Miro makes Channels a central part of its user experience, using the same technology as a blog. Having chosen not to offer instant playback video (unlike, say, YouTube) I think that the metaphor of a channel to helps me to understand what I will see after waiting for a download to occur. The TV channel metaphor was easy to grasp, since I’m often asked to subscribe in some way to a channel on my TV. Using the technology behind a blog (syndication feeds like RSS), it makes me consider a flow of new videos in the future, again like a TV channel. By using bandwidth friendly downloading, it can allow a channel to make the promise that the download will be better quality than a live feed.
While it is running, Miro is capable of downloading in the background without impacting the playing video. Therefore it’s often my experience that once I’ve watched one video in a channel, the next has downloaded. By leaving Miro running on the computer attached to my TV, there are also always downlaods that have completed while I’m away. As such, whenever I want to watch channels in Miro, there is something to view. In practice, this means that when I encounter a new channel, I hit the subscribe button, anticipating I will be able to watch it next time I sit in front of the TV.
As an aside, downloading before viewing has another advantage – playback is far more reliable. Most of the internet live feeds I’ve used experience breakup and dropout, making them unpleasant to watch. Miro never suffers from this, which is great.
Whilst I’m generally sceptical about copying the user experience from traditional TV’s and HiFi’s, the channel as blog metaphor seems to work well for Miro.