Software Sunday: Miro Media Player

Starting this week, we will be posting highlight articles about Open Source Software every Sunday.

While we have used plenty of different open, or even free, programs over the last two decades, everyone finds the ones that work for them and that they like and become familiar with.  Often, we stop there and look no further for perhaps better suited or other interesting applications.

Open Source Software covers all areas of technology, from mobile to desktop, and general to special purpose.  Often covering solutions we didn't even consider or were not looking to solve.

We may present some that you already know well, even though you may not know they are open source, and perhaps show you some you didn't even know existed.  And some may be bullet proof, production and corporate ready, while others may be beta or pre beta.

This instalment is on the Miro Media Player.

Miro is a fairly robust Media Player which has seen many upgrades over the years.  It is now in version 6.0 and includes not just video playback, but audio and streaming playback plus internet TV functionalities.  It also allows you to share your media on your network with other devices.

As noted in the wikipedia article on Miro, it began life in 2005 under the name of Democracy Player.  It was originally developed to play video both from a local source, as well as from internet based sources such as YouTube and video podcasts.

Today, it has grown to be much more than a video player and media centre.  It includes a bit torrent function to grab content from the web, a robust search feature, the ability to convert video into the device friendly MP4 format, and syncs with Android.

It also works on most PC operating systems including Mac, Windows and most Linux distributions.  It has RSS feeds for your favourite video channels as well as online video and audio stores such as Amazon and emusic.

As mentioned above, Miro can share its media library on a local network as well as operating as an UPNP device, allowing one to play audio and video on their console such as PS/3 and 4 and Xbox, which might be connected to you large screen TV.

Miro may seem like a familiar media player, like the one you might already have.  If you are using a proprietary media player or are looking for one with some decent features, Miro could very well be what you need.