There are a few options when it comes to streaming torrents on XBMC. One being Stream, another being Pulsar. I’m here to show you how to install and setup a new torrent finding and streaming engine.
Pulsar is built on “providers” that are separate XBMC Plugins that are used to locate media (typically through website APIs). This serves as a huge benefit for being able to scrape many different sources, and allowing many outside contributors to create providers. This also means if there is a change on one of the torrent sites, the whole plugin isn’t broken, that specific provider plugin will just need to be updated.
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More information:
Pulsar is centered around media: it browses media from TheMovieDB and Trakt.TV.
And so, when you decide you want to watch a media (i.e. given an IMDB or TVDB Id), here’s what Pulsar does:
- Enumerate the installed providers
- Call each provider to find the media you want to watch (in parallel)
- Each provider returns a list of BT links they found
- Collects and de-duplicates all the links
- Goes on the BitTorrent network to find out the number of seeds and peers in real time (i.e. not provided by the provider)
- Finds out of which quality are the different links (thanks to their name)
- Ranks the links by quality and availability (Pulsar privileges quality over availability, but it’s not dumb. However, you can get a full list to choose from manually it you want)
- Sends the chosen link to the BitTorrent streaming engine (brand new, and completely rewritten)
All of this is done in less than 1 second.
Pulsar is around 95% Go, and thus, it’s fast. Very fast, actually.
The BitTorrent streaming engine was completely wrote from scratch, and is very resilient (or at least it’s designed to be).
It’s built on top of the brand new libtorrent 1.0 (which had special patches for the streaming case). So it’s very optimised, especially for low CPU machines.
I have yet to find a media that doesn’t play with the engine.
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[alert-announce]Note: This is still very much in beta, and might not work 100% on all systems.[/alert-announce]
Download Repo
The first thing we need to do is download a great unofficial repo that has Pulsar as well as a bunch of other providers.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/icanuckxbmcrepo/files/repository.pulsarunofficial-1.0.1.zip/download
Download the latest version
Rename the ZIP file to ‘repository.pulsarunofficial‘
Install Pulsar Add-on
Open up XBMC and go to System > Settings
Click on Add-ons
Click Install From Zip File
Navigate to where you saved the Zip file (to your desktop perhaps) and click on it
The repository will now install
Don’t go anywhere from here, now click Get Add-ons
Click on Pulsar Unofficial Repo
Click Video Add-ons
Then click on Pulsar
Then click Install!
It will download, and then become Enabled
Check to confirm it has been enabled
Install Pulsar Providers (Pulsar Add-ons)
Now, click back and go to Program Add-Ons, we need to install our provider(s)
In this example, we will install the “YIFY2 Provider” Add-on by mancuniancol
Confirm it has been enabled
[alert-warning]Note: You need to enable “Allow programs on other system to control XBMC”. Systems like Openelec require this![/alert-warning]
[alert-note]Now, at this point you need to exit, and restart XBMC in order to start the Pulsar daemon. Please restart XBMC.[/alert-note]
Once you have restarted XBMC, you need to go to Videos > Add-ons
Click Pulsar
Now, for example click Popular Movies
It may take a while to load, but when it does you can browse the media. Simply choose the file you would like to watch
The file will start to buffer, and your media will begin shortly!
From here you can then start to experiment with new providers. In this example we only covered Movies, but you could install the EZTV provider plugin which would allow you to stream TV shows.
Hope this helped! Leave a comment below if you have any questions, comments, or need any help.
Thanks,
Alex
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Don’t you think you might mention that this software is still in beta and is not compatible with many systems?
Thanks, I’ve made a note at the top.
Any knowledge about setting up Pulsar on ATV2 with XBMC?
Hi,
Pulsar isn’t available on ATV2 yet.
Great, that work on Raspberry Pi with OpenElec 4.05. Great explanation. I configure subtitles too with Opensubtitle plugin and it work great.
Regards
That’s great! Glad you found the guide helpful.
After I install this stuff, everything in the providers section is marked as “Broken” what does that mean?? Please help!
Why is the Pulsar Unofficial Repo empty?
Hi, I’m running on OpenElec 4.2.1 and I have installed Pulsar with this tuto but I have nothing in Pulsar Unofficial Repo ;-(
Anybody know why ?
Hi,
You should check out the following threads on the Kodi forum, you may need to ask your question there:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=204728
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200957
Thanks
I have the same issue, was anyone able to resolve this?
Thanks.
You should check out the following threads on the Kodi forum, you may need to ask your question there:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=204728
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200957
Thanks
I have installed following the method above, I installed a few providers and ensured they were installed. I then restarted XBMC and got a message saying that the Pulsar daemon had started, however when I try to start the add-on I get a message saying the add-on only works with Windows, Linux & OS X. I am running OS X so was wondering what the issue is.
I am running XBMC 13.2 on OS X 10.10.1
Hey Mick, check out http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200957 and post your question there along with a log dump. The dev and community there will be able to help out.
Works like a charm on Openelec, i wonder why some titles returned by a search doesnt show a time and can’t be played.
Yeah great if yifi now yts hasthe movie if not it will say unavailable. if you want yifi ,ovies use the yifi add on or go to the site yts.re
do you need to open up ports on the router?
Installing from zip file reports that file has incorrect structure. I have followed the instructions about finding plugin id from xml file and verifying that the folder in the zip file is named with this name as well as zip file itself is named repository.pulsarunofficial.zip. Still no success. (Raspbmc)
Hi,
is it possible to set up a lokal “provider” with your own video files. That way you could make a server with your files (music, videos etc.) and a bit torrent server, which is only available for your house (perhaps friends?!?). Speed would be fast (LAN/WLAN). As clients raspberry pies and everybody would be happy. Or would this be a waste because of overhead?
I’m sorry but why would you use torrents for this?
In xbmc you can simply add a network share and play all the files over a network.
http://kodi.wiki/view/Video_library/Adding_media_sources
Not compatible with ANDROID
Use Xbmc torrent it’s still working and works on all platforms.
Hi,
it was working fine on windows 8.1 but today all of a sudden the pulsar daemon isn’t starting and i get ‘You must restart xbmc before using Pulsar’ notification. i tried multiple reboot and even complete reinstall with no success.
Thanks,
Jai
Hi, i’m running win 7 x86, kodi instaled, and i have problem with running the pulsar addon, it always says that i need to restart kodi, i’ve done it a dozen times, and still it doesn’t work, do you have any idea what’s the problem?
Stahinja install the plugin from the link provided here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200957&highlight=crash
I install pulsar and plugins, When I search in TVShows menu I’m able to find entire seasons, but some episodes have “no link”.
Hello
Do you know when it is possible to get Pulsar on apple tv 2 with xbmc?
Hi,
They won’t be developing that.
gracias por tu ayuda me salio todo bien, saludos
Hi, thanks for your detailed guide, but I installed the repo in android media box everything went fine but when I click on add on it says pulsar is only compatible with windows linux & OS X, please help, thanks
Hi Vivek,
Maybe because it’s only compatible with Windows, Linux and OSX?
Hey, thanks for your post.
But how can I know which movie/provider will be choosed ?
For example, yesterday I’ve launched a movie to try. One of my 4 installed provider has been selected. And the 1080p Original Version, launched.
Why this one ? Why not the 720p version ? Why not an other provider ? How can I choose or define these rules ?
My second question is how can I combine Pulsar with subtitle ? And only Pulsar ( I don’t want subtitles with local movies) ?
Thanks a lot.
will pulsar work on android soon?
Not sure, ask the developers.
i did everthing like stated
but i can find any pulsar providers under program add on
it show pulsar is enabled and installed
i restarted many times, but stil no providers
i also installed the icanuck repo
stil no [roviders to be found
Trying to make it work with OSMC and a Raspberry Pi 2.
Nothing shows up when I select the repo. I forced refresh, checked updates, rebooted several times but no luck.
I checked both sites noted before but found no useful info.
I’ll keep trying. Any advice?
Great tutorial.
Working very well on my Raspberry-Pi 2. YIFY2 wasn’t in the repositories and a few scripts for other sites seem to fail in the searches – I presume that’s an ongoing issue as sites change their set-up, but very very impressed with the initial results.
Saving the torrents to an external hard-drive worked well and was easy to set up. remote controls from Yatse for searches all worked well, allowing me to type in the full names of my searches using the android keyboard rather than the slower open-elec on-screen qwerty. All-in-all super-impressed with this. Thank you very much. More suggestions about making the most of open-elec and Kodi would be very welcome.
I followed you exactly and Pulsar is still empty on my Kodi. Also Pulsar has crashed and needs restarting and it beeps over and over and over. What can I do to stop it?
Thanks!
Pulsar has crashed and tries to restart over and over aain making a horrible beeping noise. What can I do about it? I followed you step by step in installing Pulsar but my Kodi is empty pretty much. What went wrong there? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Phil
Hi there, I have tried repeatedly to install Pulsar on Kodi Helix (14.0) running on Apple TV 2.0
Keeps coming up with the Must restart XBMC message, tried uninstalling/reinstalling, tried several different links, several different versions, tried purging packages and cache, tried removing providers, removing the repository, and doing it in a different order.
I can’t seem to find any solution.
I’ve searched extensively and no one seems to have a solution for this,
It just seems like this is a HUGE bug. Pulsar does not work on Kodi Helix
Need help please!
You should probably post this on the Kodi forum, or ask the developer directly. Posting here was a waste of time 🙂
Pulsar is now a DEAD project. It hasn’t been updated in over half a year. It doesn’t work. No one else has picked it up, even though its an open source project. It doesn’t even let you find new torrent providers like it used to. Move along. Move along. The last thing the dev wrote was some shit about knowing Python programming to update the providers which he won’t talk about for legal reasons. Its just a big WHAT THE FUCK waste of time.