Miro Media Player 5 Release Candidate Out, Final Version Soon

The developers of Miro have released a first release candidate of the upcoming Miro 5 version. Miro at its core is a media player with Internet connectivity built right into the software. The software can play back media formats and supports the playing and downloading of media from the Internet.

You can use it to manage your local video and audio library, go to video hosting sites like YouTube from within the program interface to watch and download videos from there,  subscribe to podcasts, download torrent files, or make use of the channels and shows offered by Miro. Channels include the ever popular Ted Talks, Buzz out Loud or the Discovery Channel Video podcast. You can subscribe to these channels to receive updates when new items are published.

A lot has changed since our initial review in 2008 and last year’s update to Miro 4. The developers behind Miro have now released the first release candidate of the upcoming version 5. This is a test version which is not suited yet for productive environments. While the majority of features work without larger issues, you will come upon  a few bugs in that version, like the inability to minimize the program version using the button at the top of the window.

When you look at the program interface you will notice that it looks more or less identical to previous versions. The developers claim massive updates to the Windows backend of the software.

The new version of Miro now supports downloading HD videos from Vimeo feeds, faster device syncing and format conversions, song information and album art lookup, and a new album view mode that groups together songs by album and artist.

Interested users can download the release candidate of Miro 5 from the official blog. Downloads are provided for Windows and Mac Os X, and the source code.

New users should check out the Get Started section for an overview of some of the things that Miro allows them to do.

Are you using an all-in-one media player like Miro, or do you prefer to keep things separate?

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday March 21, 2012 -
Tags:mac software, miro, windows sofftware

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YTubePlayer Is A Desktop Youtube Player

Youtube desktop players offer an alternative to opening the YouTube website in a web browser. There are surprisingly few applications available that let you play YouTube videos on the desktop. Miro comes to mind but that application is not lightweight by any means.

YTubePlayer is a desktop Youtube player that comes with most of the bells and whistles that you would expect. The program does rely on Internet Explorer’s Flash plugin which without doubt can be a issue for many users who prefer not to install that plugin on their system. A fall back to HTML5 is not provided.

The player interface is minimalistic in design. You see a controls bar at the top, the player window on the left, and the search, playlist and video listings on the right.

You can start searching for videos right away by entering a search term into the form at the top. This opens a new window with search results that list the title, description, play time, views and thumbnail of each video result.

Videos are sorted by relevance by default, with options to sort them by rating, view count or publication date instead.

A click on the title sends it directly to the player were it plays automatically. You can use the controls at the top to pause and stop videos, and to switch to the next or previous video if you have selected a playlist.

Videos can be added to playlists, of which you can create as many as you want. Each playlist contains a feed of videos that have been added to it.

You can change the size of the window, and of the video player and playlist listing individually. That’s useful if you only want the player window visible on the screen to save screen estate.

The application has a fullscreen mode, and a toolbar mode. The latter displays only the toolbar and no video player or interface, which makes it great for music, and not workable at all for videos that you want to watch.

The application supports most multimedia keyboards so that you can control videos in the program window with your keyboard’s media keys. It also offers an option to import existing YouTube playlists, and to share playlists to other users of the desktop player.

The player comes without options to download YouTube videos. YTubePlayer is available for Windows and Mac operating systems.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday March 7, 2012 -
Tags:windows software, youtube, youtube videos

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Adobe Releases Flash Player Security Update to 11.1.102.63

Adobe today has published an update for Flash Player that brings the current version of the product to 11.1.102.63 on the desktop, and version 11.1.111.7 on Android devices. Adobe classifies the update as a priority 2 update that fixes several critical security vulnerabilities that have been discovered earlier in the product. Priority 2 is the second highest priority rating, and critical the highest severity rating.

[A priority 2] update resolves vulnerabilities in a product that has historically been at elevated risk. There are currently no known exploits. Based on previous experience, we do not anticipate exploits are imminent. As a best practice, Adobe recommends administrators install the update soon (for instance, within 30 days).

The vulnerability affects all previous versions of Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris, as well as previous versions of Flash Player for Android.

The vulnerabilities can be used by attackers to cause a crash on the target system running vulnerable versions of Flash, to take control of the affected system. Adobe recommends that users update their Flash Player version to the latest version as soon as possible to protect their system vulnerability exploits.

Flash users who do not know which version of the product they have installed, should visit Adobe’s About Flash page to find out. Flash Player needs updating if the version displayed is lower than 11.1.102.63 for a desktop system, and lower than 11.1.111.7 for Android systems.

Desktop users can visit the Get Flash Player website to download the latest version of the product from the Adobe website. Keep in mind that you need to close all open web browsers before you can complete the update of Flash Player on the system. The Google Chrome browser is updated automatically via Google Update, an update for that browser alone is not necessary.

Adobe furthermore has made available an update to Flash Player 10 users who, for whatever reason, cannot update to Flash Player 11. The update resolves the security issue on their system. It can be downloaded here.

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Adobe Flash Player Security Update Available About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday March 6, 2012 -
Tags:flash player, flash player update

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VLC Media Player 2.0 Final To Release This Week

Back in January we reported that VideoLan was about to release VLC 2.0, and that a first release candidate was to be released in that week. This release candidate has been out for about a month now, and VideoLan is preparing to ship the final version of VLC Media Player 2.0 later this week.

The developers have already pushed a Linux test version of VLC 2.0 to the test servers indicating that a release is near.

The new version of VLC will introduce several new features to the client that should get lots of users excited about the release. Probably the biggest feature addition is support for Blu-Ray media that users can then play in the video player, provided that their computer has a Blu-Ray drive. VideoLan notes that the feature is experimental, and that copy protected Blu-Rays won’t play in this version of the player.

Other features include ports of VLC to Android, iOS and 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system, C-64 SID file playback support, and a switch to Direct2D video outputs on Windows 7 and Windows Vista systems.

Changes do not stop here though, the official changelog lists more than a hundred changes and improvements over previous versions of the video player. If you are interested in a summary of those changes, check out our VLC 2.0 coverage from back in January.

VLC users can check for updates frequently under Help > Check for Updates or on the official VideoLan website where the new versions will be available for download once they have been released.

Adventurous users can download the release candidate from the following address: VLC Download Server

The Linux version is listed in the root directory. Windows and Mac users need to click on the respective directories for downloads for their operating systems.

Some Windows users have reported that the VLC 2.0 RC1 is running slow on their systems. They managed to resolve the issue by enabling GPU decoding in the options. This can be done by clicking on Preferences > Input & Codecs > Use GPU accelerated decoding.

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VLC Media Player 1.1 Released About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday February 14, 2012 -
Tags:video players, vlc media player

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Latest Flash Player Preview Adds Protected Mode Features For Firefox

Popular web browser plugins like Flash Player or Java are a prime target of malware and hackers. The core reasons are simple: Lack of centralized updating and little to no protection of the underlying system if the plugin has been compromised.

Changes have been introduced, but only in select browsers at this point of time. Google Chrome for instance uses sandboxing technology and automatic updates to keep users secure. The global updater that other web browsers use on the other hand is not nearly as thorough when it comes to downloading and applying updates as soon as they get released.

Adobe today has released a new Flash preview version for the Windows operating system that contains a new feature for the Firefox web browser.

Flash Player Protected Mode aims to limit the impact of Flash based attacks in Firefox on Windows systems. The new Flash Player feature is compatible with Firefox 4.0+ on Windows Vista or higher. Only a 32-bit version of the Flash Player release is available for download.

The security mode is automatically enabled when users view Flash Player files in the Firefox web browser. Flash contents are executed in a restricted environment that prevents attacks from reaching the operating system or other applications. It is basically a sandbox comparable with Google Chrome’s sandboxing technology, Protected Mode in Adobe Reader, and Protected View in Office 2010.

Firefox users running the new version will notice that two processes are started whenever Flash contents are accessed in the web browser with Protected Mode enabled.

Adobe notes that these are the “broker and sandbox” processes which only run if Protected Mode is enabled. These are child processes of the plugin-container.exe process if enabled in the browser. Plugin-Container adds crash protection to the browser.

The Flash Player Protected Mode version for the Firefox browser has known issues. On 64-bit Windows systems for instance, a right-click on Flash contents causes Firefox to hang. Here is the list of known issues.

Flash Access support is not enabled in this build.Secure Sockets are not working in this build. (3101130)
Open and Save dialogs can hang in Windowless Mode (3096944)Camera streams fail to play back when encoded with the H.264/AVC codecs (3096918)On 64-bit Windows, Right-Clicking Flash Content cases Firefox to hang (3096953)Custom context menus and clipboard copy does not work (3096977)Local Security Dialogs are not displayed (3096714)
When printing to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer”, the “Save File As” dialog is always minimized (3096958)
Some Stage3D content may cause Adobe Flash Player to exit silently (#3049089)Closing a SecureSocket connection may block Adobe Flash Player execution and result in timeout (#3045631)Camera fails to play back when camera stream is being encoded with H264/AVC codec (#3049298)IME may not be active in Windows Vista at times between browser sessions (#3055127)In SandBox Stand-Alone Player, some menu items in the Microsoft IME language bar do not respond to mouse clicks (2947549)Some Windows function keys such as F5 may prevent the Japanese IME candidate box to pop up (#3055096

Adventurous Firefox users find the Flash Player Incubator preview release over at Adobe Labs.

A final release version of the new Flash plugin version moves the Firefox browser security wise closer to Google Chrome.

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Firefox Spyware Add-On Adobe Flash Player 0.2 About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday February 7, 2012 -
Tags:Firefox, flash player, sandbox

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Chromus A Last.fm Web Music Player

You have got plenty of options if you want to listen to music. From Internet radio to online services such as Spotify or YouTube to CDs or ripped mp3s. Some services have changed over the years, and Last.fm is without doubt one of those services. It is still highly popular thanks to its vast database, but not so much anymore when it comes to listening to music directly on site.

The free web service Chromus could change that again. The service combines Last.fm’s music database with the music found on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The result? A player that knows and plays nearly every song and album on the planet.

Here is how it works. You visit the Chromus website over at Github. Now type in a band name, artist, song or album after clicking on the search icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Tracks and albums are displayed on a result’s page afterwards. You can now click on an album or track to start playing it right away on the site. If you select an album, all tracks of the album are queued in a playlist. This lets you listen to all songs of an album in full length online. All without a Last.fm or Vkontakte account.

You can select individual tracks with a click on the playlist entry. The player supports all basic controls from pausing and changing the volume to seeking and repeating the playlist.

Last.fm or Vkontakte users can sign in to their accounts to make use of scrobbling and music playback more reliable.

Chromus looks like a spin-off of the popular Google Chrome extension Last.fm free music player which provides more or less the same functionality. It is not clear if the two are linked in any way or if the author of Chromus has used the Chrome extension for inspiration only.

It is interesting to note that many non-English and non-Russian songs can be played as well. If you are looking for a free web music player that does not require you to register, and that does not limit your music listening experience, then you may have found it in Chromus. (via Caschy)

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ALSong a music player with lyrics About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday February 1, 2012 -
Tags:music, music player

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SMPlayer 0.7.0 Media Player Now Available

One of my favorite media players of all time, SMPlayer, has recently been updated to version 0.7.0. SMPlayer is a front-end for MPlayer making it a player that supports nearly every video format out of the box without the need to go codec hunting before you can start watching the video or movie you are dying to watch.

SMPlayer, as always, comes in different release versions. Users can download a portable version, a web installer, or an offline installer. Existing users can simply copy or install the new version over the old one.

One of the big new changes in SMPlayer 0.7.0 is support for MPlayer 2, a fork of the original MPlayer project, which adds features to the video player that the original MPlayer does not support. This includes precise seeking, seeking while the video has been paused or ordered chapters support in mkv videos.

To integrate MPlayer 2 the following needs to be done. You first need to download the MPlayer 2 binary from the website linked above. Open the options menu in SMPlayer afterwards and select Preferences from the menu. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-p to open the preferences directly.

Switch to the General > General tab if it is not displayed. Change the MPlayer executable path to the MPlayer 2 path to use it instead of the original MPlayer.

Another change is support for playing YouTube videos right from within the media player. Just paste in a YouTube video via the Open > Url menu to watch it right within the desktop video player. You can alternatively drag and drop video links right from a browser into the SMPlayer window to play the videos in there.

The developers have added a new favorites menu accessible right from the new heart icon placed in the player’s main toolbar. This opens a menu with direct access to favorite videos on the computer, and options to add or edit videos in the new favorites window.

The changes introduced in this version of SMPlayer all make sense. Especially support for MPLayer 2 can improve the video experience significantly.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday January 31, 2012 -
Tags:media-player, smplayer, windows software

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Adobe Shockwave Player Now Installs Norton Security Scan

Bundling third party applications with your own software is not a new thing on the Internet. It is for instance quite common that you see the Ask Toolbar, Babylon Toolbar, or any other toolbar added to software installations. Users who do not pay attention to the installation are then not only installing the software they want on their system, but also software they do not want. To make matters worse, it usually is not that easy to get rid of the latter.

The popular download portal Download.com for instance has also started to bundle adware with the majority of downloads they provide site users with.

Today when I was downloading the latest Adobe Shockwave Player from Adobe’s website I noticed that both the slim online installer and full installer were now offering to install a third party application as well.

Near the end of the installation you are taken to a screen that will install Norton Security Scan on the system if you do not opt-out of it.

Norton Security Scan is a free program that checks computers for potential threats. It will download the latest definition updates to the system when an online connection is available. The program detects but does not resolve the issues though. It in fact very similar to scareware in this regard, which alerts the user of serious problems on the PC to sell a product.

You can only scan the system after launch. Initiating a scan will first check for updates. You will also be notified if security and web protection is installed on the system. Only tracking cookies were detected on the system, which did not keep the program from displaying a big Fix Now button on the left side of the screen. When you press it you are taken directly to a web page where you can purchase one of Norton’s security programs.

Removal of Norton Security Scan is straightforward though. Just click on Start Menu > Control Panel > Uninstall a Program and select it for uninstallation. You need to restart the PC to complete the installation.

Looking for free alternatives that you can make use of right away? Try AVG Anti-Virus Free or Avira Free Antivirus, but keep in mind that they too may be bundling their programs with toolbars.

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Adobe Flash Player Security Update About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday January 25, 2012 -
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Get Ready For VLC Media Player 2.0

VLC is one of the most popular third party media players. If you check the download stats on portals such as Softpedia or Betanews, you will notice that it is always listed in one of the top spots. That’s not because of the player’s pretty name but the functionality it provides. VLC plays nearly every media format out of the box, without codec hunting and installation. There are other players, like the excellent SMplayer that offer that functionality as well, but none managed to reach the popularity of VLC.

The developers of VLC Media Player have just announced on their Twitter account that they will release the first release candidate of VLC 2.0 at the end of the week. The latest release version right now is VLC 1.1.11 which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, popular Linux distributions and even other operating systems such as Android or OS/2 (anyone still using that?).

Windows 64-bit version of VLC Media Player running the Spin Demo

Once a suitable release candidate has been found, VLC Media Player 2.0 will be released for all operating systems. Existing VLC users likely want to know what they can look forward to in version 2 of the player. Here is a list of important changes taken directly from the latest nightly build of VLC 2.0.

Major Video Core and Outputs rework and rewrite: Subtitles, subpictures and OSD can now be sized and blent inside video outputs x11 (Unix), OpenGL (Unix) and Direct3D (Windows) are such video outputs.Almost every video filter can now be transcodedPort to Android, iOS, OS/2 and Win64Multiple files are now supported inside RAR filesExperimental Blu-Ray Discs support using libblurayYou can now use ffmpeg-mt in conjunction with vlc, to split decoding load on multiple cores. H.264, VP3, VP8, JPEG-2000, Mpeg-4 ASP/DivX and RV3/RV4
are notably concerned.C64 SID file playback support of using sidplay2Support for WMV Images, aka WMVP and WVP2, as used by Photo StoryNew video output based on Direct2D for Windows 7 and Vista (with Platform Update), New video output for iOS platform

Probably the biggest improvements are the 64-bit version for Windows, the port to mobile operating systems and Blu-Ray playback support.

You can get a taste of things to come by downloading the latest nightly build from the VLC build server. Remember that nighly versions are not necessarily stable, as they are development builds. (Thanks Mike)

While we are at it: Which media player are you currently using?

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday January 18, 2012 -
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