Couchtuner is a free online service/website that allows you to stream content such as TV shows, movies available on online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc for free. If you are a TV series fan or like to watch the latest movies online then couchtuner is a great option for you. Thought, unlike Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO and other streaming services that charge you some sort of fees in the form of a monthly or yearly subscription, couchtuner is absolutely free.
But then the question arises how can couchtuner provide such great content that too for free? And if it provides everything for free then why people still buy subscriptions for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc? Well, the simple answer to this question is, couchtuner is not exactly a legal website/service.
But if couchtuner is illegal, why is it still working? We will answer all these questions in this article.
How couchtuner works?
Couchtuner has been in the market for a long time now. It started as a platform for streaming media content online just like Kodi. But as internet TV and online content streaming became popular, couchtuner started providing similar content for free.
Couchtuner is not a single website but rather it is a network of multiple websites registered on different domains. The reason for this is to prevent the website from getting blocked. Now, we need to know what exactly couchtuner does?
Couchtuner started with a single com domain in the early 2010s but since then it has expanded to dozens of country-specific domains that provide the same user interface and the same content. The only purpose of having multiple different domains is to always have a backup for the couchtuner website in case one of the websites get taken down or blocked. In parts of the world such as England and Europe, piracy is taken very seriously and you can be sued and fined if you are found to be streaming pirated content. In such countries, having multiple different domains for couchtuner helps a lot as all the domains can’t be tracked down and blocked.
Couchtuner also has a lot of proxy sites that just reroute the traffic from the user’s devices through a series of different servers to avoid the detection of the actual IP address or the location of the user. This helps to keep the identity of the couchtuner website and the user confidential and avoid detection by the ISP.
Couchtuner website features a decently good UI with a grid on the homepage that shows the latest TV series episodes or seasons added to the list. You can also get a search bar on the website that you can use to search for your favorite shows. Along with these, you get a list of the top all-time favorite shows and a list of trending shows on the couchtuner website.
Though the problem with couchtuner is that none of the shows are arranged in chronological order or even in the order of the original series. The list of the shows is updated as new episodes are added so it can be quite a cumbersome task to search for all the episodes one by one if you don’t know the actual order of the series.
Well, couchtuner hosts the links for different TV series, movies, and videos that are taken from other streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. People can visit couchtuner and search for TV series or movies that they’d like to watch and just stream it for free. But this is completely like stealing copyrighted media. Yes, it is. So Is couchtuner legal?
Is couchtuner legal?
The answer to this question will be no. Couchtuner is not legal. It is illegal because all the content that couchtuner provides is copyrighted content and the distribution of any kind of copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal in many parts of the world.
Though couchtuner does not host any of the content it allows you to stream for security reasons. Couchtuner only provides the links to the original sources of the media from where you can directly stream the content. This is done for multiple reasons such as
● Couchtuner keeps changing its domain name and address to avoid blocking by the ISPs. For this purpose, they need to shift to jew domains often. They also keep changing the host for the website on a regular basis. Due to this, if some content is hosted on a host, migrating to some other hosts will require migrating all the media content too, which will be a very tough and slow task. To avoid this issue, the couchtuner does not host any streamable content on its servers at all.
● Couchtuner mostly buys domains or hosts its websites in countries where the anti-piracy laws are not that strict or don’t exist at all. This is to avoid copyright infringements by the actual copyright owners of the media content. Siting in such countries helps them to operate the website without having to worry much about the legal issues.
How to use couchtuner safely?
As we stated in the previous point the couchtuner is a pirate website and is completely illegal and using it in regions such as Europe and England can lead to fines and legal troubles. So the best way to avoid all this is to use a VPN service. A VPN connection service helps you to route all your requests through a different server present in a completely different part of the world and conceal all your data requests so as to make them hard to capture and detect.
This can help you to anonymously stream the content from the websites such as couchtuner. IF you don’t want to use a VPN connection then you can go for a proxy site for couchtuner which works in a similar way as that of a VPN but it is not as secure as a VPN connection.
Conclusion
Couchtuner is a great website that provides free streamable content such as TV series and movies to everyone. Though it is a pirate site and provides pirated content which is a crime in many parts of the world. But if you are inclined to watch your favorite TV series for free or don’t have enough money to go for paid streaming services such as NetFlix, Amazon Prime, etc then it is a good option for you.
