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Miro Turns 1.0

nicholasreville writes "We have just released version 1.0 of our internet video application Miro. Miro is a free and open-source (GPL) RSS aggregator and video player with BitTorrent support and a built-in guide of video feeds. It's created by the Participatory Culture Foundation, which is devoted to making online video more open and has received grants from Mozilla and Mitch Kapor, among others. In contrast to closed, proprietary delivery systems, Miro embraces open standards and DRM-free video. We build this software because we think it's absolutely crucial that internet video have an open technology foundation. We don't need more gatekeepers. Miro was featured previously on Slashdot."

4 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If there was only content worth watching by multisync · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When using the Democracy Player, I could not find any content worth watching. Just garbage.


    That's funny. I find the same thing with commercial television.

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    I don't care why you're posting AC
  2. Re:If there was only content worth watching by Selfbain · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You know you can add RSS feeds of torrents right... tvrss.net is your friend.

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    Well, it has never been successfully tested.
  3. Miro is a video domain trademark already by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.miro.com/ displays

    and Miro Video Editing soft/hardware from Pinnacle, now owned by Avid such as the
    Pinnacle Systems miroVIDEO DV300 FireWire/SCSI Adapter Board

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    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  4. Tried it, don't like it by jilles · · Score: 4, Informative

    The concept of Miro is appealing: having videos you are interested in download automatically and have them available for watching. Miro tries to do this. The problem is that it is a mediocre feed reader; a mediocre bittorrent client and a mediocre media player. Consequently it is not replacing any of these on my machine.

    Unfortunately there is lots of rough edges that are known but not addressed in this 1.0 release. For example, Miro hogs bandwidth on my PC. Because it is hogging bandwidth, forget about doing things like browsing the web or accessing the miro guide when it is running. In other words, it renders the connection unusable. Most p2p clients have options to configure and constrain upload and download bandwidth capacity. I've never used a p2p application that worked without providing reasonable settings for such options (like a few kilobytes below the max capacity for upload and download to prevent being throttled by the ISP router). Miro lacks these options. I have a ordinary cable internet connection similar to what most home users would have, nothing special. So likely this affects most users.

    Additionally, I don't like the built in media player. VLC is nice if you can configure it properly but that is not possible with the options screen in Miro. There's no option to launch video in an external media player.

    Finally, many options default to rather annoying settings. For example subscribing to a feed results in Miro automatically downloading all new items in that feed. That just sucks unless you subscribe to only a handful of feeds. Basically it results in the automatic downloading of stuff you'll never watch and the delaying of downloads that you might actually want to watch. Additionally no way to prioritize here of course.

    Altogether this feels like a premature release. They should have spent a bit more time polishing and fixing obvious issues.

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    Jilles