Miro : Quick review after a week (Miro+Torrents=Better than Cable TV?)
Last week I mentioned Miro, the free and open-source Internet video downloader. I’ve been using it for about a week on my Mac Mini (connected to my TV). Here are my thoughts so far:
Miro + Torrents could equal a convenient and free alternative to PAYING for cable TV.
In fact, they are superior to typical cable TV in many ways:
• Free (besides Internet charges)
• Watch ANYTHING (just about every movie, TV show, video podcast)
• NO commercials!
• More choices; tons of Tech, Mac, Science and other esoteric categories of shows/videos you can’t find on TV
• No need to pay for a DVR or TIVO service
It also has a couple disadvantages:
• Lower Quality (in some cases)
• Miro’s interface is still buggy
• Takes time to download videos, so you need to manually search and/or setup automatic downloading (pretty easy with TVShows and Miro)
With Miro, I can also watch Bill Maher’s Overtime (the 10 minutes after the show ends on HBO) before it’s on HBO.com!
Miro also has an HD category! The quality looks GREAT on my Maxent MX-42HP from the Mini (especially after I FINALLY got SwitchResX tweaked out to perfection). There is a large range of HD channels with really interesting content.
Conclusion: I may be saving my money and ditching cable TV soon… Peace Charter!
Popularity: 3% [?]
I downloaded the Miro application from its site. It seems very userfriendly.
I watched a few of the programs today, but I guess from an older generation such as I, podcasts can be frustrating; we’re not used to being teased by 3 and 4 minute snippets when we would prefer to watch an entire episode or movie. Granted channels that broadcast older movies in their entirety in the public domain are available, but you won’t find a recent full length feature due probably to licensing issues. Example: I went to the Bladerunner Channel hoping to view the newer HD improved version of it. All that was available were selected scenes and trailers. This is essentially an application that consolidates webprograms and podcasts
from various internet sites. A replacement for subscription TV? Well, that’s debatable. I guess it depends on your personal requisites and attention span. Nonetheless, I have kept the application on my Dock as an entertainment source. On the plus side, on my iMac G4 the picture quality was actually excellent.
Yes, you actually need to look around to find the good shows. It’s true that us younger folk (at least myself) like the short and to the point blips of info. I like getting the basic message, then deciding on my own if I want to continue learning about the topic (google time).
As for the cable replacement, it’s definitely miro + TORRENTS; Miro taking care of all the “webprograms and podcasts
from various internet sites” and Torrents getting the new and old movies/tv shows/etc; including, HD Bladerunner :)
Blah-blah-blah. I don’t care about you opinion, your words mean nothing to me. I’m big, bad and always just.