Democracy Player is 0.9.2 and Growing Up Fast

Dean writes "Democracy Player, the open source answer for RSS video aggregation/playback, has just made it to 0.9.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux. If you haven't tried Democracy Player for a while, it's time to try it again. The application is more responsive and stable, uses less memory, integrates Bittorrent, and can now play Flash videos (including stuff from YouTube, Google, Yahoo, etc). Democracy takes all the hassle out of finding and watching videos from your favorite sources." In many ways, Democracy is the template of what I'd like to see out of Apple's upcoming iTV. Although my guess is that it will be more like MythTV- only for people willing to put in the effort.

Re:XUL versus My Memory

[MP3Chuck]

Enter XULRunner [mozilla.org]. Democracy Player uses it ... when FF and TB will is another story, I suppose. I guess since their development is ahead of XULRunner's curve (XULR is based on FF 1.5.0.4's codebase), it'll be a while.

Re:Six codecs -- all free?

[RalphBNumbers]

There may be some official flash codec from Adobe that you have to pay for, I don't know, but there are definitely other ways to play flash in quicktime.

Quicktime itself can already play older non-video flash presentations. And the flash video codec that Democracy player is asking you to let it install is Perian [perian.org], an open source project that integrates libavcodec and a bunch of other video related OSS libraries into a Quicktime component.

Re:XUL versus My Memory

[2sheds]

From the XULRunner FAQ:

Q. When will Firefox be based on XULRunner?
A. See the XULRunner roadmap. This is scheduled for Firefox 3 (XULRunner 1.9), in the first quarter of 2007.

Re:Flash Videos? Hassle to View?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The benefit of Democracy is that it saves bandwidth for the producers given that it uses bittorrent. Also, it offers channels via RSS, such as a particular show that you like, so if something new comes down the RSS feed, Democracy can automatically download it and add it to your media library. Once it puts the video file on your computer, you can reencode it to other formats if you like.

Re:Open Source ...

[p80]

ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/democracy/sr c/ [osuosl.org]

Democracy can't play many of the formats it d/l

[lscotte]

The thing I don't like about democracy is it will download content with formats that it doesn't know how to play, which completely defeats the point of it, forcing you to use an external player anyway. mplayer plays them (everything) fine, so I don't think it's a codec issue.

The other issue is content. After spending about an hour searching for and downloading content I didn't end up with anything that I thought was particularly worthwhile. A replacement for TV it is far from...

not so good

[rucs_hack]

I installed it, ran it, and boom, out go the lights, windows crashed spectaculerly, requiring two restarts to work properly again.

Not the best example of stability I've seen.

Democracy for SLED10

[Anonymous Coward]

I just built Democracy Player for SLED10 for my SLED RPMs page. This is the first time I got to try out Democracy Player and all I can say is CHECK IT OUT! Couple this along with the DeVeDe Utility and you got an excellent way to get some really cool shows on DVD that you normally wouldn't be able to get.

Democracy Player just happens to be the best interface for Google Video and YouTube to boot.

Get it for SLED10 at http://www.pcc-services.com/sled10_rpms.html [pcc-services.com].

Kubuntu 6.10

[Trip Ericson]

I just reinstalled Kubuntu 6.10 yesterday, and so this morning, seeing this article, I decided to install Democracy.

So far it looks pretty nice, but if I try to view any feeds, I get an error telling me that the PSM is not installed (despite the fact I did install that package) and then it freezes and I have to kill the process.

Looks promising, but I can't really do anything with it til I find out about this problem, and I don't know where to look.

Re:Six codecs -- all free?

[sunetos]

Flash Pro includes an encoder. Decoders, such as the one in Democracy, are free as far as I know.

Democracy is Hiring Developers

[chatooya]

PCF, which makes Democracy Player, is hiring developers:

http://www.getdemocracy.com/jobs/ [getdemocracy.com]

Telecommuting is ok.

Annoying

[mqduck]

I suppose it's just a matter of what I'm used to, but I don't feel comfy in this app.

1) If you maximize the window, it covers the task bar. It has a fullscreen mode; why does it have to do this? Being able to see the task bar is one of the only reasons I /wouldn't/ want to be playing a video fullscreen.
2) I've yet to find a way to close the channel guide on the left. It takes up valuable screen real estate.
3) In Media Player Classic, if you click on the video it stops of pauses. If you double click, it enters/exits fullscreen. I'm used to it.

That's just how I feel, in case anyone cares. I guess I'll stick with MPC, though I seriously hate how it steals input from the volume not on my keyboard away from Windows, making it change the video volume rather than system volume. Hate it, hate it.