You have probably heard about Joost, one of the popular Internet TV clients that made the rounds in the blogosphere for a while. I hardly hear about it anymore.
Joost was proprietary and had about 250 channels. Did you know that there is an open source alternative that has about 2500 unrestricted channels? Yes, I said 2500!
Miro is the open source version that is free and can turn your computer into an Internet TV. It is loaded with numerous features and a built-in bittorrent client that touts faster downloads. Let’s check out some of the impressive features that make up this hard to ignore piece of open source software!
Not So Quick Facts
Watching
- Miro loves HD content and you can see it’s brilliance in Full Screen in your 22″ wide screen display
- Remembers where you stopped watching a video
- Throw any video format and it plays – MPEG, Quicktime, AVI, Divx, Flash video, H.264, gp2, Flash video, Windows Media to name a few.
- Control playback via a remote control – easy keyboard shortcuts
- You can minimize the player to the task bar
Organizing
- Create video playlists
- Miro can watch a folder for new video and add it automatically like Picasa adds pictures
- Move your entire video collection with Miro, if running out of space
- On installation, Miro can find all your videos in your computer
- View videos by channels, folders and as thumbnails
Downloading
- Download individual BitTorrent files and torrents in a feed via Seamless BitTorrent
- Watch the video in library just like any other video – no extra steps
- You can download individual videos by pasting URLs
- Auto-expire watched videos and create space for fresh content
- Control space usage by telling Miro to stop downloading after reaching a certain size
- Easy Pause/Resume for downloads
Subscribing to Channels
- If you are a RSS feed junkie, Video RSS feeds will be natural for you.
- Miro can auto-download video for any specified channel so it is ready for you to watch in the morning
- Easy bubble icons shows you how many new videos are waiting for you to watch in a channel
- 1-Click subscribe buttons lets you to go from a video in a website to Miro instantly
- Miro can search and download from all major video sites like YouTube, Blip, Revver, DailyMotion etc.
- Create saved search so any new video published for your search appears in Miro
- Create search within a channel – soft of a keyword filter in RSS feeds. For eg. watch just ‘pingpong’ videos in a sports channel.
Miro Guide
- It’s a full featured web service containing a comprehensive catalog of video RSS feeds
- Rate channels and get suggestions
- If you have a video RSS feed, submit it to Miro Guide
- Create your own guide of videos & feeds and add it to Miro
Sharing
- Email links to videos quickly with an email button in every channel & video
- Stumble, Digg, Reddit or del.icio.us from within Miro video
- Import/Export Channels as an OPML file just like you would export/import bookmarks in your browser.
Miro 1.1 just released with some of the above features just included in it. I was overwhelmed by the maturity of this video player and the full blown features it offers. You can find detailed descriptions of all the above features in Miro’s features section but I have listed most of them here so you don’t have to click over.
It works great in all 3 major operating systems – WIndows, Mac & Linux. And it has a beautiful and intuitive interface.
While installing Miro, it offers to install a Firefox Extension ‘I Heart Miro’. What this extension does is to donate a small amount to the Miro open source project anytime you purchase something from Amazon. When you are not paying for it so why not help such a cool software by having that extension installed? If you were feeling generous, of course you always make a direct donation to the project.
Miro 1.1 Download – Mac OS X | Windows | Linux (source – install notes) – Ubuntu
Update: 2/10/09
I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I wrote this Miro review. Miro 2.0 has been released and sports a lot of new features.
- New interface
- Improved speed and performance
- Links to online streaming video places
- Add & download videos via RSS
I would love to hear how much of time do you spend in a day watching videos online. I used to spend atleast 30 mins or so but I don’t find time anymore. I would like to get back into following videos and have thought about posting a tech video section here every Friday. Convince me either way. 😉
Nice! Reminds me a little bit of blip.tv
I like it. I was a beta tester for Joost…never liked it. In fact I unloaded it.
very nice writeup k…
Hey Troy, that is pretty cool too! But, Miro has a lot going for it, imho.
digitalnomad, I beta tested Joost too but never went back to using it. It was long gone for me too.. but I can see Miro taking a permanent seat for me.
techbliss, thank you! 🙂
I never actually liked Joost . Was resource consuming. How is Miro in terms of resources.
K,
This is a great write-up of Miro — love to hear that you’re so happy with the software! Please e.mail me if you have any direct feedback you’d like to give us.
All,
I just wanted to remind you that we’re not really competing with blip.tv. Blip and Miro really compliment one another (they are one of our all time favorites!).
In fact, check out the lower right corner of the blip show player (they put a Miro 1-click button there for us): http://epicfu.blip.tv/
If you’re ever publishing video, blip is a great place to do it.
Best,
Dean Jansen
Outreach Director
PCF/Miro
Madhur, sorry for the late reply. Just catching up on the great comments since last week. Miro is not bad on the resources. I tend to use just that when I am in the mood for watching videos, so I don’t have complaints at the moment. 😀
Dean, I voice strongly for any product that has the quality and of course I love open source. I am sure I will have feedback to offer as I usr Miro, more and will absolutely be happy to do just that. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to chime in, in the discussion. Cheers!
Great post. I added you to my blog roll!
I was searching for reviews on Miro and found a good one here by you. I was thinking of giving it a try so wanted to know how good it is before I actually use it.
Btw, the above “Fahad” is not me. Why do people like to use other peoples names? :/
Fahads last blog post..How to Remove Watermarks from Windows 7