Miro (software)

Miro

Miro 3.5 under Ubuntu, showing the Miro guide in the main window while playing a podcast.
Developer(s)	Participatory Culture Foundation
Initial release	21 February 2006, 11:42 (2006-02-21T11:42) (0.8.0-rc4 = earliest known)
Stable release	4.0.3  (August 10, 2011; 3 months ago (2011-08-10))[1] [+/−]
Preview release	SVN  (n/a) [+/−]
Development status	Active
Written in	Python using GTK
Operating system	Cross-platform GNU/Linux Mac OS X Microsoft Windows
Size	~2.0 MB (GNU/Linux) 15.28 MB (Mac OS X) 28.50 MB (Microsoft Windows) 9.28 MB (Source code) (all archived)
Available in	More than 40 languages
Type	Internet television RSS+BitTorrent Media player
License	GNU GPL v2 or later/GNU LGPL/BSD license (free software)
Website	getmiro.com

Miro (previously known as Democracy Player or DTV)^[2] is an Internet television application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation. It is supported on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. The program supports most known video files and offers sound and video, some in HD quality.

Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Miro is free software.^[3]

Features

Miro can automatically download videos from RSS-based “channels”, manage them and play them. The application is designed to mesh with other PCF products such as Video Bomb, a social tagging video website, and the Channel Channel, a TV guide for Internet television.

Miro integrates an RSS aggregator and podcatcher, a BitTorrent client (based on libtorrent), and a media player (VLC media player under Windows, QuickTime under Mac OS X, and Xine Media Player or GStreamer under GNU/Linux). Since 2.0, Miro supports the adding of website bookmarks under the “Sites” category; by default, ClearBits.net is preloaded in Miro as a bookmark.

Examples of supported video files are QuickTime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID as a video player. It also supports RSS BitTorrent. When a new video is available, the program will notify and download if possible.

The Miro Video Converter, a separate free program, converts video formats.^[4] It is based on FFmpeg with profiles for the .ogv, .mp4, and WebM video formats supported by various devices.^[5]

History

The application was first launched in 2005 as Democracy Player in 2006 (sometimes abbreviated as DTV) and Miro in 2007. Video searching of web-based video archives was included in 2007, with access to various archives changing over time.

Miro is mostly written in Python, although it links to various libraries written in a variety of languages. Versions through 2.x had an almost entirely HTML/CSS based UI. Miro uses embedded WebKit in a GTK window on Linux (Mozilla Gecko/XUL until 3.0.2), WebKit in a Cocoa window on OS X, and Mozilla in a XUL window on Windows. Since version 3.0, the Windows and Linux ports use GTK and the OS X port uses Cocoa. The embedded web browser is used only for web pages.

Version history

Release	Date	Features
Democracy Player 0.8	February 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.1	March 9, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.1a	March 22, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.2	April 16, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.4.1	June 23, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.5	July 20, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.5.2	July 25, 2006
Democracy Player 0.8.5.3	August 4, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.0	September 11, 2006
Democracy 0.9.0.1	September 16, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.0.2	September 22, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.1	October 19, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.2.1	November 27, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.2.2	December 30, 2006
Democracy Player 0.9.5	February 13, 2007	Interface refinements and an update to VLC Player 0.8.6.
Democracy Player 0.9.5.1	February 21, 2007
Democracy Player 0.9.5.3	March 19, 2007
Democracy Player 0.9.6 (Miro RC1)	June 4, 2007	Adds a "folder watching" feature, the ability to resume playback, and the ability to minimize to the system tray.
Democracy Player 0.9.8	July 18, 2007
Miro 0.9.8.1 (RC2)	July 30, 2007	Name change, Veoh search engine, and Windows system-tray functionality improvements.
Miro 0.9.9	September 4, 2007
Miro 0.9.9.1	September 6, 2007
Miro 0.9.9.9 (RC3)	October 31, 2007	First-time user guide, generates thumbnails, remembers search terms, has permalinks for videos, and bug fixes.
Miro 1.0	November 13, 2007	Startup guide, permalinks, search-result memory, unicode-related error fix, better thumbnail generation, and delete while playing video.
Miro 1.1	January 10, 2008
Miro 1.2-rc1	March 17, 2008
Miro 1.2	March 20, 2008
Miro 1.2.1	March 27, 2008
Miro 1.2.2	April 9, 2008
Miro 1.2.3	April 23, 2008
Miro 1.2.4	June 9, 2008
Miro 1.2.6	August 2, 2008
Miro 1.2.8
Miro 2.0	February 10, 2009
Miro 2.0.3
Miro 2.0.4
Miro 2.5	July 23, 2009
Miro 2.5.1
Miro 2.5.2
Miro 2.5.3
Miro 2.5.4
Miro 3.0	March 25, 2010
Miro 3.0.1	April 15, 2010
Miro 3.0.2	May 24, 2010	Linux version switches from gtkmozembed and XULRunner to WebKit
Miro 3.0.3	July 26, 2010
Miro 3.5	October 22, 2010	Miro now remembers the previous selected view under Library and features the addition of new video conversion capabilities for a variety of devices. Users can now cancel all queued auto-downloads.
Miro 3.5.1	December 6, 2010	Minor bug fixes
Miro 4.0	May 26, 2011[6]	Music manager and purchasing capabilities added.[7]

Reception

A link to download Miro and Mozilla Firefox appeared on the front page of The Pirate Bay in July 2009 underneath a notice "We love free software."

Miro received a favorable review from Josh Quittner who wrote "I have seen the future of television and it’s an application called Miro."^[8] In May 2011, Seth Rosenblatt of CNET wrote, "Providing one-stop shopping for all your video and audio management desires, open-source and cross-platform Miro deserves much of the praise that's been heaped upon it."^[9] The Softonic review gave the software a score of 9/10, and described the software as "a perfect example of how video content from different sources can be integrated into one single application and served directly to your PC in a fast, easy and elegant way."^[10]

See also

	Free software portal
	Television portal

• Broadcatching
• Peercasting
• Open Media Network

References

1. ^ ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab, 10-Aug-2011 19:33, http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/src/, retrieved 2011.09.12 07:33 
2. ^ Nicholas Reville (12 March 2007). "A Name Change". http://www.getmiro.com/blog/2007/03/a-name-change/. Retrieved 2007-09-03. ; Nicholas Reville (17 July 2007). "Announcing Miro". http://www.getmiro.com/blog/2007/07/announing-miro/. Retrieved 2007-09-03. 
3. ^ "Get Miro download page". http://www.getmiro.com/download/. "...the software code, which is licensed under the GPL." 
4. ^ Miro Video Converter
5. ^ "Miro Video Converter FFMPEG Conversion Matrix". Participatory Culture Foundation. 2011-04-08. https://develop.participatoryculture.org/index.php/ConversionMatrix. Retrieved 2011-10-11. 
6. ^ Lahey, Chris. archive/miro-releases "Participatory Culture Foundation's Launchpad page". https://launchpad.net/~pcf/ archive/miro-releases. Retrieved 2011-05-31.  (Archived by WebCite® at webcitation.org)
7. ^ Ryan, Paul. @Accessdate= 2011-05-31 "Hands on: Miro 4.0 offers music management, Android syncing". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/05/hands-on-miro-40-offers-music-management-android-syncing.ars @Accessdate= 2011-05-31.  (Archived by WebCite® at webcitation.org)
8. ^ Quittner, Josh (November 13, 2007). "The future of Internet TV". TechLand blog. Fortune.CNN.com. http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/11/13/the-future-of-internet-tv/. Retrieved 2011-10-27. "I have seen the future of television and it’s an application called called Miro." 
9. ^ Rosenblatt, Seth (May 25, 2011). "Miro - CNET Editors' review". CNet.com. http://download.cnet.com/Miro/3000-2139_4-10587758.html. Retrieved 2011-10-27. 
10. ^ Santos, Elena (July 25, 2011). "Watch internet videos like you watch TV". Softonic. http://miro.en.softonic.com/. Retrieved 2011-10-27. 

External links

• Official Miro website
• Democracy Player is dead, long live Miro - last100, July 17 2007
• CNET 5 Star Review 2009
• CNET Blog article on how to use Miro to automatically download the latest TV shows of your choice
• CNET Video Review of Democracy Player - Dated
• Groklaw interview with Nicholas Reville, February 2008