The “internet tv” and video player Miro, previously known as Democracy has caught my attention lately.
I tried Democracy for the first time more than a year ago. My first impression was OK. Considering the fact that I can’t afford to keep up with the latest hardware updates, I tried it on a little older Mac. This proved the program rather CPU intensive. The concept behind Democracy was a good one however. Being able to subscribe to channels in a podcast type of manner has evidently become a winner.
Being able to “store” the channel material is an advantage over more “live services” such as Joost, since you can pause any time you want. You skip the ads and if you do have low bandwidth you can download the whole episode/show before viewing.
That same success is what Miro has has expanded on. You can obtain HD material which is becoming more in demand.
Miro also offers a BitTorrent service. (Because of rather limited bandwidth I seldom use BitTorrent, but gave it a try with Miro.) The first torrent in Miro worked impressively. Though afterwards I had to pause a download to be able to use my bandwidth for necessities and when I resumed it started downloading from the beginning. In other words it restarted instead of resuming. A quick search online on Miro’s forum proved that others had this problem, and it was not yet resolved.
My main challenge to Miro is help the users find the content, in an even greater manner. I find myself using the content I find in the applications more than outside subscriptions’. Therefore my guess is that if the content is more accessible people will stick to the application. Another Joost-joy I am missing is being able to control Miro via remote.
For Miro’s slightly biased comparison of Miro vs. Joost check out their comparison.