Category: Techtoday
Understanding Xunlei
There are many secrets to downloading media in many countries, even in "restricted" places like Chuugoku. Xunlei is one of the most popular websites/software providers in the Middle Kingdom. Xunlei Thunder 7.x is an all-in-one manager for P2P sharing, torrents, and accelerated file downloading. The interface is in Chinese, but even those without the ability to read Chinese can navigate the interface especially if you've tried similar applications such as BitComet, uTorrent, Napster, and older download managers. Interested users in China can visit an English tutorial over at keemanxp.com. The same site provides a great English language pack that can be added to the languages folder of the application.
Why Xunlei and Thunder?
- They're fairly popular and boasts a ton of users in the Orient. Moreover, the application is customized to somehow get past China's downloading limits. Mainland China, Macao, and Hong Kong users can easily take advantage of this application. The speed of the downloads are very, very impressive considering the supposed "limitations" of the broadband network in the Middle Kingdom.
- Xunlei's free file-sharing apps can be installed on Windows phones, iPhones, and Android platforms. However, read my disclaimer below first before attempting such a task.
- Besides speed, the amount of media available is amazingly diverse from the application and on the Xunlei site. An old movie of Dolph Lundgren was featured on the home page when I visited the site. I was especially happy to see K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop music videos at high quality streaming on the site. For the "curious," there are plenty of Category II and Category III movies plus old Run Run Shaw movies. The aforementioned speed allows users to watch the movie stream from start to finish - just like other popular video sites in the U.S.
My download needs are normally pretty pedestrian (e.g. Unix and Linux distributions and applications). Moreover, I was wary of any application of immense popularity. Limewire, Gnutella, and old popular downloading platforms were rendered unusable due to that very reason. However, I wanted to give Xunlei Thunder a try due to the availability of media on their network.
Using Xunlei Thunder: Disclaimers and warnings
- The Xunlei system of file-sharing involves tons of plug-ins and pop-ups once you install the Thunder application. As keemanxp.com notes, uncheck all the added software during installation. However, to browse through the videos at Xunlei, you have to install Adobe Flash and a minimum of three other proprietary plugins. I was constantly assaulted with prompts to install plugins even after I installed the minimum requirements to watch and download videos. I had foreseen this eventuality so I happily played around with Xunlei and the applications on a Windows 7 virtual machine on VirtualBox installed on a Linux box. The precaution was a bit too much as I later found out the pop-ups were annoying, but generally harmless. Plus, Xunlei uninstalled cleanly enough.
- There is nothing mysterious about the interface and the English pack helps, especially when you're using the toolbar. As for every P2P, torrent, and file-sharing application, users should configure startup options, downloading location, number of downloads, and speed limit. Of course, the default settings are fine as it is.
- Xunlei Thunder can download just about everything though users might scratch their heads if they drag a URL address to Thunder, expect the embedded video to download, and instead end up with an HTML page instead. Xunlei Thunder really doesn't offer any advantage over other English downloading software other than excellent access to Asian content. As I mentioned on a previous article, I'm happy with the broadband speed in Shanghai so any speed gains Thunder provides isn't worth the numerous plugins and occasional pop-ups. If you're happy with your torrent application and can find the media you want in sites such as Btscene.eu and Fenopy.eu (which are not blocked in Chuugoku), then you won't need Xunlei Thunder (or even Xunlei).
- Firefox and Chrome plugins can provide what you need – even when pulling videos from the Xunlei site. As a fan of Asian movies and an admirer of Asian pop, I was thoroughly impressed with Xunlei's access to obscure Cantonese movies and very old HK cinema (plus the usual popular Korean and kung fu movies). I was especially interested in downloading K-pop and J-pop music videos that are typically not available on YouTube (which is blocked in China) and via torrents. Somewhat confused with how to download an HD video using Xunlei Thunder from the Xunlei site, I installed the classic Firefox plug-in Flvdownloader, wondering if it would be able to detect the embedded videos and export it to FLV. It worked flawlessly on music videos though I'm currently testing them on full movies. Take note, however, some of the high-quality videos would still require downloading some of the Xunlei plugins.
Xunlei = Asia
The Xunlei site is great for accessing streaming video and rare Asian movies and clips, especially if you're interested in foxy Chinese popstars, adult movies, and Girls Generation. The commercials are not nearly as bad as commercials on U.S. websites and are actually funny. I'll definitely be visiting the Xunlei site for my Asian fix (thanks to Firefox plugins), but definitely uninstalling Xunlei Thunder. The experience surprised me - with the availability of several technologies for file sharing, I never thought I would go back to just plain direct downloads.
0 comments:
Post a Comment