Miro (software)
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 Miro 3.5 under Ubuntu, showing the Miro guide in the main window while playing a podcast. |
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| Developer(s) | Participatory Culture Foundation |
| Initial release | 21 February 2006, 11:42 (0.8.0-rc4 = earliest known) |
| Stable release | 4.0.4 (December 22, 2011)[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]
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[edit] 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]
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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] |
[edit] 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]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Get Miro download page". http://www.getmiro.com/download/. "...the software code, which is licensed under the GPL."
- ^ Miro Video Converter
- ^ "Miro Video Converter FFMPEG Conversion Matrix". Participatory Culture Foundation. 2011-04-08. https://develop.participatoryculture.org/index.php/ConversionMatrix. Retrieved 2011-10-11.
- ^ 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)
- ^ 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)
- ^ 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."
- ^ 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.
- ^ Santos, Elena (July 25, 2011). "Watch internet videos like you watch TV". Softonic. http://miro.en.softonic.com/. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: |
- 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
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