Rating: 4/5

General Info: This application’s primary purposes are: automatically downloading, viewing, and cataloging your video content. Soon to be known as Mira, Democracy is one of the most Mac-like multi-platform programs I have ever used. It just exudes the look and feel of a Mac app. It even uses QuickTime and VLC under the hood to play video. OK, so what really is Democracy? Well it’s a lot like iTunes for video. While iTunes can be used for video podcasts, this takes it to the next level. It trounces iTunes’ video capabilities with several main features. One is an integrated Bittorrent engine. While Bittorrent can easily be used for stealing, it also makes High Definition video cheap to distribute. Another neat feature is browsing of YouTube, Google, and other video sites with the added ability of downloading videos in flash format. Speaking of flash format, Democracy can also play virtually any video format you throw at it. It also features a “Channel Guide” akin to iTunes’ podcast directory. Here’s the biggest weak point. Speeds of the “Channel Guide” have become reasonable, yet the content rating and featured videos remain too static. The selection available on the main page remain the virtually the same day after day. Another problem is syncing with your iPod is not built in … yet, the developers have stated their plans for syncing with mobile devices in future versions. Currently, Democracy is in late stages of beta, 0.9.5.3.

Retail Price: Free and Open Source

Site: http://www.getdemocracy.com/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Betas, Reviews, TV, Video & Movies, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.