Miro-an alternative to Real Player.

There are a few programs on the web that can download and convert videos into wmv,flv and mp3 format. Such as browser plug ins like Downloadhelper and Download It All. And also Real Player,which is a media player with a built in web browser that downloads and converts videos from the web,and saves them in files on your computer. I have used Real Player to download and save my own videos from the web. But Real Player is not without it's problems and Windows users will know that Real Player often crashes and it is slow and some times does not work.
The previous version,Real Player 11 stopped working a lot and crashed many times. The current version,Real Player 14 is a little better but not much. And then there is the unwanted adverts and unwanted steaming media that is not your own,making it look some what unattractive in appearance. But I and other Windows users put up with it all because we had to,and it was the only way to download and convert videos. There is Real Alternative but that is not an option for Windows 7 users,as it will not install or run in Windows 7. As it is not compatible.

But I have found a program called Miro,which like Real Player has a built in web browser and video player. But will also download videos from the web. But Miro is open source and a free program. So you do not get any adverts and other junk that comes with Real Player. Also Miro is much more user friendly than Real Player and it's built in browser is based on Firefox so it is faster.

The web browser in Miro is different from Real Player's in that it will only browse
for online videos. That is you cannot browse the whole web,but then,that's all you want to do in a video program. Although if you want to go onto the web,you just click "open in a browser" option to get to the Miro start page.

Miro can search for any video and find it if it is on the web and will download and convert into wmv,flv and other formats,so you can upload it to your website if you want. Some video players like VLC player do save videos to files but they do not always save them in the correct format. So although you can watch them on your computer,you cannot upload them to video or websites as they are not saved in the correct format.As online sites will only accept wmv,flv or mp3 format.

But Miro finds,plays,downloads and it does convert videos into the required format. And also it will tell you where on your computer your videos has been saved,by clicking the" view in Explorer"
(Windows Explorer) option.And you can choose where to save your video,in Desktop or Documents file or other for example. Also the video player itself is wide screen like VLC player is.

There are also additional features such as you can also watch online channels in Miro,and also Miro uses bit torrents to download videos. Downloadhelper and other Firefox add ons do this. But the downloads are broken resulting in an incomplete video. But with Miro there is not this problem and I have never had an incomplete video download.Miro will also play audio files. It also takes up less space on the hard drive than Real Player does.

In my opinion Miro is a much better program than Real Player and it has been around for some time. So it is not new but it is not well known either. I have uninstalled Real Player and replaced it with Miro. And now that I have Miro, I will never use Real Player again.

Miro made for all versions of Windows,Windows XP,Widows Vista,Windows 7 and older versions,Windows 95 and 98.

Links-Miro download link-click here.

Photos- top left- Real Player,which has a lot of unwanted adverts and does not feel very much like your personal video player.

Top right-Miro in action,the start page and downloading videos,it also saves rss feeds in it's built in web browser and will also let you search on the web by opening your default browser,such as Flock or Chromium or another web browser. And also Miro is an excellent video player that will play videos in wide screen.