTER format WORKS for Azureus/VUSE!
As One Gentleman said on ANOTHER forum and I quote:
“I will continue to use Azureus 2.5.0.2 till they pry it from My Cold Dead Hands!”
Oh SOOOOOOOOOO TRUE!!!
Well, I awoke to azureus crying about wanting to upgrade, and usually I do. But when I saw the message about (something like) users using old version blah, blah, I went ‘wait a minute’. Luckily the paranoid schizophrenic in me decided to look into it. I am so glad I did. I checked out that vuze bullsh*t a while ago. It sucked then, it prolly sucks now (especially after reading all of your comments).
I have now turned off all updating functions in Azureus. I’ll stick with this version until it just plain refuses to work anymore. Then I’ll find a new client.
Vuze tries to sell you crap you can find anywhere for free, with DRM no less! Screw the guys at Azureus for even affiliating with them. I’d rather deal with ads in the UI than this crap.
Stupid vuse! I only get 3-12k downloads now instead of 30-155k. Vuse sucks trying to throttle people
The new Azureus Vuze SUCKS BIG TIME. Been using Azureus for a couple of years. I installed 3.0.4.0 which has Vuze. It lasted 2 minutes on my laptop. I uninstalled it and I am now running uTorrent.
What are these goons doing? Really.
The integration of Vuze into Azureus has been done incredibly badly - aside from whether it was a good idea in the first place. Azureus used to be a great torrent manager, now I’m experimenting with others for comparison, starting with utorrent.
Vuze is screwing up all the good experience I had with Azureus through the two years I’ve used it. Who the **** came to that stupid idea of replacing the old one with Vuze? All we want is a torrentclient not an entertainment system (whoever needs one can buy or configurate his own). I’m going back too to the old version or I’ll just uninstall it and look for another client.
Don’t blame the users Azureus, we’re not failing you, you’ve failed us first!
When i saw the changes this vuse crap brought with it it took not even 2 minutes for me to deinstall azureus and get the good old version back, what a luck azureus runs well without updating
git transmission!
Vuze blows. It opens up 4 windows on my machine, 3 of which are empty, and then crashes after about 2 minutes. I will definitely be using Azureus 2.5 and cancelling all updates.
Azureus was my first client, ever since i installed it i just loved it. It had so many capabilities and though required so few resources it was clearly the best client in the market imo ( i had tried almost all the rest ). That’s until Vuze…While Azureus was running quietly in the backround requiring 30mb from RAM, Vuze decided to step up it needs an astonishing 150-160MB of RAM…Clearly the programmers had the wrong idea of the system specifications in 2008. Anyways to sum up, nice entertainement software…but that’s about it. It’s a useless bit torrent client which consumes huge amounts of resources, and can’t run properly in 80% of the world’s pc’s. I wish they never made that decision…
Used Azureus for years with no problems, then they introduce this abortion. I thought bittorrent was supposed to be the good guys?
Dumped Azureus for Utorrent, it’s not as good as original Azureus but it only does what I want it to rather than loading up screenfuls of resource hogging crap that I didn’t ask for.
The whole Vuze thing is a huge own goal on Azureus’ part.
I’ve had Azureus for like almost a year with the proper original Azureus then my mother board broke down a few months ago so I got a new Computer Tower had my hard drive placed in it and then I tried installing my old azureus then this stupid garbage Vuze showed up and has messed up everything when Im download a file that has more than one video on it doesn’t even give me the option of ticking which files I want downloading instead I have to go on the details and then files and it takes a million years to fucking set up which files I want downloading then it doesn’t even download it keeps pausing and stops downloading im so pissed Vuze is shit get the old one back. Vuze sucks
I think Vuze stinks! U only can download stuff for a hour! ONE HOUR!
Thanks to Francky for the info on how to turn it off - now I’m back to my old lightweight Azureus, which is all I or 95 per cent of the rest of the users want.
To repeat for those that don’t want to trawl to find it - Francky said “To get the old interface, just go in preference/interface/start (might have to run the wizard to go in advance mode first) and then just click the “display Azureus UI chooser” bingo”
It was different for me - I had to go to options/interface/display ui chooser.
Last weekend i’ve updated my linux box and when I started Azureus something incredible happend… f***k some shit called vuze poped up. I was so angry after realising that it downloaded more megabytes for this shit media center wanabe then for the file I really wanted.
Yesterday I started using uTorrent in my Windows box. That’s something really dumb to do but …. any sugestions for a good torrent client in Linux ?
Azureus/Vuze frankenstein monster is THE WORST. Screwed up my system. Every time I installed it other programs like Dreamweaver, Firefox, iTunes and who knows how many others simply stopped working. When I’d reboot, Windows would conduct some sort of “system repair” that thankfully took this crap software off (at least I think so.) Luckily, I saved my old 2.5 installer. Ugh, what a stupid, stupid development for what was a great application.
i am getting 150-160 on vuze i wouldn’t mind it if there was not that annoying logo at the top of the screen i just hate it honestly it gives me a headache and makes me want to punch my computer if they didnt have the logo there so you could ignore the vuze stuff and continue as normal it would be good but they decide to shove it in your face i hate vuze but i will give it a go if i can get over it ill stick but if not straight back to 2.5 mate
U can just download the older azureus 2 5 0 0 from mininova
Thats what im doing right now considering ur talk.
I just setup Azureus on my gf’s computer today, as my computer is under repair. I went to azureus.com, and I see all this Vuze shit. I thought it was a fake site, or Azureus bit the dust or something. So I google it, and find the old Azureus page…but the new update is still this Vuze shit. I realized this must be for real…man, I’m so disappointed. I switched back to classic view, but really, wtf? I hadn’t updated Azureus in forever, so I never saw this Vuze shit on my computer. I’ve been using it for years, and I thought it was a great app…
I’ve just booted into Vista - first time for ages (I usually use XP or Mandriva Linux) and I thought i’d d/l last night’s Dr Who. Fired up Azureus and innocently accepted the “updates”. What a mess this Vuze thing is - I don’t want it I just want a bittorrent client and this is certainly no longer that. After five minutes of frustration and indignation I’ve installed utorrent which is what I use in XP so….. I’m afraid…. through no fault of mine….. it’s goodbye to Azureus……. forever….. It was fun while it lasted. A pretty good product totally ruined
Like almost everyone here, I hate the new Vuze, but thanks to Francky I’ve got the old interface back and I’m able to select which of multiple files/videos I want to download before it starts - just like in old Azureus. So thank you!
To those who are trying to do this also, this is Franckys helpful post “To get the old interface, just go in preference/interface/start (might have to run the wizard to go in advance mode first) and then just click the “display Azureus UI chooser”
Works like a charm
I agree that the new vuze doesnt work well at all
It just slows everything down
But i have a question and maybe someone can help me out
How do you select whether or not to seed the torrents that you have already downloaded?
Is there a way to dissallow seeding from azureus?
Thanks for the help in advance!