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uTorrent 3.1 alpha
(Credit: BitTorrent)

The company that develops μTorrent announced today that the paid upgrade version of the popular torrent client, called μTorrent Plus, was ready for limited public testing. μTorrent Plus comes with additional value-added features in an attempt to entice fans into upgrading. Originally announced earlier this year, parent company BitTorrent, which also makes the original torrent client BitTorrent, has revealed a bit more about the value-added features that will come in μTorrent Plus.

These include drag-and-drop file conversion for transcoding files and then transferring them to another device, a built-in media player, remote file transfers, and customer support. It also comes with antivirus protection provided by Bitdefender.

Exclusive to CNET, BitTorrent has invited the first 500 people to sign up for μTorrent Plus alpha (external link) to get access to the alpha, any subsequent beta versions, and the final stable version for one year, a $25 value.

In an informal and unscientific poll CNET ran when μTorrent Plus was first announced, 82 percent of 1,858 people voted that they would not pay for extra features in μTorrent.

Virus protection

If you do most of your downloading through uTorrent, wouldn’t it make sense to build a virus scanner into the program itself, rather than running a resident-in-memory, puts-a-sizable-dent-in-your-FPS virus scanner like AVG or McAfee? BitTorrent has teamed up with BitDefender (similar names, eh?) to provide built-in Virus Guard protection. If you’ve downloaded Virus Guard from the uTorrent App Studio, it’s the same deal, only the uTorrent Plus version has a larger virus definition database and the ability to actually clean up any malware that it finds.

In practice, this works exactly as you’d expect; you’re notified when a file has a virus and given the option to clean it, and when a file is clean you get a nice, reassuring green checkmark.

uTorrent media player
Integrated audio and video playback

This one’s a no-brainer: instead of opening movies and TV shows in an external program, uTorrent Plus now includes an integrated media player. For now this seems to be hardcoded to use Windows Media Player, but we’re told that you’ll probably be able to choose your own media player in a later beta or the final build. This feature will also let you watch media as it downloads, streaming-style, as long as the torrent has a high enough availability.

In practice, this works quite well — and it’s certainly good for checking whether a media file is real or not — but you can’t escape the fact that you are stuck within uTorrent. You can still go full-screen, but if you click any other part of the uTorrent UI, the media player stops immediately. Worse, you can’t tab back to the media player: you have to navigate back to the torrent, click Play, then scan through the file. Hopefully by the time the final build rolls around the media player will work in the background.
Automagic transcoding

This is the stand-out feature in uTorrent Plus — and unfortunately, the pre-alpha build that we reviewed didn’t work very well. In theory, you will plug in an Android or Apple device over USB, or video game console over the network, and uTorrent will then automatically transcode any media that you download for that device. The idea is that you can set up a download over night — your favorite TV show, for example — and in the morning there’ll be a steaming-hot, low-res, transcoded-for-your-phone AVI waiting for you.

uTorrent add a transcode target device

At the moment this feature is very much in flux. We’re told that the list of devices is final — Apple or Android, Xbox or PS3 — but the list of codecs and “device profiles” are still being worked on. H.264, Theora, and WebM will probably be supported video-wise, and MP3, AAC, and AC-3 for audio.

This feature is also a perfect complement to the next…

uTorrent Remote
uTorrent Remote file transfer

If you’ve used uTorrent 3.0 you have hopefully used uTorrent Remote, an awesome web-based control panel that lets you control your desktop uTorrent installation running at home from anywhere in the world. You don’t have to play your firewall settings, and it’s completely secure.

With uTorrent Plus, Remote gains the ability to transfer files. You can log in from the office, check on your torrents, and then transfer an episode for your lunch break. If you forget to copy over that freshly-transcoded file to your phone in the morning, just stream or download it from uTorrent Remote while you’re on the train.

Again, though, this is in theory — in our testing, uTorrent Remote had not yet been updated with this feature.

Some more features:

Automatic Transcoding:

This is the stand out feature in uTorrent Plus and unfortunately, the pre alpha build that we reviewed didnt work very well. In theory, you will plug in an Android or Apple device over USB, or video game console over the network, and uTorrent will then automatically transcode any media that you download for that device. The idea is that you can set up a download over night, your favorite TV show, for example and in the morning there’ll be a steaming-hot, low-res, transcoded-for-your-phone AVI waiting for you.

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Anti Virus

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Integrated audio and video playback:

Instead of opening movies and TV shows in an external program, uTorrent Plus now includes an integrated media player. For now this seems to be hardcoded to use Windows Media Player, but sources on the net suggest that you’ll probably be able to choose your own media player in a later beta or the final build. This feature will also let you watch media as it downloads, streaming-style, as long as the torrent has a high enough availability.

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