There are few applications more eagerly anticipated this year than Voddler. What Spotify has done for music fans, Voddler promises to do for film lovers and Softonic has been allowed an exclusive look at this Beta release of the Voddler client for Windows.
The good news is, you won’t be disappointed by it. Voddler provides stunning DVD quality images and sound and and a huge rapidly expanding collection of films and documentaries all for free. All you have to do is sit through about 5 minutes of adverts at the beginning to enjoy them. The bad news is: that you need an invite from Voddler to try it and it’s only being rolled-out in Sweden at the moment. A pan-European and North American release is scheduled within the year.
When you install Voddler, it takes you through a quick setup wizard which checks the suitability of your connection. The test takes a few minutes but if you’ve got a 2.5Mbit connection or more, you’re good to go. When Voddler launches for the first time, it goes straight into full-screen mode. I would prefer to have been prompted whether I wanted to open in windowed or full-screen mode but you can revert back to windowed mode (so that you can access the rest of your PC normally) by pressing [Windows]+F.
The first thing to note is that you can’t use your mouse when Voddler has started. Everything is controlled via the keyboard – mainly the cursor and Enter keys – which is a bit disorientating and awkward at first until you get used to it. The probable reason for this is that eventually, Voddler plans to launch a Voddler box which will attach to your TV and allow you to use it without a computer. However, I think it would still have made more sense to have allowed users on a computer to use a mouse.
Once you setup a profile and log-in, you are presented with three options in front of a scrolling background displaying iconic movie stills. The options are Settings, Movies and Quit. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through them. The Settings option simply allows you to resize the screen for your monitor. However, I found this part of the interface a little confusing. Drag each corner and the position of the subtitles, hit Enter to confirm each one when you’re happy. It would have been far more useful though if there was a way to see exactly how big, and where on the screen, an actual movie will look once you’ve finished.
When you click Movies, the fun begins. Movies are categorized by Premium, Recommended, Documentaries. Finally, Sort allows you to organize films Alphabetically, Most Viewed and Top Rated. Finally, if you scroll to the far right, you can change the View from Wall View to List View.
The choice of films and documentaries in Voddler is staggering. There’s enough free content to keep you going for a long time and if that’s not enough, there’s also a Premium service where you pay in the region of 3 dollars to watch a film ad-free. Free choices include offerings such as Airplane, Jackass Twopointfive and Trading Places. The odd thing is Premium films are aren’t exactly “hot-off the press” either. There is a definite lack of newer films but that will hopefully change as Voddler becomes more established. Each film also has a handy synopsis, trailer and average user rating.
When the film starts, you have to sit through about 5 minutes of adverts and usually a trailer just as in the cinema. Controlling the film can be done using the cursor keys and pause with the Spacebar. The streaming stability and sound quality of Voddler are outstanding – I didn’t experience a single blip during streaming of a movie. Finally, when you’ve finished the film, you’re asked to give a rating.
Voddler is a superb application which, like Spotify has done with music, is set to become the blueprint of how movies will be distributed online.
Download Voddler 1.1.0.4212 Beta in Softonic