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| Internet TV, Free at Last! |
| Democracy is an open-source platform to watch video podcasts over the Net |
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Roberto Spiezio (seong)  |
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Published 2006-05-13 06:34 (KST) |
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Multimedia content is the most important pillar of the Internet area known as the Web. Companies from all over the world gain loads of money every year from sponsorships and on-line presence with their logos and websites. The market of on-line videos and TV has also improved. Nowadays, for example, all the major content providers, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN have a section of their portals dedicated to videos.
Although Internet TV is becoming more and more important, since it merges our TV-oriented mass culture with the Internet, our era's killer application, it seems that only the "usual suspects" are exploiting the new opportunities afforded. Independent publishers, common people and other organizations appear excluded.
Enter the idea of the Participatory Culture Foundation. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, this not-for-profit organization is made of ten people with a clean and enthusiastic look, but, most of all, with a precise project: to make Internet TV free at last, open, independent and available to anyone.
 |  | |  Democracy Player's Channel Guide | | | ©2006 PCF | The open-source platform offered by PCF is quite comprehensive: from the production to the publication and sharing of the videos through the websites and the applications they have created : Democracy Player to watch, VideoBomb to share, Broadcast Machine to create and the Channel Guide to choose from the innumerable video podcasts and vlogs -video weblogs- available and covering any topic that might come to your mind: Animation, Movies, News, Politics and Technology, to name some. I have just been watching a video about the 2006 London Marathon. The applications' code is freely available and released under GPL license.
The idea has been so successful that many organizations and companies have adopted this platform to distribute their videos, from Al Gore's Current TV, to Creative Commons and Telemusicvision, featuring independent bands' music videos.
I have tested the Windows version of Democracy Player, based on the Mozilla browser code. I first tried the beta version 0.8.3, a milestone towards version 1.0, but after the third crash in three seconds, I thought I had better use the previous stable version 0.8.2.
The file package to download is not particularly "heavy," but it requires a broadband connection, taking about 17 MB.
 | | | | A satyrical cartoon in Democracy Player. | | | ©2006 PCF | After installation, Democracy looks like an hybrid between iTunes and an Internet browser. With a black-colored style resulting particularly appealing and pleasant to look at, the program opens with the Channel Guide, where the users can browse and subscribe to the videocasts and the vlogs they prefer. After downloading, the videos are immediately available, they can be deleted, shared via email and via VideoBomb. The videos can also be tagged, which makes their retrieval easier. Democracy also integrates Bit Torrent to manage download processes.
The application has an interesting "full screen" feature, so everybody can just lean back and enjoy the video, but not an "always on top" option that would be extremely useful, especially if you are used to doing many things at once while using a computer.
With an average configuration -Athlon64 2 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 128 MB video card- the program loads and manages downloads smoothly and without problems. Since the videos can take dozens and at times hundreds of MB's of space, a broadband connection is necessary. Although the guys at PCF say the application should work even on older computers equipped with WIN98 or ME and DirectX 3, the ideal configuration requires Win 2000 or XP. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux are also available.
Democracy Player is a well-made program, with a wide room to improve and grow. It's the perfect platform to anyone wants their voice to be heard and "seen." If you are tired of the usual multimedia contents over the Internet and want something new, different and open-source, that is the perfect match.
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©2006 OhmyNews
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