Following more than three months of forced hiatus, the original Popcorn Time project is reportedly planning a big comeback. As the free movie streaming service was taken down October 2016 with movie torrent YTS.to, is the latter also plotting a grand return?
TorrentFreak reported this week that works are underway for the original Popcorn Time team to restore the old service that was taken down at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which was also responsible for the sudden disappearance of popular free movie download site YTS. In resuming the real Popcorn Time fork, the team of developers promised a "resilience-driven development," the TF report said.
In a statement provided to TF, the reformed team said that the new Popcorn Time, which will switch from PopcormTime.se to PopcornTime.sh, will stand on the core elements of Project Butler that operates on neutral technology with special focus on streaming that prohibits the use of illegal contents.
"We're a little diminished, and we've chosen a new direction: we're shifting from an active development of Popcorn Time to a more or less resilience-driven development," the team said, admitting that the MPAA takedown has largely influenced the change of course.
The team also clarified that while some members of the original Popcorn Time group will not be involved on the new project they were part of the Butler technology development. The same will be the base platform of the upcoming Popcorn Time operation, the report said.
Another notable change is the new team's move of disassociating with monetizing schemes involving Popcorn Time, which appears to be hardwired with Project Butler. "We'd like to add that we do not accept any donation and have no interest in monetizing Popcorn Time by any way: our philosophy hasn't changed," the group said.
As for the original YTS or YIFY site, the team or person behind the service remains disconnected from the torrent community following the shutdown of the YTS.to website, which happened almost at the same time with the Popcorn Time take down last October 2016.
The last update from the operator was an apparent deal with the MPAA and part of the settlement, which got the YTS team off the hook, was the signing off of the website to MPAA that further diminished the chance of a likely comeback.
The same service, however, was resurrected through the new domain YTS.ag, which operates under a new team that no direct link with the old group. But the new YTS claims to provide higher quality torrents that are slightly larger in size and packed with better audio quality. The YIFY replacement also highlighted the fact that the new operation is ads-free and therefore malware-free.