Get Ready to cut Cable TV: A Look at Miro

I’ve always been an advocate for cutting subscription costs out of my life: I guess I just don’t like the idea of having to constantly pay for a service — which won’t be there when you run out of money.  The only essential I’ve never really even considered cutting was cable TV, perhaps because there’s really nothing like it.  At least, there wasn’t — before Miro was introduced.

Miro is an application that is reminiscent of PVR: using the Miro Guide, you can subscribe to channels that you want to watch.  Episodes will be downloaded regularly via RSS feeds, and quality is not compromised because the actual video is being downloaded, not streamed.  Download speeds are impressive for me, but will depend on your Internet service’s download speed.  The best part about having the videos downloaded is the ability to play them more than once and pause them when you need to.  Just like PVR.

The GUI is impressively laid out: very simple, and colourful, but without overdoing it.  The word I’d like to bring out is “pleasant” — in fact, it somewhat reminds me of Mac OS X’s GUI a bit.

The Search function also contributes to Miro’s wow-factor: it allows you to download videos from YouTube, Veoh, and other video sites.  However, as of version 1.2, it was a bit slow when reloading different searches.  The search function does allow you to save the results as a Channel though, interestingly enough.

And the videos: there is quality, and much potential.  However, at the moment, the shows are somewhat less mainstream: I would expect that eventually, mainstream shows like Heroes and even music videos and all will be put on Miro, just as Joost is proceeding to do.  Still, there’s plenty of fun and games with Boing Boing TV, GeekBrief, and even National Geographic.

I know I had taken an earlier look at Miro, but I totally felt like it deserved a second revealing.  Alright, I’ll admit it: I forgot that I had already looked at Miro (grins sheepishly).  Still, it’s a great piece of software and totally out of Beta, so you should give it a try!  If you’ve got the storage and the Internet speed, then what are you waiting for?