µTorrent Plus coming this Fall

We're excited to announce that we'll be releasing a new product, µTorrent Plus, later this Fall. (There will also be a BitTorrent-branded version.)

Our plan is to continue to introduce great new features into the world's most popular torrent freeware, while supplementing our product offering with a brand new paid version which bundles a number of extensions to add convenience and a range of great new features. Many of these features don't come to us for free, but given our scale we can negotiate hard and pass on a great value to our users.

µTorrent Plus will combine the lightness and speed of our freeware with a bundle of new features that make torrenting more convenient than ever. In particular, it will make moving and playing content on devices beyond the PC easier. This means the hassle and security risk of finding codecs, manually converting files, and related inconveniences will be taken care of. While many of you may have this process down already, perhaps you're sick of the hassle nonetheless. Or, perhaps you know others for whom the provision of this feature set from a trusted source would be of value.

Whatever your thoughts, we'd really like to hear them. We know this is a significant event in µTorrent's history, and that there are ways to do this right and do this wrong. We're also well aware that you and others like you who take the time to talk with us play an enormous part in making our products a success. Our ears are open for this next product as well.

There is more information available at www.utorrent.com/community/labs/plus. But we'll be keeping an ongoing conversation with you all through this forum, and will be releasing more information to you in the coming weeks.

Thanks,

Jordy

Ugh! So I wonder how long it will be before the free version gets left behind?

Sounds like uTorrent is set to become bloatware. Yuck!

Doesn't Vuze already do this?

Ugh! So I wonder how long it will be before the free version gets left behind?

Sounds like uTorrent is set to become bloatware. Yuck!

The free version won't be left behind. And well, the plus components are all provided separately from the client, so the free client wouldn't get any of this "bloat".

Would be nice to see the next "normal" version as an updated 2.2.1, so utorrent+ could continue what was started in 3.0 and is not really that what most users like and expected from a "ultra light" freeware ...

better name for this project is "µFail" [:

"plus" leave for Google.

@schnurlos - I agree with you.

Yes yes! Please, take all this bloatware crap like "apps", "streaming" to separate version. Remove it from free version, do us a favor. Torrent client should download torrents and do it best. It should not make coffee, iron socks, play your movies, convert and stream media files. Leave it to software specifically designed for that.

I just don't get it. Why everyone tries to make "universal software"? Nero once was excellent lightweight CD authoring tool. Winamp once was excellent lightweight music player. What a crap it became today.

Look around, guys! At real world. Nobody use sportcars as lorry or beat speed records on family car. Nobody uses coffee machine to heat meal. Even washing machine and dryer are separate entities, despite they look similar and take part in same process - laundering. Good sound system has separate satellites and subwoofer. Do I need bring other examples?

Do something one, but do it best.

Nice basic torrent client + bloatware = µFail

Yes yes! Please, take all this bloatware crap like "apps", "streaming" to separate version. Remove it from free version, do us a favor. Torrent client should download torrents and do it best. [...]

Right! Funny, because I created this topic:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=103078

...before this project started (or better - was announced)

Maybe this is a step in the right direction. I hope.

Yes yes! Please, take all this bloatware crap like "apps", "streaming" to separate version. Remove it from free version, do us a favor. Torrent client should download torrents and do it best.

power dvd did the same thing 9 was perfect now it wants to control music and pictures .I was so dismayed

needless to say im still using 9 and i have 10 and 11 archived never to be used again.If it aint broke don't fix it

Plus one to schnurlos.

Vuze or Azureus as it was known used to be a light client then they started adding more junk by each release where as utorrent is starting to take the exact same path

Somewhat confused as to what this plus version can even offer in the first place? i saw

More secure

Well, the nice thing about the Plus features is that they're separate. So your normal, free µTorrent client stays the same.

And not all users have an antivirus or security suite, so I guess Plus will include some kind of integration with an AV.

I think people (including myself) are asking for the plus features to not only be not included in the free version, but to change some of the existing features into plus versions i.e. remove them from the free version.

IMO the following features should be plus-only:

1. Apps

2. Streaming

3. Remote

4. DNA

Remote is a useful concept.

However the other things are not really part of "torrenting". I'd be happy if they were completely taken off of the footprint of the free version.

You could make Plus even launch shuttles for all I care. As long as you keep the free version down to earth and simple.

Wishlist:

Apps, Stream, DNA to Plus.

Better file management(an abstraction layer between disk and app files would be nice).

Better documentation(at least update for 3.0).

It's good to hear your suggestions. Thanks, guys.

By the way, in case anyone is unaware: you can right-click to remove apps and a couple other left-hand menu items. You can also right-click to hide the "playback" column (and other columns). We do try and make it very easy to customize the product to your liking and remove or hide features you don't use.

Sure - and I've made my interface as minimal as possible. Compared with 2.0 though, it's a pain to do so. And the extra features come with costs - memory, configuration, etc.

A lot of people will be happy with a bare-bones free version, just getting improvements/updates to the actual protocol. Moving the extras to plus might encourage people to pay for it.

As to why I think Remote should be part of plus ...

1. It's provided as a web service and requires that the service be up. This incurs a cost on Bittorrent (the company). It therefore seems fair to me that people using the free version don't get to use this service.

It would be different if the remote capability only required the uTorrent client (maybe with port forwarding) - but that's not how it's been implemented.

2. I don't personally need it, since I have a VPN to my home network and can just remote-control my server.

you can right-click to remove apps and a couple other left-hand menu items. You can also right-click to hide the "playback" column (and other columns). We do try and make it very easy to customize the product to your liking and remove or hide features you don't use.

A long as functionality you remove from the GUI is also *disabled* resources-wise - I agree that none of the existing features should be removed. Whoever doesn't like them - just don't use them. And ALL existing features should be fully debugged, and improved to make them as user-friendly as possible (Rss downloader included... )

you can right-click to remove apps and a couple other left-hand menu items.

Thank you I did not know this, apps is the only thing I currently dont like about utorrent. Apps should be moved to the plus version... Web, Streaming and DNA should stay.

Only if uTorrent provides more methods of "FILE-TRANSFERRING" will I be willing to spend money on it. The other Apps for videos are just bloat where many of us already have MUCH more advanced utilities.

Features such as http(s)/(s)ftp/emule etc... is what I think uTorrent developers should consider adding.

No wonder Xunlei is displacing uTorrent & Vuze/Azureus in much of Asia & parts of North America & Europe, especially the Asian communities.

More junkware with more 'new features' and no fixes for the old bugs and the new bugs. I won't be trying or buying - I'm sticking with 1.8.5.

Would be nice to see the next "normal" version as an updated 2.2.1

I fully agree here. I'd like to see a utorrent with a working back end and logically working features. I don't need a fancy GUI at all. I rather dislike changes all the time because I hate to relearn how to use a program after every update. :cool:

Yes, I admit, I hate the ribbons GUI from MS Office.

Only if uTorrent provides more methods of "FILE-TRANSFERRING" will I be willing to spend money on it.

Features such as http(s)/(s)ftp/emule etc... is what I think uTorrent developers should consider adding.

Would you mind expanding a bit on what you have in mind here?

It sounds like you would like uTorrent to support more different kinds of sources for file. It's not obvious exactly how this would work. We already support http as a source (as a webseed), it requires the torrent creator to specify the URL in the .torrent file though. Do you think it would be useful for us to support https for web seeds?

I can't imagine ftp or sftp would be widely used. HTTP(S) is a superior protocol with today's internet, and todays understanding of TCP.

Integrating with other file sharing networks is also not simple, technically. Many other file sharing networks use SHA1 and MD5 file hashes to find sources, in order to make that integrate with bittorrent, not only does the client need to support it, but a substantial number of torrent creators need to support such an extension as well, to include a SHA-1 and MD5 hash for each file in the .torrent file. Even if that would happen, there's no good way to verify that the .torrent file's SHA-1 and MD5 hashes are actually correct, and matches the piece hashes.

No wonder Xunlei is displacing uTorrent & Vuze/Azureus in much of Asia & parts of North America & Europe, especially the Asian communities.

My impression of what xunlei does is they cache content on their CDN, something that might be too legally challenging and also privacy infringing for BitTorrent to do.

My impression of what xunlei does is they cache content on their CDN, something that might be too legally challenging and also privacy infringing for BitTorrent to do.

Yet Pando have been doing the same thing in the US for years now. Or maybe you weren't implying that location is the issue.

Yet Pando have been doing the same thing in the US for years now. Or maybe you weren't implying that location is the issue.

As far as I know, pando has not promoted blatant copyright infringement, and hence has not done the same thing as xunlei. But then again, my knowledge of both of those companies is limited.

The main purpose of my post was to ask simon100 to clarify what he meant. It didn't sound like he suggested us hosting people's content (since that would be orthogonal to whether we use http, https, ftp, sftp or bittorrent for hosting).