BearShare has been a favorite among many P2P fans for some time now, and we were intruigedintrigued to find out how the developer has attempted to diversify and launch a client designed specifically for downloading movies . Like many, we were initially puzzled by the need for such an app, when the original program allows you to download movies anyway.

Putting these prejudices aside, if you're someone who is just looking to download movies, TV shows and clips then BearFlix could be seen as an ideal choice. The clear, tabbed interface incorporates many of the elements of its father application, which is one of the easiest P2P clients to navigate around, making this a great program for those who are new to the world of file sharing.

As you'd expect, there are several changes to the GUI that lend themselves to video downloading videos, including a nifty filtering function that allows you to hone your search to a specific movie file type, though thisn’t exactly a revolutionary feature. There's also a traffic progress monitor at the top of the main window indicating the amount of bandwidth currently being commandeered by the app. However, possibly the biggest change is in the inclusion of a built-in video player, allowing you to preview videos and play them once they've been downloaded. Given that this is such an integral part ofis what supposedly what makes BearFlix different stand out from other P2P, we were somewhat underwhelmed by this feature. P layback is often a little slow and juddery, and the range of player controls is very basic. Considering it's supposed to be dedicated to video, some multimedia conversion or compression tools wouldn't have gone amiss either.

That said, there are still many positives to be taken from BearFlix. The advanced parental controls feature puts you in control of what content your kids can get hold of, searching is very quick, and best of all the network returns a substantial number of matching results when compared to the likes of Limewire and Ares. Whether a video-only P2P client catches will catch on remains to be seen , but if you're looking for rare TV shows or older movies, BearFlix is a fast, simple and reliable solution. If it's newer releases you're after though, you're probably better off with a Bittorrent client, as availablityavailability and download times are superior. Remember though, kids, stick to the copyright-free material if you want to stay on the right side of the law.