BitTorrent to start certifying devices, launching an all-in-one client

BitTorrent has teamed up with the Information and Communications Research Laboratories at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to deploy new standards for consumer electronics. Manufacturers and developers will be able to apply a "BitTorrent Certified" label and logo to their products; chips, designs, and devices that get certified will promise a seamless consumer experience for playing BitTorrent content on Blu-ray and DVD players, digital TVs, tablets, and mobile devices. The BitTorrent Certified technology ecosystem will ensure compatibility amongst all devices, content, software, and application extensions.

"Today's generation of consumer electronics devices are more powerful than ever before, but they still lack cohesiveness and ease of use for content playback," Shahi Ghanem, chief strategist and executive vice president at BitTorrent, said in a statement. "Consumers shouldn't need to differentiate between codecs, file formats, bit rates, and other technology jargon. Content playback should just work – regardless of content type or source. BitTorrent's new development partnership with ITRI's Information and Communications Research Laboratories, one of the world's preeminent research institutes, coupled with close relationships with Taiwanese technology companies, will help us create a new generation of devices that offer consumers a simple promise: your files will play."

Sometime this quarter, BitTorrent will replace its mainline client (µTorrent will live on as the minimal client) with a new all-in-one solution for media entertainment that will be part of the BitTorrent Certified technology ecosystem. The new client will integrate search, downloads, and playback on multiple devices, according to TorrentFreak.

Earlier this month, the company announced that BitTorrent and µTorrent hit 100 million monthly users. On an average day, 20 million users from over 220 countries use either of the two BitTorrent clients, available in 52 languages, and 400,000 new clients are downloaded every day.