Miro Review - Great Internet HD Video Player

Miro is a free, open-source video player with ports for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, designed especially for watching HD videos. Miro bundles over 6000 Internet TV shows and video podcasts, and allows you to download each of them to your computer, so you can watch them without the need of an Internet connection.

In this review I will talk about the latest version of Miro available to date, 3.0.3, as it comes with the Ubuntu 10.10 Beta repositories.

Among the video formats supported by Miro are AVI, WMV, MOV, Ogg Theora, MKV or MPEG. Miro also includes support for subtitles. But Miro was not created to be the usual movie player, it was created having HD Internet TV in mind.

The first time you fire up Miro, a wizard will appear asking you if you want to enable opening Miro at start-up and if you want to let him scan local folders for video content. Here's how the main window of Miro looks like:


As you can see, it includes a mini web browser which points at https://www.miroguide.com/, a place from which you can start searching for videos on the web, view lists of HD video shows or watch the most popular ones.

Miro also includes integrated video search, and allows you to download and view the selected videos:


Another feature of Miro is the media library, where you can organize video and audio files and manage your downloads. In addition to these, Miro offers a BitTorrent client with search capabilities and several audio and video feeds, like the default Global Pulse or Wildlife Highlights, which contains awesome wildlife videos in HD format. You can also create playlists of your content in Miro.

Wildlife Highlights


Regarding preferences, Miro allows you to configure thing such:
- system tray integration
- control how feeds are handled
- configure the BitTorrent client
- watch certain directories for changes and show them in the media library


As a final conclusion, Miro is just great firstly because of the awesome HD movie feeds it provides. However, as a movie player it does not offer the more advanced options dedicated movie players provide, like video and audio effects, support for DVDs, etc. But this is not the case, since Miro's goal is not to do these things, but to offer a great way of watching online videos.

Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/miro
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How-To: Install Miro 2.5.1 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Miro is a great application for watching videos and high-definition TV podcasts in Linux. The latest release is 2.5.1, a bug fix release for the 2.5 series, which has a faster start-up time, a new, revamped library interface, new keyboard shortcuts, a refined interface and lots of bug fixes. Miro is an awesome multimedia application, especially if you like watching videos at high quality.


Miro 2.5.1 in Ubuntu 9.04


By default, Ubuntu Jaunty comes with Miro 2.0, but the Miro project offers their own repositories for Ubuntu with the latest Miro packages, so you can easily fetch and install the latest release using the instructions below.

1. Edit the sources.list file
Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file using your favourite text editor (e.g. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list or gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list) and add the following line:

deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu jaunty/

2. Update the package lists
Type in a shell like GNOME Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

3. Remove your existing Miro
If you have an older version of Miro installed on your Ubuntu system, first remove it:

sudo apt-get remove --purge miro
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

4. Install Miro 2.5.1
Type:

sudo apt-get install miro

This should do it. Miro 2.5.1 should be now properly installed and you can run it by typing Alt+F2 and writing miro in the run box that appears.

Alternately, here are instruction to install it the graphical way (applies for Ubuntu with GNOME):

Open System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. You will be asked for your user password upon opening Synaptic.

Next, in Synaptic go to the Settings -> Repositories menu, then click on the Third-Party Software tab in the window that pops up. Click the Add button and copy/paste the line below (it's the same line you would have added in the /etc/apt/sources.list file by hand):

deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu jaunty/


Click the Add Source button, close the window and then click the Reload button in the main Synaptic window.

Next, just search for Miro in the packages list in Synaptic, mark it for installation including its dependencies and you're ready to go.

Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/miro
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Miro 2.0 - Watch TV Podcasts and Videos in HD

Miro is an open-source and cost-free application for watching Internet TV in high definition quality. It's available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

The latest release is 2.0.5 and it was released on June 25, and some of the features it comes with are:
- watch Internet videos in HD, subscribe to many, completely free podcasts
- resume playing to where you stopped a video last time
- support for many video formats (including MKV, AVI, Quicktime)
- it allows the creation of video playlists
- support for the BitTorrent protocol
- support for audio podcasts
- Miro can search and download videos from sites like YouTube or Yahoo!


Usual interface when Miro starts


Beside being an Internet TV application, Miro can also play various video files, including AVI, WMV or MPEG. It also supports Matroska MKV video files, but it won't play SWF ones.


Miro playing an MKV video file


Miro comes by default with several HD podcasts, for example Wild Life or INSERT, so you can start downloading and viewing them immediately. One of the drawbacks is that Miro doesn't seem able to play Shockwave Flash videos (SWF), so you will have to use a player like mplayer for those.


Watching a Wildlife video podcast in HD


Miro also allows to download torrents and also to subscribe to torrent feeds, then access them from within Miro. The default website included is LegalTorrents, which provides completely legal and free audio and video torrents.


Download torrents from within Miro and watch them


I think Miro is just great for watching TV podcasts. You can download entire videos and even make personal collections depending on your preferences. Another plus is the support for BitTorrent protocol.

Official Miro homepage
Source URL: https://ashesgarrett.blogspot.com/search/label/miro
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