Miro is to conventional television what iTunes and podcasting is to radio. By offering programs that can be downloaded and watched from your hard drive, Miro avoids the bandwidth problems that plague real-time viewers like the Zatoo program.
Instead of watching live television, Miro, allows you to subscribe to channels in the same way you subscribe to podcasts. You select a program from a list of channels and it immediately begins to download. Its intuitiveness and its simple functionality makes Miro easy to use and work, with whatever your technical skills or web based knowledge.
Channels
The lists of shows are impressive: News channels, BBC and National Geographic documentaries, music videos, cartoon networks and independent films of surprising quality. If you are not sure where to begin, have a look at the Google video channel where some of the most cutting edge documentaries are listed, or the Must See film and documentary channel for some quality alternative films. All are free to access, free to download and free to keep.
With over 2.300 channels to choose from there is a far broader range of subjects than that which conventional broadcasters have traditionally offered. And this is what makes Miro and Internet TV really interesting because program choice is no longer made by the major networks. Everyone can play a part.
But does anyone really watch TV on the Internet? When NBC decided to put out its TV series on the net, more than 52 million downloads were registered in the first month alone.
Video
Miro is more than simply Internet television. It can organise, update and playback all the video files on your computer. It also has a built in search engine through which you can download videos from not just YouTube, but also from Yahoo and Google and store them directly on your hard drive.
With YouTube planning to provide more choice for Apple TV, iPhone and now iPod Touch users, Internet video sites are rapidly becoming an important news and entertainment source.
To compete the package, Miro has also built in a video player that can play most file formats in full screen mode. To do this, the Mac version embeds a version of Quicktime into the program whilst for Windows users, Miro embeds a version of the legendary VLC player.
As Internet television finally looks set to take off over the next 12 months, Miro (open source and cross platform) looks likely to be a key player in what will inevitably be a heated contest between companies fighting for viewing time.
Miro Requirements
Miro requires either Windows XP and 128mb of Ram. Macs users will need version 10.3 of OSX or higher .
Not required
A Television.
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