podcast Alright so a few weeks ago I finally decided it was time to start watching the video podcasts I download on my TV instead of in Firefox in a tiny window.  So I began by downloading each episode I wanted to watch (the large HD formats, of course) and set up a file structure that my 360 can see over the network.  This all worked fine until one day when I came home and thought "gee, I'd like to watch some Totally Rad Show right now."  The only problem?  The large HD downloads can be upwards of 600 megabytes at times, so to wait for the download to complete takes so long that by the time it's done downloading I might not even want to watch it anymore.  It takes the immediacy out of the content, instead of just needing something to watch and being able to watch it I suddenly found myself wanting to watch something then having to wait a long time to get it.

What I realized is that what I really needed was an application like iTunes that would automatically download new episodes of my favorite video podcasts without me having to do it manually.  That way, whenever a new episode came out, it would be automatically downloaded and I could go to my 360 to see what was new without having to worry about it.  At the same time though, I really didn't want to use iTunes.  iTunes is great on the Mac, but I've already set everything up on my main Windows box to use Windows Media Player for my media.  So I needed an iTunes alternative, preferably tuned to just media collection and not necessarily playback (that's what the 360 and TV are for).  Then one day this past week I was browsing Digg and I saw it - a Revision 3 branded version of the Miro aggregator/player.  It's perfect for me because pretty much all of what I watch is Revision 3 content, and since all of the Revision 3 feeds are integrated automatically in this new version of Miro all I had to do was download it, set which shows I wanted Miro to monitor, set the folder I wanted them to go into (the one that my 360 was already set up to scan for content) and I'm set!

miro

I had never used Miro before despite having heard about it.  Like I said I always just watched the content on my PC so it wasn't a big deal to me until now.  Let me just say though, Miro is a handy piece of software to have.  For right now the version that I'm using is Mac or PC only (no Linux version, I'm afraid).  When you first install Miro what you do is set up "channels" for the feeds of content you want to monitor.  For example, I want new episodes of The Totally Rad Show to be downloaded as soon as they become available, so I have a Totally Rad Show channel in Miro.  When a new episode of TRS comes out Miro downloads it and lets me know that there's a new, un-watched episode for me.  It's pretty much that simple.

If you love online video content as much as me you really shouldn't be without Miro, it makes having to monitor several different websites for new content a non-issue.  Plus, even if you aren't streaming the videos to a different player or machine, Miro comes with a nice built-in media player so you can watch the new episodes from Miro.  It's funny, I just looked at my Miro client and it looks like it's grabbing the latest episode of iFanboy for me as I write this. :)

Now Playing:
Flogging Molly - Lightning Storm (incredible album, by the way)
Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass