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Television The Internet

Miro 2.0 Launches Today 148

soDean writes "Miro just launched their 2.0 release today. The free and open source HD video player and Internet TV features an all-new interface and an entirely rewritten UI engine, plus tons of new features and improvements — it's less of a collection of new stuff and more of a rethinking of the whole experience. You can download Miro 2.0 here for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Miro is developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, hell-bent on making Internet video more open and decentralized, along with a dedicated community of users, volunteers, translators, testers, and coders."
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Miro 2.0 Launches Today

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  • Nice, BUT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:29PM (#26806635) Journal
    You also need to focus on the PUBLISH side. In particular, I would push a publisher for Musicians. Make it compete against MTV, etc.
    • Re:Nice, BUT (Score:4, Interesting)

      by moteyalpha ( 1228680 ) * on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:47PM (#26806841) Homepage Journal
      I just installed this a few hours ago and it is a nice interface. The variety of what is free to download is amazing and they did a good job on making the interface intuitive. It will be a nice place for me to publish blender animation products and video tutorials of all kinds. Blender has a great tutorial on making tutorials and videos.
      • by buswolley ( 591500 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:56PM (#26806929) Journal
        I have one of thos einternet connections many just dream about..University BBone...ANyway, I got Miro and started to download content like a madman. 10-20 concurrent downloads all running at 1-10 megabit... It was great...

        Then the university admins cut me down to 56k modem speed for 2 weeks to teach me a lesson.

        Be careful with Miro. :P

    • Re:Nice, BUT (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:19PM (#26807213) Homepage

      There does need to be a push for publishers to adopt these technologies. Most traditional media outlets do not see how well this can work, and refuse to admit the technology is already robust and available, and better for the consumer than broadcast TV.

      New publishing services do exist: LegalTorrents.com (one of the default sidebar items in Miro) and focuses entirely on the publishing side. (Disclaimer: I work on LegalTorrents) - and there are many others too that work well with Miro.

      LegalTorrents is an online digital media community to discover and distribute high quality open-licensed digital media. Each Content Creator on the site has an RSS feed that integrates automatically with Miro. (Sidebar -> Add Feed) The real benefit here is that Miro will download and share new content in the background automatically from each feed, and you can watch/listen whenever you want.

      • I think what they're refusing to accept is that TV is now a commodity to be swapped freely online, rather than DRM'd, just like pages of text.
      • If you have an easy to use publisher type software, then it should allow small groups to make some interesting stuff. In particular, with this recession getting worse, I think that we will see 15-20% with the current formula. And if we were using the old formula from GD days, we are already over 20% unemployment. The point being that PLENTY of ppl will have time and computers to think about this. They will decide to do something new and different. If I can make a suggestion, put your competitors links on yo
      • I wish that Thedailyshow and Colbertreport would work with Miro/torrent.. not everyone can stream those shows even at the lowest setting, and they are pretty ruthless about the limitation.. If miro would support TDS and CR, and be more forgiving, I'd use it.

    • California Music Channel....

      Bring back in their former gory, or glory, Weird Al Yancovic and Elvis Costello... and some Blancmange...

      Go back full circle... Then, Thrillingly, they can sing Everyday they Write the Book, while Living on the Ceiling, hehehhe

    • Miro seems to be basically a RSS-client+Torrent Client+Broswer and a rudimentary player bundled into one. But wait, I use Google Reader, my browser plays videos, can download. I need a separate torrent client for non-video/music files anyway. And Video Search ? Google started searching video a long time ago. So why should Miro be an extra app running and not just a website that publishes video?

      First, I don't want to download everything I see. And that which I want , can be done with an easy Download link.

      I

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Xabraxas ( 654195 )
        The point of Miro is to make it extremely simple to watch syndicated video. It's the combination of RSS, torrents, and video playback that make it useful and unique, not the technologies themselves. Before Miro I would search for torrents, download them, fire up my bitorrent client, download the video I wanted to watch and then when it was done I would start up my media player to watch the video. Now with Miro I just add a torrent feed for a specific show to Miro and set my automatic download and retenti
  • Build instructions (Score:4, Informative)

    by ChienAndalu ( 1293930 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:31PM (#26806661)

    Since many distributions don't have it in their repositories yet, you might want to grab the source [osuosl.org] and build it [participatoryculture.org] yourself.

  • by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:35PM (#26806703)

    I can't be alone in my problems with Ubuntu's media player. I installed Ubuntu in a VPC in order to be able to surf porn sites on my work computer and be undetectable in case someone tried to go through my cache. Things worked great except that I simply wasn't able to get video to work in the media player.

    It's not the end of the world. I can of course download static images, but sometimes it's more enjoyable to see porn in motion.

    Anyone else have the same problem? Does Miro solve this problem?

    • I don't think a VM is the right place to be trying to play videos.

      • Totally agree. I use VM's HEAVILY at work, but they have their uses and a desktop isn't one of them. Even when the proper drivers and such are installed, the "local" input and video capabilities of a VM are going to feel off. What I've found most useful for VM's is for servers, where there isn't going to be a local user anyways. Remotely, a VM behaves much like any other machine that's hidden away.

  • Miro + ??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bornagainpenguin ( 1209106 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:41PM (#26806793)

    The last time I tried Miro it installed something called "OpenCandy" on my system without my permission. I think I'll pass until the Miro developers realize who owns this computer....HINT: Me, not them, not opencandy, or whatever else wants to piggyback with the installer.

    --bornagainpenguin

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @08:50PM (#26806875)

      It appears "OpenCandy" is only available for Windows, so I believe Microsoft owns your computer.

    • Re:Miro + ??? (Score:5, Informative)

      by oboreruhito ( 925965 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:11PM (#26807123)

      OpenCandy [opencandy.com] was removed from Miro two months ago [getsatisfaction.com] after user complaints.

      Hi All,

      We're going to remove OpenCandy from our installer next week. Thanks for pushing back on this.

      We still think the core idea of open source projects promoting one another is a great one, and we'll continue to support and promote other FOSS projects whenever possible.

      ~Jesse

      Also from that post:

      OpenCandy is a a software recommendation engine that we added recently in order to suggest other free and open source software to our users. You can find out about the organization at www.opencandy.com.

      I wasn't aware that it permanently left their recommendation engine on the user's machine after running it. We'll look into that right now and fix it as soon as possible.

      • So open source isn't immune to adware.

        Proponents of Microsoft often cite their market share as being the reason for bullshitwares' authors' attraction to their OS.

        With only 1% desktop share, the last thing that needs to be associated with the word "open" is this kind of crap. Microsoft are the worst [citation not needed], but Apple are also bad. [macworld.com] I haven't been this pissed since Sun tried to push Yahoo fucking toolbar [sun.com] into their garden-variety Java install.
    • by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:34PM (#26807373) Homepage

      I understand and concur about not wanting programs to install stuff you don't want, but I thought I'd mention that this is not as bad as having proprietary software do something similar. With proprietary software you have no option to edit anything to make it work as you wish, or get it edited for you by someone you trust. With FLOSS that option exists even if you choose not to take advantage of it. FLOSS actually respects your ownership by giving you everything you need to make the program behave as you wish. Proprietary software does not respect your position that you own and should control your computer. Whether you are willing to leverage software freedom to your fullest benefit is a completely different issue that is entirely in your control.

      As it so happens, the Miro team is a pretty nice and responsive bunch of people so I don't think you'll find Miro doing something so unexpected now.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I uninstalled Miro last time because of its bad manners. It made connections to servers without me asking.

      It also didn't have a loop function. WTF?

      This time I got Skype spammed as soon as I opened the application. Coincidence? Four Skype spams in three years?

      Looks like it's going in the bin again.

      • It made connections to servers without me asking.

        Umm, that's the whole point of it.

        It also didn't have a loop function.

        Please define "loop function" in a way that makes sense in this context.

        This time I got Skype spammed as soon as I opened the application. Coincidence? Four Skype spams in three years?

        My mailserver rejects several thousand spams per day. Yes: four spams is a coincidence (and not even a big one).

  • I'm all praise for Miro. After discovering it, my TV viewing dropped considerably. Channels like 'The Real News' provide unbiased, in-depth coverage of world events. Channels like Submedia / It's the End of the World as we Know it provide some nice activist news with a health sprinkling of comedy. Then there are some pretty nice documentaries. Oh, and then there's that tech babe with gadget reviews ( can't remember the name of the channel for the moment ). But anyway, both the quality and the quantity of Mi

    • Sumi Das?

    • by linzeal ( 197905 )
      Agreed, the scrolling news channels are only on in my house if the world sounds like it is going to end to sane people. The scrolling news started after 9/11 didn't they? Why are they still scrolling, hasn't the crisis passed?
      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Crisis passed? You mean the Never-Ending War on Terror? No, no, no... that's never going away.

  • Ubuntu Names (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 )

    Fuck those stupid code names for Ubuntu! Put the damn version numbers up like normal people. Alliterative animal names are for 4 year olds. Get over them.

  • Hulu doesn't recognize that I have Flash 10 installed (64-bit) when run thru Miro. How do I tell Miro that I really do have Flash? It works fine in Firefox.

    • by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:15PM (#26807171) Journal

      Well according tot the article, streaming flash only works in Windows & OSX, by your post title I presume you're running some form of Linux. The exact quote is, "You can add streaming sites like Hulu to your sidebar (note: streaming with Flash only works in Windows and OSX)".

      This is unfortunate, although not a show stopper. Although it's probably coincidence I installed Windows in VirtualBox on my Gentoo based desktop just to stream Hulu to my Xbox 360 via PlayOn last night.

      Anyone know of an open source Hulu streamer (ideally one that supports UPNP for Xbox 360/PS3 support)? I've been serving local content over UPNP via fuppes (using their SVN releases, works great on the 360), but I doubt they'll be implementing Hulu support any time soon.

      • Got a Fuppes + 360 question. How do you solve the problem of the MP3s randomly skipping to the next track, before the track is over? I'm otherwise having no problems running it

      • Well according tot the article, streaming flash only works in Windows & OSX, by your post title I presume you're running some form of Linux. The exact quote is, "You can add streaming sites like Hulu to your sidebar (note: streaming with Flash only works in Windows and OSX)".

        I'm guessing this is due to the slight differences in the way Flash is implemented on various Linux distributions, combined with Flash's EULA. Hopefully the Ubuntu developers will enable Flash when they do the build for the repositories. After all, if it works on Windows and OSX, it should work on Linux too.

        • More so, it seems that its embedding firefox in its window, and has a ~/.miro/mozilla directory, so why the hell doesn't it work?

          I've been looking around, and others seemed to have flash working in previous versions... Besides that, without flash support it really cuts down on the amount of legal media Linux users can use when it seems entirely reasonable to have it working.

          Now it looks like I'm stuck trying to hack their source, sigh.

  • HULU? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:11PM (#26807119)
    I notice they mention sites like Hulu and CBS on their site, but I assume this is only available to US residents? They cunningly don't mention any restrictions.

    Have they got round this, or is this content still blacked out for most of the world?
  • BugZilla sucks! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:14PM (#26807149) Journal

    To any developers, please listen carefully.

    From and end-user perspective, BugZilla is a complicated, confusing, steaming pile of shit!

    As an end-user I shouldn't have to "create an account", "login" or anything else to report a damn bug. Especially from a link within the program itself. A brief bit of text outlining what makes up a good bug report is fine, but I shouldn't have to jump thru hoops just to say "X is broken, here is how to reproduce it, here is my config".

    For other developers, it is fine. For end-users, it is a nightmare.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by xant ( 99438 )

      Developers don't want your bug report if you aren't willing to do the proper procedures. A bug report that you've put some effort into might help fix the bug. It takes patience and attention to detail to open a useful but report.

      A bug report that you wrote in half-assed is worthless, and worse than worthless. It wastes the developer's time and hurts the project.

      If you're not willing to jump through a few hoops, don't open a bug.

      • Re:BugZilla sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @11:49PM (#26807839) Journal

        I'm perfectly capable of entering a useful bug report, but BZ is a pain in the ass. If you ask for end-user help, then you need to accommodate end user methods without trying to pretend you can turn them into developers.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Kral_Blbec ( 1201285 )

          Not to mention it is still another pain in the ass to have to register for a service that I only intend to use once.

          • In reality, people may respond to your bug weeks or months later, asking questions on how to reproduce it, etc.

            You need the login, but I agree that it's a pain to create a separate account. But view it this way: it's free software, all you have to do is create an account and log a bug.

            • And then wait till they sell your address to a nice spam company.

              There should be no reason they'd need your email address unless I wish to receive digests of posts via email. Especially if it's a forum where I can easily bookmark my posts, and check for updates when I feel like it.

              How I wish you could just log in with a username and password, then set my preferences to "web only" ... and never have to give my email to yet another unknown quantity.

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by cerberusss ( 660701 )

                There should be no reason they'd need your email address unless I wish to receive digests of posts via email.

                Well, in the case of Bugzilla (which was what the GP was talking about), it's useful because the software notifies you when comments are made or questions are asked about the bug you logged.

                • Oh yes, I'm not debating the usefulness of it ... I'm just saying that supplying your email should be an opt-in choice to receive those notifications, not a requirement simply to sign up for an account.
    • by richlv ( 778496 )

      from the end user perspective, bugzilla is the best system out there. guess what that makes of the other systems.
      it's absolutely annoying to see reports where developers want to get more information, but nobody responds because report submitting was anonymous. as a bug reporter, i dislike passionately systems that do not allow me to register so that i can receive notifications on any updates or questions to my reports.
      now what might be a middle ground - openid support in bugzilla (https://wiki.mozilla.org/B [mozilla.org]

      • by Ed Avis ( 5917 )

        Yeah but that doesn't mean you have to register first. A simple 'your email address here' field would do fine. (Registration and more advanced notification can still be there for developers and advanced users.)

  • I used to use Miro, for the better part of a year, and while I loved certain parts of it there were a few other things that eventually drove me away from using it. I got really tired of the odd crash, which while not a daily occurrence was still often enough to be quite irritating, and then also some videos just wouldn't play properly, and then there was the OBSCENE amount of RAM it used just idling in the background. I don't care what explanations the people over there kept coming up to justify why a glori

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by drDugan ( 219551 )

      Seems like no memory problem for me:

      http://i41.tinypic.com/jl5nb8.png [tinypic.com]

      on mac: 90MB "real memory", smaller than firefox at 101MB

    • Miro 2.0 is a huge improvement in my opinion. It uses about 80MB on my system while downloading 7 torrents. It's also a lot more responsive than any previous version. I don't feel like I'm always waiting for the UI to respond anymore. The only complaint I have against the new Miro is that they GTK-ified the rest of Miro, which is a good thing, but they ripped out the GTK themed media controls of the previous versions and replaced it with iTunes-ish media controls. WTF?
  • I'm still trying to figure out how popular projects like Miro and Songbird really are, and why. How useful is mashing Web functions together with media to create some interactive behemoth? Why do people need these bloated apps for content discovery when browsing a Web site and running an RSS-supporting torrent client is at least as effective?

    Is it just the convenience of not leaving an app? If it's the interface, I understand even less - both are so cluttered, even with Miro's upgrade, and resource-inten

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I add the ATOM or RSS feed in RSSOwl, let BitTyrant open up the incoming torrents and open the result in whatever is associated with the file, usually this will be Windows Media Player (I tried several others, but I have to give MS a thumbs up on the design of WMP's interface). The only thing that could be made (slightly) more supple is to have RSSOwl automatically open torrents instead of requiring a click from me. But otherwise its pretty painless, and I don't see how having another application (especiall

    • I think Miro and Songbird could be useful apps, but the web browser portion is simply bloat as it is IMHO. There is actual usefulness in software that will manage your song/video collection and fetch new podcasts for you. That's essentially what iTunes does (coupled with a very easy to use music store).

      I mean, I thought Songbird was a great idea: essentially an open source iTunes-like clone, but essentially starting with the Firefox codebase as a basis for that type of app still seems odd to me. Truthful

      • One thing I like about iTunes vs Miro's selection is better variety and quality, and that's just for the free stuff. Internet video really doesn't do much good when the selection is, meh.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The UI is mouse centric.

    I like some of the features,
    but the UI is not useful on a media center,
    as it complexity prevents the use of an IR remote to control it.

    I look forward 3.0.

  • Hell-Bent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @09:44PM (#26807429) Homepage Journal

    More organizations need the term "hell-bent on" in their mission statement.

  • Most of the HD clips are just stinking movie trailers.

  • by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @10:39PM (#26807565)

    It also tries to integrate your torrent downloads so that you can track them from Miro as well.

    I'm running this on a mac and it appears that there's still not yet a proper solution for a torrent client with RSS. UTorrent was recently released for mac but it lacks many key features of the Windows client such as the RSS feed. http://tvrss.net/ [tvrss.net] seems to be a good, clean torrent feed and you can key in search terms to make sure you're only getting one provider of the show at a time. Will probably work great on Windows.

    I'm a recent mac convert and am surprised to read other mac heads saying they preferred running windows torrent programs under wine or in xp under parallels rather than deal with the sucky offerings for mac clients.

    • VUZE (Azureus) has a nice implementation for tracking and downloading programs you watch regularly.
  • Network settings? (Score:3, Informative)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <(moc.agnorat.6002.todhsals) (ta) (retep)> on Tuesday February 10, 2009 @11:36PM (#26807755) Homepage Journal

    I open it up and what do I get, about 6 dialogs telling me it can't connect to servers.

    1. Don't connect without asking me, thanks.
    2. You apparently can't connect until I can set my network settings, I guess you don't use the OS proxies.
    3. You don't have any place to set the proxies.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

  • Does it do something I need, that VLC media player doesn't do?

    Assume I am too lazy to RTFA.

    This is not a troll, I have no clue what Miro is. TIA, and not from an AC.
  • Miro no longer requires Java! I'm all about it! This is day one though, so this is no endorsement.

  • A modestly sized program, and easy to install. I told it to go catalog my media and it grabbed some pr0n it couldn't even play and some .ogg files from Wesnoth that I turn off the sound to avoid hearing. Then it crashed.

    Forced quit and tried it again. Watched a funny Onion spot and some bullshit propaganda called "The New World Order." Then it crashed again.

    Maybe I'll wait for 3.0

  • When can we see some integration between Miro and UPNP clients like the PS3 and Xbox 360?

    I'm fully appreciative of downloading torrents with my 6 down 1 up DSL, which peers in a typical torrent seem to like. I really do like Miro's interface.

    But the computer is in the computer room. And the TV and PS3 are in the living room. And while the computer monitor I'm looking at right now is rather nice, I'd rather watch TV on the 52" Samsung while sitting on my couch in the living room.

    When are these folks going

  • The power of television has been the ability to commercialize "free" entertainment. All you have to do is wait through the commercials during the show and you get the show for free.

    In today's work-flow, everything is "choose your own adventure". Jobs these days are so cut-throat that people have to make intense business plans around everything and look for places to be more effective. We make hundreds of thousands of decisions every day. Look at starbucks. It's not just "cream or sugar", you have like

    • by glwtta ( 532858 )
      Options are good, but I don't want to spend all my time looking at options when it comes to entertainment. Just let me plug in and VEG!

      So what's the problem? It's not like TV is going anywhere.

      Or does the mere existence of other options interfere with your vegging?

      (For the record, some people appreciate the ability to cut down on their vegging-oriented entertainment, and still watch the one or two shows they actually like)
      • by ryanw ( 131814 )

        So what's the problem? It's not like TV is going anywhere.

        Or does the mere existence of other options interfere with your vegging?

        Well, the main problem is that the options of today require lots of fussing around eating up all the time that I allocated for vegging out.

    • by Mr2001 ( 90979 )

      Seems like a recommendation system (a la TiVo) would go a long way here. Rate the shows you like, use your spare bandwidth to download shows that people with your taste also enjoy.

  • Miro & tvRSS.net (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How to setup Miro for automatic downloading of your favorite shows. [cnet.com] I've been doing this for a couple of years now. Grab your feeds from tvRSS.net. Use the filters properly and will d/l only the episodes you want. Enjoy.

  • How does it work with Comcast's Torrent Disruption System?

    Anyone running Miro from a Comcast connection? Can the torrenting aspect be disabled?

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