Make a fusion between Miro and Songbird

like the idea, but i didn't suggest it myself because it's unlikely to ever happen, although since they are both programs based on Mozilla's XULRunner and are both media player the fusion should be a easy, there still are two different teams behind each project

I would like to see Songbird fully develop as a player before trying other projects.

Miro is way too much of a resource hog, even more than Songbird. And unlike songbird, it's not getting any better. Adding video playback to Songbird would be good enough I think.

It says the company implemented this idea? how? when?

they're probably going to include video playback and rss support in songbird. (which would constitute a fusion between Miro and Songbird)

I would rather not so much redundancy. Why not just make them play more nicely, maybe even merge?

It seems like Miro 2.5, just released yesterday (7/23/2009), will make a further foray into Songbird's own functionality: they're adding an audio podcast section to their Miro Guide, and have redesigned the user interface for audio playback. They've already added (since 2.0) the ability to bookmark "Sites", with a preferred target in audio blogs and BT trackers (LegalTorrents.com is bookmarked by default).

So now at this point, the only two things that Miro's missing are

• hardware support for mobile media playing devices, preferably those which play both video and audio


• iTunes-Front Row-like Integration with a media center application like MythTV

Miro and Songbird are so damn similar. I feel like they should at least link to each other's sites or something because most users would be interested in both. I don't like keeping and playing music and videos in the same program, so I also wish they would develop both fronts separately to maximize progress, but I am glad to see both open source projects flourishing.

mirobird mirobird mirobird

I like the idea. Seems like a hard thing to optimise the speed and performance of the application if they were combined since miro is resource heavy (I only base this off my experience with miro, tell me if I am wrong). There is that problem of bloat too. At the same time, it feels like a waste not to utilise the code from miro that is available. Perhaps if both projects focus on trimming and speeding up the programs in the future, the idea will be more feasible.

Why in the world should Songbird become a massively bloated monolithic jack-of-all-trades iTunes rip-off?

If you want a fast app make it for a specific purpose and you can tune the heck out of it and squeeze every drop of performance out of the code because you don't have to worry about extraneous things like "video playback" and "visualizations."

If you want an app that does everything out-of-the-box you can't expect it to be fast by any means, things just don't work that way.

Or you can do what Songbird is currently doing and make a generic and very flexible base upon which additional functionality can be built.

There was a video playback function i Songbird some time ago, but they removed it because it was really buggy. It's based on the engine used in VLC. So i think if video support will be on the roadmap, it will be as good as in VLC and maybe better than in Miro (not quite sure, because i never installed Miro).

The BitTorrent and YouTube integration though would be very interesting and is surely worth implementing.

I don't think they should fuse their code into one piece of software; I think it would be better if they just formed a kind of partnership where they link to one another and maybe try to share some code or interface design choices so that it is easier for people to discover both and use them side by side. Their goals are so similar that anyone who uses one would probably like to know about the other, so both websites should at least but links at the bottom of their home page just like thepiratebay links to Miro and Firefox to help spread the word.

nice to see so many comments on this idea in the last 24 hours, I wonder what's changed.

what I want is a media application and platform that truly competes against iTunes, but from an open culture perspective/philosophy. in the same way that we evangelize to our friends about switching from IE to Firefox, I want to be able to do the same with Mirobird vs iTunes. it should be that simple. Mirobird should do everything that iTunes does, but better, while at the same time making the case for a more open culture of media (plugins, support for non-Apple hardware, not limited to the iTunes store, supporting bittorrent, etc.) isn't Firefox's ability to successful compete against and steal marketshare from IE so quickly, while pushing the open philosophy, the truly inspiring part?

speed matters just like it does when you are out there making the argument for Firefox over IE, but so does good support for both audio and video, the 10-foot Front Row-like experience, a simple interface for getting all media, a great podcast library, ability to rip CD's (and maybe DVD's), and everything else that I'm forgetting but that we can't thank the developers at PCF and Pioneers of the Inevitable enough for. i just feel like Firefox made the jump from the ghetto of the geeks & free culture to the mainstream while bringing along its ideals, and we could do the same in the realm of media players with a merger of Miro & Songbird. but I don't think we get there as quickly or at all in separate pieces.

Yeah, it would really be nice if Songbird could also play videos. Every time I need to open one, I have to launch VLC.