PopcornTime original repository is still available at GitHub
3 points · Open discussionpopcorn-time
popcorn-app
CSS2014–2014
popcorn-time / popcorn-app
popcorn-app
An experiment using the peerflix module of nodejs and connecting a bunch of APIs.
16Distinct people
18Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
An experiment using the peerflix module of nodejs and connecting a bunch of APIs.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month18 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-02-28 04:32:22 UTC to 2014-11-19 22:47:09 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2014 | 2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mar 2014 | 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| Apr 2014 | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| May 2014 | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2014 | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2014 | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2014 | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2014 | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2014 | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2014 | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
#Popcorn time
Goodbye
Update 15 March 2014 : Sorry friends, but we removed issue tracking because it was being used to link elsewhere.
Idea
To allow any computer user to watch movies easily streaming from torrents, without any particular knowledge.
Status
Under development (RC1) for Mac OSX - Windows - Linux.
APIs
Currently used:
RottenTomatoes for movies metadata.
PirateBay Recent popular movies list.
YIFY movie torrents API.
OpenSubtitles for subtitles
TheMovieDB for movies metadata.
In discussion:
SubtitleSeeker for subtitles.
Building
Dependencies
You will need nodejs and grunt:
$ npm install -g grunt-cli
Build
Install the node modules:
$ npm install
Build with:
$ grunt nodewkbuild
By default it will build for your current platform however you can control that
by specifying a comma separated list of platforms in the platforms option to
grunt:
$ grunt nodewkbuild --platforms=linux32,linux64,mac,win
You can also build for all platforms with:
$ grunt nodewkbuild --platforms=all
Any problem?
Regarding superagent dependency
Due to wrong browser verification on a dependency, this hard fix must be applied.
Replace node_modules/moviedb/node_modules/superagent/index.js contents with:
// if (typeof window != 'undefined') {
// module.exports = require('./lib/superagent');
// } else if (process.env.SUPERAGENT_COV) {
// module.exports = require('./lib-cov/node');
// } else {
module.exports = require('./lib/node');
// }
Regarding Video, MP4 H264 Playback
Info: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Support-mp3-and-h264-in-video-and-audio-tag
Needed to build a custom build of node-webkit that adds h264 support (or you can download ready-to-go builds from https://file.ac/s4Lt3Vo6rls/)
Alternatively, we can replace a .so and .dll file from the correspondent Chrome build to node-webkit and node-webkit.exe
Development
Run compass watch in Terminal for CSS compiling and listen to future changes.
How to build with SublimeText
Currently Gaze to watch all files and reload the app is disabled due to memory leaks and unstability.
Run node-webkit from the root directory with --debug to enable debugging mode like so node-webkit . --debug
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
18 sourcesAnyone have the code somewhere? I'll host it.
Edit: Isn't this it? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
What exactly is the problem?
In Popcorn Time Devs Drop Like Flies But No One Will TalkForks of https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app are still online. Beware the speculations until you hear a statement from either the developers or github.
In Popcorn-app no longer on GitHubStill exists afaik: https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
In Popcorn-app no longer on GitHubFWIW, the source code is still around on GitHub, if you'd like to fork it:
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
It doesn't seem to mention the license it's released under, though.
In Popcorn Time Is DeadAnyone interested in the app can still build it from their repo.
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
In Goodbye Popcorn TimeWhat does their last commit stand for? https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/commit/7e4d851bc...
In Goodbye Popcorn TimePopcorn Time binaries were deleted from MEGA several times
2 points · Open discussionbtw, it's open source. You can research who the committers are https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/graphs/contribut...
In [dead]Ask HN: How does one build apps like Brackets and Popcorntime?
Hello everyone!
After ready about Popcorntime app, I've got interested in building desktop applications that are based on javascript and nodejs(?). But reading the code didn't really give away any tips on how to start.
I don't really know where to start, So I would like to get some pointers where to look, what to read, what to watch etc.
Are there any frameworks? How is the window built? How does the app communicate with the OS?
Examples:
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app https://github.com/adobe/brackets
Thank you.
1 points · Open discussionIf you're interested in node, I highly recommend poking around the source files. Pretty amazing what's possible in a small amount of code.
While the frontend is all Backbone, the real magic happens in its backend dependencies like peerflix (https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix) and video.js (https://github.com/videojs/video.js/).
Edit: And, of course, the remarkable (undocumented?) API provided by subapi.com. Check out http://subapi.com/popular.json !
Double Edit: The API appears to be developed by the Popcorn Time people, as per https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/issues/294
In Popcorn Time – Watch torrent movies instantlyIf you look at this file here: https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/blob/master/js/t...
It sends usage data to Google Analytics. I can see how this can translate into you getting caught. Be careful.
Even if you don't have a 'trackingId' set it still sends GET requests to http://google.com/
In Popcorn Time – Watch torrent movies instantlyTheir first commit on GitHub may only have been 20 days ago, but they certainly started working well before that. Their initial commit had a lot in it.
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/commit/342c94a2a...
In Popcorn Time Is So Good at Movie Piracy, It’s ScaryLooks like it's basically a mashup of the YFTY torrents api, a few other APIs for subtitles/metadata, and the peerflix nodejs lib for streaming the torrents. Done in node-webkit. The first commit was only 20 days ago, according to github (could have rebuilt history of course), and the most recent 3 hrs ago at time of writing. Seems pretty active.
It looks like "they're watching you" through Google Universal Analytics[0]. Not sure if that's something to be concerned about.
Sources:
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app
https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/blob/master/pack...
[0] https://github.com/peaksandpies/universal-analytics
In Popcorn Time Is So Good at Movie Piracy, It’s ScaryShowing the 15 most recent of 18 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.