All right, I am all for freeware, Open Source programs, but for me to like it, it needs to work. I have Ubuntu on my desktop and would love to add Miro (the free Open Source Joost alternative that basically plays any video format) to it, but for the last month, month and a half, Miro has been nothing but problems for me. Let’s see what I had:

1. The program would crash on startup. I would install it and it would open and automatically close in under five seconds. Once I managed to get the program up and running it would freeze and fail to open channels and shows.

2. The video would not play. After I had managed to get the program working and add all the channels I need, and organize them into folders and playlists, the video mysterious disappeared one day. I would try to play a video and all I would see was a gray scene with all the audio playing. Every video, every channel, old and new downloaded ones — nothing worked.

So at this point I said screw it and went over to iTunes and added all the videos as podcasts. iTunes worked for me, but it didn’t have the organization of Miro, and of course all the videos I download stay on my computer (Miro deletes the videos after 7 days). So when Miro became 1 yesterday I decided to give it another chance and redownload it. Well it downloaded and the video came on when I clicked play but…

3. The video is dark as hell. I can’t watch any of the darker videos becuase all I see is darkness with audio. I figured it was my monitor, yet when I run it on all three of my monitors it is still dark.

So now I am back on iTunes because the videos are watchable. Miro really has something going for it, but at least for me it is way too buggy to recommend to anyone. If you really want a free, Open Source alternative to Joost or iTunes. Try Miro, but don’t have too high hopes.

And yes I did report all of them to the Miro team on Bugzilla.

Tags: miro, joost, itunes, video, internet tv