Getting Into Miro - Kioskea

Mr Ashutosh Mishra

Filed under : Kioskea - Tribune >> Internet >> Broadband >> Getting Into Miro Key words : miro , chanels , internet , application , open source , tv , viewer , Getting Into Miro 17 Mar, 2008 09:53 am

You're watching TV on your computer? You're using Windows Media Center or PouchIn TV? Maybe you should have a look at this new open source web TV application : Miro, formerly called Democracy Player.

Miro, formerly called Democracy Player, is an open source Internet TV application. It allows you to download, watch and share videos and TV shows from over 3000 channels and from video sites like YouTube as well. The best part is that downloading the stuff via Miro is legal, making it a big boost to the anti-piracy campaign! I have posted some screenshots of Miro here - do have a look at them and then you can try this wonderful, small and free app.

1. The default home page in Miro opens a channel browser displaying the featured channels in smooth slides. The recent and popular channels are put up in thumbnails. Scroll down a bit further and you will be able to surf channels from your favorite category. The recent entries from the official Miro blog and online Help topics are displayed at the bottom. The sidebar panel lets you access most of the features in a jiffy.

2. What I like about Miro is it's excellent video searching facility. With just a single click, you can search for videos from YouTube, Yahoo! Video, Google Video, Blogdigger, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, Mefeedia and Revver.

3. And Miro isn't just about downloading stuff - you can also put the downloaded media in the Miro Library and view them directly with Miro's inbuilt video player! This video player, very much like VLC or GOM, supports a wild variety of formats so you don't have to go on a find-that-damn-codec mission.

4. Miro's main purpose however remains with the channels. You can "subscribe" to the various channels available (3787 as of now and counting...) and download the shows available in the channels. By default, Miro will search for all new shows in a channel and download it for you, once you subscribe to that particular channel.

5. Miro has a nice set of configuration tools as well. The Preferences window allows you to have full control over how it behaves.

6. Sharing the videos with your friends is very easy with Miro. The Miro Developing Team have teamed up with Video Bomb, which allows you to directly mail the downloaded videos to your pal's email ID, irrespective of it's size! You can also post them at Digg, Del.icio.us and Reddit.

7. Miro has now partnered with Revision3, TED and Deutsche Welle, and you can directly subscribe to the additional channels from these players in Miro. More information is available here.

Any cons / limitations in Miro?
As you have seen, Miro is an awesome utility. Being open source, it breaks free from any limitations. However there are some small tweaks that I would like to see in the future versions:
1. I would rather have the home page show the video library and not the channel browser.
2. Miro is bit of a resource hog. The developers should work on making it more streamlined.
3. Miro is mostly about downloading videos, which are usually big files. If you are on limited broadband, Miro is not for you. [This is of course not Miro's fault]

Hopefully the future versions will make Miro a truly killer app!

The Competition
Miro faces tough competition from some similar free software, most notably Joost and Livestation. While these two players have their own cool features and channels, I personally prefer Miro to both. My reasons - Miro is open source, it is available for Linux (and I use Ubuntu Linux), and it has more than 10 times as many channels as Joost or Livestation. MakeUseOf has covered both Joost and Livestation pretty well.

Technical Info
Miro is available for Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mac OSX 10.3+ and all Linux distributions. The installer is less than 25MB big.

Article originally published on: PC Ton!c

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(2)

[1]

This is really cool. It's like having both VLC and YouTube in the same app.
Thanks for the article.
Comment by Kate - 17 Mar, 2008 10:58 am

[2]

The URL has been left out by mistake - it's http://getmiro.com/
Comment by Ashutosh Mishra - 17 Mar, 2008 11:37 am

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