So you have a PlayBook device and wondering how you can further take advantage of its awesome hardware capability by downloading torrents directly on to the device storage.
In this article, I will show you how to very easily side-load a P2P app called ‘PlayTorrent’ and how you can use it to download/share content with friends/family/etc. Please see the disclaimer at the bottom of this article before you begin.
Side-loading the App
- Before you can side-load the application, you will need the Java Runtime Environment installed on your PC. You can find JRE here.
- Next, download the side-loading tools from here and extract them on your local machine. Credit goes to Hatax @ CrackBerry forums
- Enable developer mode on your PlayBook and make note of the password you use. You can find the developer mode setting in the: Options –> Security
- Next make note of the IPv4 address your PlayBook is assigned. You can find this from Options –> About –> Network
- Now go to where ever you extracted the PlayBook Tools.zip and edit the PB-Installer.bat file with your PlayBook’s IP and Password you assigned
- Now, on your PC, find the PlayTorrent.bar file (should be in the same directory)… drag it over the PB-Installer.bat and release.
- A command window should open and install the application
That is all! Give it a minute or two and your PlayBook should now be side-loaded with PlayTorrent! You should see it in the main applications screen.
Downloading Torrents
Now that you have side-loaded the app, let us download some torrents on to our device!
- Download a .torrent file from the PlayBook browser
- Open PlayTorrent (tap the little help icon on the right if you are unsure about some of the action buttons at the top)
- The torrent should automatically load up in the app (cool feature from the developers)
- Press Start and you are ready to go!
Below are some screenshots of the download process:
31 replies on “Downloading Torrents on the PlayBook Using PlayTorrent”
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which jre download are you suppose to do,and once i find it what do i do next? i justgot the playbook so im kinnda stuck lol
Download which ever one is the latest. As of this reply, the latest is JRE 7u2.
Download and install it then continue with the instructions 🙂
JRE tool doesnt giveoption to download for windows 32 bit, only 64 bit, i downloaded that and it wont even start, is it only for 64bit windows?
Hi,
If you click ‘download’ under JRE, you’ll be taken to this page @ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre-7u2-download-1377135.html
There you can select your system & architecture.
Have completed all but cannot get the .bar file dragged unto the .bat file using air browser.
Hi Lenn,
You need to run the batch file (drag the .bar over the .bat) from your PC and not the PlayBook it self. Remember to edit the .bat file with the tablet’s IP and dev pass.
Does the JRE file have to be installed on the pc or the playbook. i have done everything else but this?.
Hey James,
You run the JRE installer on your PC 🙂
I will make the instructions a bit clearer.
Hi, when you say drag the playtorrent.bar file over the pb-installer.bat file, is that as simple as it sounds (like when you move a document)? Because it doesn’t work for me and I can’t figure out why.
Yup it is as simple as dragging the .bar over the .bat. When you do this, a command window should open – are you getting that?
You can also try another method if the above does not work:
– Go to the directory where PB-Installer.bat is located, hold shift and right click an empty area then select ‘Open command prompt window from here’ (this will work on machines > XP… if you have XP, simply open a command window and cd to the directory)
– Type the following: PB-Installer.bat PlayTorrent.bar
Hope that helps.
Hi, thanks for your work and sharing it. I had no problem following your instructions and successfully loaded and ran PlayTorrent. However, when I attempted to download and run two torrent files, although both ‘saved’ their names in the shared/downloads directory, only one of them (after a few hours) loaded into PlayTorrent and appeared as a file in shared/documents/downloads. After many hours, it started to be active and downloaded perhaps 1% of the file and then merely became “queued” in perpetuity. The other file never even appeared in PlayTorrent. I suspect that my problems may not be associated directly with PlayTorrent, but rather with my router settings or even my ISP. Nevertheless, perhaps you could provide me with some advice? For, example, does PlayTorrent require or prefer certain router ports to be transferred to the Playbook? Do you have any suggestions?
Hi,
Did you download the torrents from the same site? Are both extensions .torrent? Did you restart the App? Did you restart the PlayBook?
Can you give me links to the files in question – feel free to use the contact page on the blog.
Torrents are by definition, peer-to-peer; if there are not enough peers with the file in question, you will not be able to download (or leech) from them at high speeds or not at all.
If you send me the URLs to the files you are having trouble with I can take a look for you.
Easy to follow instructions and apps works as promised. draw back super slow downloading a 9.2 MB single song took 14 mins & 32 secs to download.
Are their settings we can adjust for faster downloading? Were 454 seeders for the song.
Thanks for all the hard work.
Rich,
You need to take the seeder:leecher ratio in to consideration – number of seeders on its own is irrelevant (i.e., if there are 454 seeders and 10,000 leechers, I would it to take a while to download ;))
I did notice that some files did take a while to get up to a good speed for me though. Sadly no options on the app and I believe the developer is no longer supporting the app 🙁
Playtorrent, whilst sideloaded successfully, seems to pause downloading when the app is in the background even though showcase is activated. It just becomes dresdfully slow until it is at a bit per second. Any advice?
Hey,
Does it slow down only when it is in the background or is it always slow?
What else do you have running in the background?
I can’t really think of a reason why that would happen tbh unless you have a lot of background apps.
hello at the top of my playbook on the development mode icon it says. expires in 10 day.
could you please tell me why.
Thank you! for your time.
Hey Mike,
This is how the OS developers developed it. My best guess is that it serves as a reminder to devs so that they do not keep accidentally leave dev mode on for long periods of time.
This is not a problem *after* you side load the app though. The side-loaded app will stay on the device even after dev mode is disabled.
Hi is there anyway I would be able to side load from a mac? If so would you be able to help with instructions? Thanks in advance for your post.
Hey James,
See this post @ http://forums.crackberry.com/android-app-sideloading-f258/android-app-player-leaked-631665/index31.html#post6503312
Basically, all you need to do is move PlayTorrent.bar in to the /lib directory (where all the Java files are) and run the command below in terminal:
java -Xmx512M -jar “BarDeploy.jar” -installApp -device THEDEVICEIPHERE -password THEDEVICEPASSWORDHERE PlayTorrent.bar
Can this be applicable to BB phones? Just wondering.. thanks! 🙂
Hey,
As far as I know there are no torrent clients for the BB smart phone but I may be wrong.
That is an interesting thought though – I am not aware of any issues one would come up against if downloading from the phone (bar the cellular network limitations). I am pretty sure iOS have a torrent client (with a jailbroken device).
Hi, thanks for the great effort. Everything has gone according to plan except that I’ve downloaded a song but can’t find the folder that it’s been put in on the Playbook, and I can’t play it directly from the PlayTorrent app.
Hey,
Have you checked the downloads/documents folder on the PlayBook? You can use the AirBrowser app to browse to these directories.
Oops! My apologies – just found it.
I have 2 Buffalo NAS and use PC/Notebook to control torrents.
Please tell if I can also use the app for NAS remote control thru wifi/over internet?
Thank you
This application only downloads torrents and places them on to your PlayBook local storage.
How do you access the NAS from your PC/Notebook? Through the web browser?
whenever i try to download it ays that it cant recognise the file, what am i doing wrong?
Is the file you are trying to download a .torrent? The app only recognises .torrent and no other extension.