Miro is a wonderful idea, and the Miro guide is an excellent web site, but the program itself is a painfully bloated (and buggy) pig. The word "refactor" echoes in the back of my mind every time I use it -- which is very often, because it's still an excellent concept!<br>
Alas, it should definitely not have hit 1.0 until the program stopped creating duplicate entries for torrent downloads, and allowed for Miro channels to change their feed URL on the fly. (As it is, since the Google Tech Talks location changed, the channel is broken for every past subscriber).<br>
<br>The front end could also use some more imagination. Possibly a bigger division between front and back ends would do the program well. I, for one, would love to navigate my Miro library with Elisa, for example, while still having a daemon (or something!) download my stuff in the background. At the moment, it is laid out just like an RSS feed reader with pictures, which defeats the purpose entirely. The only reason I really use Miro over an RSS reader, is because it integrates with that fancy guide web site. A problem right now is that opening a channel tends to take a few seconds (even on a 2.2 gHz Intel Core 2 Duo), yet that is the only way at the moment to list downloaded shows in categories. The interface has me thinking way too much about RSS feeds, what it should be downloading, wondering where things are and why one download that I thought I deleted a month ago keeps reappearing.<br>
<br>As for the good part... check out the Google Tech Talks and TED channels. Googletechtalks is just an RSS feed of YouTube, but it is really nice and easy to get those through Miro since YouTube conceals their RSS subscribe buttons so that it takes ages to find them. Thanks to the Miro guide, things like that are really quickly discoverable, which is one of the things that makes TV such an intuitive experience; when people flip channels, they may find interest in shows they had no idea existed! Unfortunately, the guide still necessitates direct searching, but areas like the Popular Channels list help greatly.<br>
There is even a Yoga channel, if I remember rightly.<br><br>Miro is looking to do for TV what the Internet is doing for text-based and interactive entertainment: Bringing the work, (and therefore the profits), closer to the content creators. This means less shady business practises, fewer businesses who base their entire profit model on luck and / or messing with their customers (*Cough* Retail), more open content, and - most importantly - less expensive content. A program like Miro (or really just the Internet TV idea in general) makes broadcast easier and more accessible than through a big TV network. This may take a while, as people are still very much hooked to the big / evil networks like Fox, but there is nothing to lose - only things to gain from the (potentially) infinitely superior infrastructure (when Miro loses its bugs). Internet services are the new medium for broadcast of content, and they have proven their worth in durability, flexibility and generally low cost. There are already some Internet radio channels that blast their analog broadcast competition out of the water, and online news sites are far easier to deal with than newspapers since they only consume space and time when you tell them to (ie: They have something interesting). Search engines like Google can integrate beautifully with all this stuff because every server talks in the same way, no matter what its owners are broadcasting. Internet TV is going to happen.<br>
<br>...Anyway, Miro is a fantastic program, but not ready for default. Yet. I do agree, however, that it may be a neat idea in the future :)<br><br><br><br>Bye,<br>--Dylan McCall<br><br>PS: In my opinion, naturally.<br><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 9, 2008 at 6:45 AM, Vadim Peretokin <<a href="mailto:vperetokin@gmail.com">vperetokin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Miro is a great program, but it was <i>barely</i> working on my 1.5Ghz, 512ram laptop. Pretty much unusable. So, it wouldn't really fit the min ubuntu requirements and make some people unhappy. Not necessary...<div><div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 9, 2008 10:29 AM, Vincenzo Ciancia <<a href="mailto:ciancia@di.unipi.it" target="_blank">ciancia@di.unipi.it</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>On 09/02/2008 Conrad Knauer wrote:<br>> Apologies; I meant to ask: 'If Miro can't be added to the default<br>> Hardy install (e.g. added to ubuntu-desktop), would it be possible for<br>> Hardy+1?'<br>
<br></div>I personally love miro but can't still recommend it to my friends since<br>it really crashes a lot on ubuntu. Including such an application on the<br>default cd would,in my opinion, be not-so-good publicity for ubuntu.<br>
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