We have just released version 0.9.6 of Democracy Player. It is a *big* update, with lots of new features, bug fixes, and improvements. It’s also the last version ever of Democracy Player. The next release from us will be under our new name, Miro.
And here it is: Download Democracy Player 0.9.6
Below are all the new features in this release, but I’d like to talk a little about the most exciting new feature, “folder watching”. It’s a new preference panel that let’s you pick folders on your local computer to include in your video collection. When a new video shows up in that folder, it will appear in your collection. Do you download videos from your browser to your desktop? Set Democracy Player to watch your desktop for new videos. Do you keep all your videos on an external hard drive? Add that hard drive to your collection and get all your videos organized in Democracy Player. Try it out.
The new features:
1. Folder watching (what I just wrote about above).
2. Resume playback. If you’re watching a 15 minute video and stop halfway, we’ll remember where you were when next time you watch it. There’s a preference setting to turn this on and off.
3. Auto-updating for Mac users. This should be the last time that Mac users will need to go to their browser to download a new version. From now on, when a new version is released you’ll be able to install it within the app and relaunch (we’re now using Sparkle). Windows users don’t have auto-update yet, but we’ll be able to give you details about what’s new in each release from within the app (right now it just tells you that there’s a new version, with no details).
4. Minimize to tray on windows– when you click the red x in the upper right, the application will hang out in the system tray. A much requested feature.
5. Windows Vista compatibility. This solves playback issues for some Vista users.
6. Resizing of thumbnails. We now resize and cache thumbnails so that the images displayed are smoother. This also makes switching between channels much faster.
7. More thorough proxy support.
8. Ability to play audio files on mac (previously we sent you out to an external player).
9. Many more keyboard shortcuts on Windows. This will make remote control support easy. Full keyboard shortcuts for Mac are coming soon with the first version of Miro.
10. Bug fixes, memory use reduction, memory leak fixes. Updated Perian on OSX to version 1.0b5.
We hope you enjoy all the improvements, please let me know what you think.
From here until Miro 1.0 we are focused almost exclusively on fixing bugs. If you find a bug, you can file it here.
Are you really serious about the name change?
Any RSS (OPML) export/import yet?
Any idea when the packages will filter down to http://ftp.osuosl.org for Ubuntu? I’d second the opml import/export feature too.
christiano – dead serious!
peter – not yet, but i hope soon
devang – ubuntu versions will be in our repository in the next few hours
Did they finally change the Delete function to delete to the Recycle bin / Trash can?
[...] 0.9.6: the last version before name change, a lot of new features and bug fixes. [source] The News: 05.06.2007 by Luca, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. [...]
Out of curiosity, what is the origin of the name “Miro”? And why the change? I kind of liked “Democracy”.
yea what is with the name change… “I like democracy” sure its a bit broad and has been heavily orwellianized by our supreme leader to mean ill-conceived wars of aggregation followed by foreign occupation with imperial divided and conquer strategy with massive sectarian violence…. but I am an optimist I think the word can still be reclaimed for a media player that aims to democratize media!
@The Cat
Miro is “I watch” in Spanish
Hm…. Name Change.
I hope you also change the icon. I liked the old one, not the current one (on osx anyhow).
In fact I’d say the when you put the new icon on the app is about when I quit using it. So… how about a new Icon? pretty please?
Jeff
[...] VÃa: Sitio oficial Comparte el artÃculo:Estos Ãconos enlazan con webs de marcadores sociales que permiten a los lectores compartir y descubrir nuevas webs. [...]
Please correct download webpage for ubuntu… there is saying for Fiesty and not Feisty… the same mistake was with the deb line:
deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/democracy/linux/repositories/ubuntu fiesty/
that should be:
deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/democracy/linux/repositories/ubuntu feisty/
Thank you for minimize to tray!!!
This version is wonderful, keep up the good work!
I have just blogged about your success
KUDOS & SUGGESTIONS. . .
First of all, this is the best software I’ve seen for accessing streaming video. Nicely done. But I’ve a few nits to pick over UI, as follows:
(1) Add an option to display a browser address bar. It’s often the case we find a video on links that are part of our normal web browsing which we could use help with from a program like this. I know it’s possible to paste links into this program, but frankly it’s too circuitous, too obscure. There’s a virtue to being plain & obvious and it would be nice to see a plain & obvious place in this UI which invites pasting in a link I’ve just copied from the addressbar in my normal browser. We don’t need this concept retitled or reinterpreted in the next program, we need it reiterated!
(2) Respect the windows TASKBAR. This program behaves atypically relative to the taskbar. Frankly I find “windows” clumsy and tend to run my foreground task full screen. I can do that because the taskbar makes it easy to switch between tasks. But when this program is in full screen it won’t relinquish the taskbar space when it’s “auto-hidden”. I know I can press Ctrl+Esc to overcome this problem, but I’m a geek. Most other people will be stuck.
(3) Why are there no keyboard control hooks in the player? You guys would do well to adopt several of the more common standards used in other players, like SPACEBAR as a Play/Pause toggle, ESCAPE to exit full screen, UP/DOWN to change volume, etc. If the phone rings in the dark I don’t want to have to track down the mouse, then find the right part of the screen to pause the proceedings, I want to instantly flick my hand at the spacebar and stop things cold!
[...] Democracy Player 0.9.6 has been released, the last version before the name change to Miro will take place. [...]
You’ve got the best player by far. Comparatively, Joost is a joke. It won’t be too long before you’ve all the aggregator features you can. Then what? You may end up being be the largest portal for videos. I love the way you can add a youTube or Google search as a channel. Anyway, if you’re interested, I have the voters.com domain– if you’d rather use that. In the future, you might want to add some kind of centralized DB to allow users to vote on each video. Click your vote and the player advances to the next video.
[...] Democracy Player 0.9.6 is out, and the open source media player has added a host of new features for finding and watching videos on the internet or stored on your computer. [...]
[...] Nicholas Reville claimed that this version contains huge update, with a lot of new features, bug fixes and improvement. In addition, it will also be the last version ever of Democracy Player, as the next release will be under the new name, Miro. [...]
My Democracy player notified me today that there was a new version so I downloaded and upgraded. Am I the only one that going to this new version completely blew away all of their subscriptions? Also, it found all the unwatched video but the title is just the file name.
The folders are cool but surely replacing my subscription list with the default set is not the intended behavior. I imagine it’s user error but I followed the same upgrade path I always use and this is the first time it has happened.
OS X 10.4.9
Ok, looks like I had a corrupt database. I see a corrupt_database directory in ~/Library/Application Support/Democracy. And the dtv-log has this:
2007-06-08 08:02:02,448 INFO Upgrading from previous version of database
2007-06-08 08:02:02,645 INFO Upgrading database…
upgrading database to version 40
upgrading database to version 41
2007-06-08 08:02:34,643 ERROR exception while loading database
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “storedatabase.pyo”, line 552, in __init__
File “storedatabase.pyo”, line 740, in loadDatabase
File “storedatabase.pyo”, line 688, in upgradeDatabase
File “databaseupgrade.pyo”, line 45, in upgrade
File “databaseupgrade.pyo”, line 541, in upgrade41
File “util.pyo”, line 564, in unicodify
File “util.pyo”, line 564, in unicodify
File “feedparser.pyo”, line 258, in __getitem__
KeyError: ‘tags’
Is there any chance of recovering my old subscription list?
Thanks.
Not a bug
but a good update would be MP4/h.264 ipod support. I rmr i used to use TED to download my tv shows and those only used mp4 rss feeds.
This method was bad b/c the uploader usually had bad conversion and was bad qualitiy or bad resolution
i suggest first dowlnoading in w/e format and then hav a built in converter (preferiibly a videora ipod converter like)
Why would you change an outstaning name to something dull. Miro sounds like some kind of cheap- run of the mill – indistinguishable from all the other junk…name.
Keep it real, Also please lighten this app up. It runs like a gorilla on os x.
There is already a video related product named Miro. Actually a few product that incorporate the name.
“Democracy”. What a great name! Which lawsuit are you afraid of?
Democracy for the world now!
Mmm. I ‘m usually not the person to react negatively to name changes. I kinda have respect for the developers taking the leap into darkness.
But this time i really regret the name change. I really liked the concept of Democracy Player (there are to many big media corporations, so we give you community driven tv). Democracy player is a great name for an app like that. That and maybe I have an affinity with “democracy” because of my legal education.
People want democracy, it’s so sad to see them loose it.
Thanks for keeping to improve a great a app.
You should SERIOUSLY reconsider the name change though (not to mention the misguided political bent) while you still have time.
As someone else pointed out above, there is already a video-related product with the name Miro. IIRC it’s a TV tuner card or NLV editing suite. I already like Democracy TV/Democracy Player and the “Get Democracy” tagline. “Get Miro” somehow just doesn’t seem play well with my already established concept of a Free as in Freedom Internet TV.
It looks like the name change is a done deal. Heck, they even have a new website and logo. I wish the developers luck with the name change.
Love the new player, finally working on Feisty – so thanks!
But Miro? Oh how sad that makes me. Democracy is a great name. It makes it sound like a movement, not just a bit of software. It has resonance, and it’s memorable. “Miro” is a meaningless, forgettable, bog-standard web 2.0 type of disposable name. Seriously, you could come up with that in two seconds flat, it’s just vacuous fluff. Utterly uninspiring, and I honestly think it’ll make the product harder to ‘market’, harder to understand, harder to distinguish from the crowd.
Please say it ain’t so.
I didn’t want to post a long comment about my thoughts on the new name, but anyone who’s interested can read a short blog entry about it: http://mattwilcox.net/archive/entry/id/904/
[...] Noticias Completa (Ingles) : Democracy Player 0.9.6 Released! [...]
This programme looks awesome, I hope to explore and broadcast soon. Okay?
never been able to install this, not for a year or more. Still cant. Are you going to commit to linux or not?
I would like the option to play back in date order. Makes catching up on missed videos a lot easier.
Oh yes! Don’t change the name! If this program was called “Miro” from the beginning, I think I’d never downloaded it!
Steven: you can sort the videos by date (forward or reverse), then select play and they will play back in the displayed order.
Marketing mistake. Ball dropped. Balls lacking. You will do that one most shocking thing and take something that is already perceived as a separate entity and shove yourself deeply into the middle of the pack. And then it will be far, far too late. Have guts, reverse your field.
I totally understand everyone’s issue with the name change– after all we wouldn’t have named it Democracy Player in the first place if we didn’t like the name. But really it just comes down to the fact that way to many potential users think that the software is only for watching videos of politicians. It really limits our ability to grow, so we need to make a change.
Nicholas I see your point. I love the old name and think Matt’s comment above to some extent sums it up very nicely. But, Miro is well ahead of the pack and at the end of the day, its not the name that counts but the number of active users (and contributors) that will define the app. After all, people pay good money for things with stupid names all the time, provided they perform well. But back @ u Matt: Miro as a name is not that bad, certainly much better than the stupid web2.0 stock standard made up names that are out there…the novelty has really worn off but people still use them. So in sum: Miro…name ok but the software is grand and that’s all that matters..
[...] Democracy Player 0.9.6 versiyonu 1.0 dan önceki son sürümü.Çıktığı zamanda büyük ihtimalle adı MIRO olacak. [...]
“But really it just comes down to the fact that way to many potential users think that the software is only for watching videos of politicians.”
I would really love to see the data that this comment is based on. Have you asked people? How was this conclusion reached? Because, to be frank, I’d be amazed if _anyone_ thought that, let alone any significant proportion of the potential user base. I may be wrong, there may be evidence galore for this – but its not been shown to us as far as I’m aware. Seems like a conclusion based on not-a-lot of evidence, and I’d be relieved if someone could give me some evidence, as it would at least vilify what you are saying (please understand I’m not intending to imply fibbing going on, but more that there is a lack of clarity with your users here).
I fully understand the reasoning that’s gone into the name change – but I remain unconvinced about the validity it. I’m also a bit peeved with the fact the name change went ahead without any consultation with the user base. When I got to this site and downloaded the player, and read through the mission statement, and experienced the whole thing – it seemed all about working as a group and empowering everyone. Something as fundamental as a name change I’d have expected you to ask for community feedback.
So you have made your mind about the name change. I think is a poor move, but what can I say? I’m just a face in a crowd…
Perhaps you consider a suggestion though, don’t let democracy die, and append it to the new name:
Miro: the democracy player
Sounds better than just Miro, people will recognize the software and associate with the things that the democracy player stands for, a community based, free as in freedom, tv.
This latest release of the player does not work on my system (XP MCE). It shows no list of channels and video will not play.
Also has hijacked all my previous video settings.
Help.
[...] http://www.getmiro.com/blog/2007/06/democracy-player-096-released-last-version-ever-before-name-change/ Democrazy heisst ab der nächsten Version 1.0 Miro [...]
Curiously, “mite” or “mieru” is the Japanese verb for “to see” (or “to watch”).
booooooo! why the name change? i don’t like the new one.. anyways, keep the good work guys, (and keep the current name if you can). you should also implement a way to read text, so i won’t have to use another RSS reader for my text based news.
Hello,
I’m using Version 0.9.6 (r4688) and I’m very sorry I miss the previous version.
I keep having prolems with it: Not only did it deleted my ongoing dowloads from the previous versions, but it does it again with the stuff I’m dowloading. After I’ve relaunched it, everything was back to 0ko!
All the best for the upcoming version,
U.
I vote for keeping the name Democracy… great product.
I’m sorry sir,
But I must say that changing the name..is a very bad mistake, and once you step to the new name..
you will not be able to step back.
If you MUST change the name…then at least include Democracy Player as part of that name.
GDI
Sincerely,
Fritz
You guys are great and show to the world that Apple TV is a waste of money in my view.
This is my all time favorite Open Source project
Thanks
Toby