Verdict
Superb TV and streaming video player that enables you to watch on-demand content through your PC
Review Rating:
Platform: Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows 7, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Vista, Windows XP
Manufacturer: Participatory Culture Foundation
Size: 449Kb
Number of Downloads: 5570
Price: $ Free
With the increasing popularity of broadband, video on the web has never been easier to enjoy. Websites like YouTube can be a little hit and miss so the Miro player offers a more specific way to enjoy the videos you want.
Miro organises videos into feeds, much like an RSS player and there are lots of feeds that can be added to the list.
The installation process is very simple and the installer is very well behaved, only becoming the default player for the file types that are actively specified rather than assuming that it should take charge of all media type.
There is a comprehensive list of available channels that can be set to download new videos. It will look for videos on the computer to play and add them to the list in the software.
Option to start Miro with windows to speed up its start up and to continue downloading videos in the background.
There is a comprehensive channel guide and once a channel is selected, new videos can be downloaded automatically when they are posted.
The quality of playback is very good and the player can play in fullscreen if required.
Videos downloaded from the internet are stored until Miro decides that enough disk space has been taken up. When this happens the oldest videos are deleted to make room for the newer ones. Videos specifically saved will not be deleted.
This is the latest v3 that ships with subtitles support, a performance upgrade and much more.
Note that Mac OS X and Linux versions are available from the GetMiro WebSite.
© Incisive Media Investments Limited 2010, Published by Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, are companies registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 04252091 & 04252093
Do you agree?
Insufficient control over where the portions are installed
Customization of the installation is quite limited. Many space consuming files (1 GB or more if you have a number of vodcasts subscribed to). are automatically installed to the system drive even if they are just jpg album covers. This is very bad if one has partitioned drives and wishes the space gobblers to be on an application or data drive.
Uninstalling is also a problem because the uninstallation process leaves all this kludge on the system drive. I'm still finding pieces to pluck off the system drive and/or out of the registry. (A typical reg cleaner will not remove all the kludge from the registry that the uninstall left behind.)
It's a nice program but needs a lot of work to be compatible with XP. operating on partitioned drives. It probably works best on the typical retail computer with just one partition. (until the first time the system goes belly-up, of course).
Curiously the main part of this program is a database which may be placed anywhere with lots of space... it seems to me the cover art and most of the other other kludge could be kept in the database -- in which case, installation, backup, and removal would be much improved.
Otherwise it is a cool application. I wanted to use it to keep video separated from audio which iTunes does not do. Unfortunately, my system partition (10GB) was just not big enough to handle all the kludge.
Posted by Judy, 18 Mar 2009
Why...?
I downloaded, installed, configured and ran Miro - only to find out that the cast majority of content is only available in USA. I can never understand why such apps are even available in non-hosted countries. Can someone please explain - WHY...?
Posted by Peter Lewis, 15 Apr 2010