As most of you have already heard the Writer's Guild is striking because they aren't receiving proper payment for their work relating to revenue coming from DVDs and online distribution of the shows. For more info look here at interesting video on Devorak's blog and some news on Digg on WGA Strike and the Death of Television. and here:
So while there are re-runs on TV, this is the perfect time for you to give Miro a try! This is an especially good time since Miro is coming out with its polished 1.0 release! Personally think that it is a very solid release with lots of features, and more importantly a lot of bugs fixed! Check out the feature list.
I find it rather ironic that these two events are coinciding. In my opinion these strikes are a by-product of the lack of openness that the exists in the model of the Hollywood TV shows and Movies. Their system is not open for users and it isn't open to rewarding their writers! The high-ups in Hollywood clearly know that there is a lot of money to be made in the online TV business, but they are doing it in such a way that they lock down their content. Many networks are moving to put their shows up for people to watch online. But you can only watch the shows if you are in certain geographic locations (US usually) and you have to watch the show in your browser... So no chance of putting it on your ipod, phone, zune, TiVO or home theatre system. Since the system is closed, there is no opportunity for users to use the content in their own way!
From what I have seen in working with and using open source software, there are so many creative ways that existing solutions can be improved and changed for different uses. Though Miro doesn't do everything you would want to be able to do with your media, it is open. So if someone wanted to have Miro work within their MythTV box, or have it sync video to their iPhone, or have it controlled with a TV remote, or bluetooth in your cell phone, they could do it. There is no chance of a user being able to do this with the pre-existing solutions like Joost, or one of the online solutions like Hulu.
Oh and did I mention that there are 2741 channels in the Miro Guide at the time of this writing, and this number is always growing! This is fully open media that anyone can watch in whatever way they choose. Also anyone can submit channels to the Miro Guide. In some ways I hope that this strike isn't resolved so some of these great writers start writing for video that is online and open!
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