Miro, formally known as Democracy Player during its early development stage, has grown to be a really good video player and downloading application. Miro is an attempt to Internet television application developed by Participatory Culture Foundation. I have to say they are coming really close to make it as easy as watching TV.

For starters, Miro plays almost every know video format out there. On the Mac platform Miro uses Quicktime 7 with a few added plugins, which enable Miro to play even more video format. Currently Miro on the Mac supports MPEG, MP4, MOV, H264, Flash, AVI OGG and more.

Miro does more then iTunes could ever dream of doing when it comes to downloading video podcast. Miro works well as your podcast downloading application. Just past it a video podcast feed and it will start downloading the latest episode, or all episode depending on your setting. Miro will keep unwatched episode and delete episode that you have watch and are 5 days old (depending on your setting). You have the option to keep/save/archive any episode you fancy.

Here is where Miro ‘one-up’ iTunes in terms of podcast/video downloading. You could, within Miro itself, search for videos on YouTube or other video sharing sites such as Google Video, Veoh Video Network and Revver just to name a few.

To top that you could also throw in a torrent file and it will start to download it. Download bittorent files and watch it in the same application, that’s ace. However I find that the bittorrent part of the application still needs some work. Let just say I wont dump trusty old Transmission any time soon.

If you haven’t already, give Miro a try. There are also tons of good contents on the Miro guide. All you need to do is to find a channel and subscribe.