These days that’s how i avoid at least some of the unwanted add-ons. Usually, you can click on the “Full specifications” link for any software offered by CNET and it takes you to a page which has a link to the developer’s main website. These days you have to be very careful indeed if you download stuff from there. CNET’s used to be a great place for free software. But, if the add-ons are forced on us rather than being optional then we should all complain and boycott the software or the website. but not often ! The developer of the wanted free software often seeks some kind of revenue to pay for their time to continue developing the software or to develop new stuff. 90% of the time we don’t want any of those add-ons but, to be fair, once in a while there’s a useful extra there which we allow to install and we get some use from it …. Lots of good free software is bundled with extra programs, toolbars, ad-ware, screensavers, etc. In any case, when you look at the movie folder the main movie will be the largest one (Duh!) The main movie file is often labeled “Stream” or “Streaming”. When ripping a movie disc a number of video files/folders are created.

If you “rip” Blu-Ray movies to your hard drive (so that you can preserve the original) you can play those Blu-Ray files with VLC. Be sure to assign all video types to it during install, and you can double-click-open files without launching a certain Redmond- spawned product of dubious functionality. Plays a great deal of file types others won’t, has a good community developing extensions, skins and so forth, and crashes much less often than some other players. Of course as others have commented, there are much more malicious download sites out there too. It’s been a while, but last time I used that site, I think there were five or six of those things I had to do before it sent the download. For CNET at least, if you VERY CAREFULLY read every screen presented to you as you try to download, you can decline offers, uncheck checkboxes that indicate you want to install add-on software, and so on.

I spend some time every now and then removing such resource-hogging bloat from users’ machines. Browser producers routinely enter these kinds of deals with “toolbar” companies as well. It can be difficult to identify these other offers and distinguish them from things you must agree to before you are presented with actual links to download the software you want. I know of a number of otherwise respectable download sites that have taken up the practice of generating revenue by forcing downloaders to “consider” downloading bloatware before they are allowed to download the software they came to the site for.

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