uTorrent adds smarter peer selection, integrated BitTorrent Bundle

BitTorrent has announced the availability of uTorrent 3.4, the latest edition of its popular file-sharing tool.

The most obvious change is the (optional) integration of BitTorrent Bundle. Click in the left-hand sidebar and you can browse licensed content from Moby, Madonna and more, downloading whatever you like for free (although you’ll probably need to provide your email address).

There’s a major update under the hood with the adoption of Canonical Peer Priority. Instead of just blindly accepting connections up to a maximum of 50, and then rejecting everything that comes later, uTorrent 3.4′s new prioritization scheme means all peers now have a far more equal chance of connecting to a swarm. In theory that should deliver better and more consistent performance, although for the best results the other clients will need to support it, too.

Perhaps the biggest change, though, is uTorrent’s move to a rapid release schedule. Forget the old alpha/ beta/ stable release cycle, the focus now is on releasing builds fast and reviewing results immediately, which hopefully means we’ll see much more regular updates without compromising on reliability.

We’ll be interested to see what happens. uTorrent 3.4 is available now.