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."

Miro is a video domain trademark already

[DrSkwid]

http://www.miro.com/ [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

My (not so great) experience with Miro

[Jety]

In the process of recently setting up an HTPC I have tried a number of different softwares and frontends to try to get an integrated media environment, with limited success. My experience with Miro, in particular, was not too great. I found that it's torrent downloading was erratic, bandwidth throttling was impossible, and most importantly, with Miro running in the background, VLC player (Miro also uses VLC to show video) encountered a number of problems that created audio and video artifacts in whatever I was watching. This could only be soved by shutting down Miro and relaunching my video. Ultimately I uninstalled Miro and am happily using Azureus with the RSS Feed Scanner plugin to automate tv downloads using tvrss.net feeds. The only downside to this is not having listings showing me what I've already watched and what is new.... but I can live with that.

Tried it, don't like it

[jilles]

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.

Nice to see them hit 1.0

[cesman]

I've included Democracy Player in KnoppMyth for some time. The next release will have Miro. It is nice to see them hit 1.0! My only issue is the interface isn't remote friendly.

Cecil

Re:bittorent + web interface

[empaler]

It has a local interface. In the "GUI". I'm not even sure if they support a web interface.

Re:If there was only content worth watching

[bughunter]

Agreed, most of the content I'm insterested comes from tvrss.net feeds.

The problem I have with that, however, is that the updates are inconsistent, as one may expect from a collection of "unauthorized" sources. (I'd watch the authorized version online, if Comedy Central's videos would play on my Mac using Quicktime and Flip4Mac.)

For instance, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" hasn't been updated since 01 November. However, "The Colbert Report" is faithfully updated every day.

But generally, most of the good programs are seeded within a day of airing, and while I PVR most of those already, sometimes my hardware encoder flakes, or I miss a scheduled recording, so the tvrss.net feeds are a lifesaver.

Especially when your wife is grumpy because she forgot to tape this week's episode of Survivor!

Some of the Miro featured content is good too, like PBS Kids shows (for my 3yo son) and some of the bikini contest stuff (for Dad). Oh - and Democracy Now! HD is free featured content as well.

Re:Miro is great, but....

[Fallingcow]

If it's VLC, then I'll bet it's an deinterlacing issue. By default it's disabled, and on medium-res videos, playing with other settings (right click->deinterlace, I think) can yield a better picture, sometimes even getting rid of odd artifacts that show up without it. "blend" seems to work the best for me, most of the time.

MPC may not have deinterlacing disabled by default.

Re:If there was only content worth watching

[Telvin_3d]

The Today Show hasn't been updated since the 1st because that was the last episode broadcast before the writers strike. It will be happening to more and more shows as the backlog of taped episodes runs out.