Democracy Player
Encyclopedia
Miro 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
.
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. It is based on FFmpeg
with profiles for the .ogv
, .mp4
, and WebM
video formats supported by various devices.
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.
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." 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." 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."
Internet television
Internet television is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet...
application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation
Participatory Culture Foundation
The Participatory Culture Foundation is a 501 non-profit organization whose mission is to “enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement.”...
. 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
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, Miro is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
.
Features
Miro can automatically download videos from RSS-based “channels”, manage them and play them. The application is designed to mesh with other PCFParticipatory Culture Foundation
The Participatory Culture Foundation is a 501 non-profit organization whose mission is to “enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement.”...
products such as Video Bomb, a social tagging video website, and the Channel Channel, a TV guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
for Internet television.
Miro integrates an RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
aggregator and podcatcher, a BitTorrent client
BitTorrent client
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer program developed by Bram Cohen and BitTorrent, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version...
(based on libtorrent
Libtorrent (Rasterbar)
libtorrent is an open source implementation of the BitTorrent protocol. It is written in and has its main library interface in C++. Its most notable features are support for Mainline DHT, IPv6 , HTTP seeds and µTorrent's peer exchange....
), and a media player (VLC media player
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
under Windows, QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
under Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and Xine
Xine
xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library that supports different frontend player applications. Another important feature of xine is the ability to manually correct the synchronization...
Media Player or GStreamer
GStreamer
GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...
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
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
, WMV
Windows Media Video
'Windows Media Video is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater...
, MPEG, AVI
Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
, XVID
XviD
Xvid is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile . It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.Xvid is a...
as a video player. It also supports RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
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. It is based on FFmpeg
FFmpeg
FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...
with profiles for the .ogv
Theora
Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
, .mp4
MPEG-4 Part 14
MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital video and digital audio streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images...
, and WebM
WebM
WebM is an audio-video format designed to provide a royalty-free, open video compression format for use with HTML5 video. The project's development is sponsored by Google....
video formats supported by various devices.
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
Python
The Pythonidae, commonly known simply as pythons, from the Greek word python-πυθων, are a family of non-venomous snakes found in Africa, Asia and Australia. Among its members are some of the largest snakes in the world...
, 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
XUL
In computer programming, XUL , the XML User Interface Language, is an XML user interface markup language developed by the Mozilla project. XUL operates in Mozilla cross-platform applications such as Firefox...
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 XULRunner XULRunner is a runtime environment developed by the Mozilla Foundation to provide a common back-end for XUL-based applications. It replaced the Gecko Runtime Environment, a stalled project with a similar purpose.... to WebKit WebKit WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook... |
| 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 | Music manager and purchasing capabilities added. |
Reception
A link to download Miro and Mozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
appeared on the front page of The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
in July 2009 underneath a notice "We love free software."
Miro received a favorable review from Josh Quittner
Josh Quittner
Josh Quittner is an American journalist.Born in Manhattan, Quittner grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is married to Michelle Slatalla and has three daughters...
who wrote "I have seen the future of television and it’s an application called Miro." In May 2011, Seth Rosenblatt of CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
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." 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."
See also
- BroadcatchingBroadcatchingBroadcatching is the downloading of digital content that has been made available over the Internet using RSS.The general idea is to use an automated mechanism to aggregate various web feeds and download content for viewing or presentation purposes....
- PeercastingPeercastingPeercasting is a method of multicasting streams, usually audio and/or video, to the Internet via peer-to-peer technology. It can be used for commercial, independent, and amateur multicasts. Unlike traditional IP Multicast, peercasting can facilitate on-demand content delivery.-Operation:It usually...
- Open Media NetworkOpen Media NetworkThe Open Media Network was a P2PTV service and application which provided distribution of educational and public service programs. The network was founded in 2005 by Netscape pioneers Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen...
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