We’ve actively avoided any sort of advertising on the Graboid site, mainly because we think it looks cheesy. Doesn’t mean we won’t eventually do it, but we’ll avoid it if we can. What do you think? Don’t care? Change your name and emigrate? Send us flame mail? Welcome it?

Don’t get me wrong. We’re greedy bastards like anyone else. But we also believe in providing as high quality a user experience as possible. Then again, if it doesn’t make anybody cringe, maybe we’ll consider it sooner rather than later.

To any of you out there who might be in the affiliate marketing business and think that Graboid would be a cool product to represent, we’re now active on Commission Junction. You can find us in the category video/movies, or just do a search on our name.

The idea is that you tell people about Graboid, get them to sign up for a free account, and then if they upgrade to a paid account, you get a commission. Sweet. You do them a favor (telling them where to get free videos) and then make money too.

Go forth and prosper.

I just got invited to join this facebook group, Best Sites to Watch TV and Movies online for free. I joined of course, always fun reading what other people are saying. But Graboid really is playing in a different league than the 100 sites listed in that group. Why the heck would you surf 20 different sites to find something you want to watch when you know you can get pretty much all of it here?

We’ve had soooo many people comment in blogs and wherenot about our FAQ statement on “Is this legal: Yes”. Kind of brief and not very helpful, right? A blogger at wisebread.com recently had an article mentioning Graboid removed from the site because of the danger that they might be seen as supporting something that might be illegal.

Now, I’ll go out on a limb here and assume that most of you don’t give a damn what happens to us (Graboid), but are mainly concerned with what happens to you for downloading files that may or may not have been posted without permission from the copyright holders. Well here’s the thing - all the music industry lawsuits out there target people who’ve both downloaded and uploaded material. Uploading (posting) content you don’t have the right to post is not condoned nor legal in most countries, including the US.

But.

Downloading isn’t subject to the same laws. I haven’t read a SINGLE case of someone being sued successfully or otherewise for simply downloading and viewing, or listening, to content off the net/p2p/torrents/blah blah. If I’ve simply missed all those cases out there, then please enlighten me.

The cute answer in our FAQ refers to Graboid, not the activities of our users. Stay tuned for comments on this blog from the people out there who have contrary evidence. Or not.

A few days ago, I was sitting on the couch at home with my daughter, and she wanted to watch a movie since she’s already seen every episode of “How I Met Your Mother”, her favourite show. She’s used Graboid herself, so she asked if we could see what was on. As it turned out, the particular show she wanted wasn’t available, so I sat there wondering, “what the… *&$^”?

Not because it wasn’t on Graboid. But because I realized there’s no alternative. We’re in the streaming/downloading business, so I have a pretty good idea of all the sites that are out there. Services that are commercial, free, in beta, whatever. I was perfectly willing to pay $4 or so to watch this movie, but I didn’t want to get up off the couch. And I didn’t want to wait 2-20 hours to download something.

My cable service - nogo, their video on demand only has 100 or so titles.  Netflix? I couldn’t even find out because you have to be a member to access their streaming service, and from what I’ve heard, it has pretty limited selection too. Peekvid? Nope, limited selection, not to mention crappy quality. And when I say limited selection, I mean like 500 movies, 90% of them made before 1950. Charlie Chaplin fans rejoice.

I literally sat there with my mouth hanging open as I realized there is NO alternative to Graboid’s streaming service. Now of course you’ll point out that we didn’t have the movie either, but we had the best shot by far. Forget that for a second. What IS the alternative? There’s iTunes for music. What is it for movies?  There’s probably an obvious answer, but I don’t know what it is.

As for my daughter, she fell asleep reading Archie comics while I scoured the net. Mission accomplished.

UPDATE: The newest AVG virus database has fixed the false-positive with Graboid. Update your virus database by going to Start -> AVG -> AVG Control Center and then clicking Service -> Check for Updates from the drop-down menus.

Some users have notified us of AVG Anti-Virus software reporting a trojan attached to the latest version of Graboid. This notification is in fact a “false positive” caused by the latest update in AVG — it is not present in other anti-virus protection software and we have tested using Symantec, Norton, Kaspersky and BitDefender.

You can test the file yourself using a variety of anti-virus scanners here.

We have been in contact with Grisoft (creators of AVG) to help remedy this situation in their next update. This was their response:

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, the previous virus database might have detected the virus on some legitimate applications. We can confirm that it was a false alarm. We will release the new virus update that will remove the false positive on this application. Then, please update your AVG and check your files again.

If you need to restore deleted files from AVG Virus Vault you can do it this way: open AVG Virus Vault (Start -> Programs -> AVG Antivirus -> AVG Virus Vault). Locate the file that was removed, right click on it and choose “Restore File(s)” option.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Best regards,

David Streichl
AVG Technical Support

website: http://www.grisoft.com
mailto: technicalsupport@grisoft.com

Until AVG corrects this, the only surefire way around the warning is to disable AVG (which we certainly do not recommend). We will update this post when Grisoft has confirmed that the misidentification has been corrected in their next update.

As we continue to develop our beta software, we get a lot of customer feedback. We’d like to know something just a bit different now. Email or post here… what are the features that you’re most likely to tell somebody about to get them to try Graboid, and conversely, what is THE problem that’s most likely to make you not want to bother talking about us?

Oh, and by the way, the single thing that’s most likely to make you not like Graboid is a slow internet connection. As we’ve discovered many times now, it doesn’t matter what “ultra” plan you’re on with your internet provider, your connection isn’t always superfast. Use speedtest to measure your connection. Anything under 3000 kbps is going to cause streaming problems, although downloads should still be good. Then call Verizon/Comcast/whomever and yell at them. They like that.

We at Graboid have our own reasons for developing the software and service, much of it selfish, because we want to get these videos for ourselves. There are many ways to get tv shows and movies for free, or inexpensively on the net; however, Graboid appears to be more of a special resource for tv episodes than for movies. Perhaps because there are so many more tv shows than there are movies, it’s hard for them to get aggregated in one place.

It would be interesting to know what brought you, and what keeps you, interested in Graboid. I have to believe it’s the tv shows and that the movies are of incidental interest.  What are you watching out there?

The FAQ was updated today, and addresses 95% of the issues you may face when signing up or using Graboid. The software doesn’t always have the most elegant response to certain error conditions, but they’re almost always easily solved. Thanks for being patient, and for being a part of the Graboid family. We love you all.

We love hearing from our users, especially the polite ones. But we’ve had so many new users lately that support emails are starting to take time away from software development/improvement. Just a quick note to everyone - please read the FAQ, or re-try what you’re doing, before getting in touch with us.

• You have to download the Graboid application from the website to watch videos. You can’t watch via your web browser.
• If you didn’t get your confirmation email to activate your account, look for it again, especially in your junk/spam folder.
• Copy and paste your password and userid from our email into the Graboid login fields. Make sure you haven’t appended a space at the beginning or end of the password - it’s very easy to do when copying in Windows.

Thank you for using Graboid! We’re working to make it better. If you like it, please let us know. It helps our programmers sleep better during their short nights.