A first look at Miro

Yesterday we brought you the news that Democracy Player would be relaunched as Miro. Today, we can finally test the newly released version of the Internet TV application. Although not a major update, the soon-out-of-beta release has a number of significant improvements like keyboard shortcuts, an improved system tray, a better bug reporter (essential for a program still in beta), and the Veoh.com search engine has been added. The developers at PCF have also taken care of a number of bugs. Maximizing the window will not cover the task bar, importing has been increased and will now avoid audio files. Oddly enough, Yahoo has also been removed as a search engine, but if you really like it, you can still add it manually.

The new design looks like it has been slightly improved. The logo itself is much sleeker than the old one. In terms of performances I still found it a bit sluggish at startup and when opening up new feeds. The program used up around 80 Mb of memory, which I think is reasonable for an Internet application streaming videos though.

In a sense, I get the feeling that the real updates have been carried out more on the site itself, with a new redesign, new forums and a new channel guide, than on the application. With version 1.0 right around the corner, let’s hope the next release of Miro will have a bit more to offer.