First Look:

PCF launches free Democracy Internet video player

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(02/27/06, 1:54 AM GMT)

Worchester, Ma. – The non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation has just launched a free player for what it calls Democracy, the world's first comprehensive open source Internet TV IPTV system.

Various components of the system have been released over the past few months, culminating with the release of the free Democracy Player for Windows, Mac, and Linux completes the platform.

"The days of waiting for internet video to buffer and watching it in a tiny box are over," says Participatory Culture Foundation co-founder Nicholas Reville. "With Democracy, internet video is ready to play when you want to watch it, like TiVo, and it fills the entire screen."

Democracy, he said, takes advantage of open internet technologies to redefine the online video experience, surpassing the user experience of proprietary systems from even the largest tech and media corporations.

“As Mozilla's Firefox does for web browsers, Democracy sets the standard for a beautiful and intuitive open-source replacement to proprietary video players,” said Reville. 

He said Democracy builds on cutting edge RSS, Firefox, and BitTorrent technology to empower anyone to watch, share, broadcast and download video over the internet in a way that enables higher digital resolution, full screen

video playback, continuous non-buffered play, and an open standards environment free of adware or spyware -- a much more TV-like experience than traditional web video, and with far more diversity and freedom than traditional TV.

"While every major media corporation in the world is trying to find a way to lock users into closed and proprietary technologies,” said Participatory Culture Foundation co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng. “we want to ensure that video on the internet is as open and accessible as websites and blogs."

The Democracy Internet TV system is being supported by private donors, including two of the world's leading technology visionaries, Silicon Valley venture

capitalist Andy Rappaport, and Mitch Kapor, Lotus founder and chairman of Mozilla Foundation (makers of Firefox).

"Because it is based on open standards and open source," said Rappaport, "this is the first time that a large-scale internet video creation and distribution platform will be available to everyone."

In addition to the just released Democracy player for Windows, other components of the system include its Broadcast Machine, software to publish high quality video for thousands of recipients from an ordinary website with almost no

hosting costs. The system also includes a program guide of hundreds of channels of available video, and Video Bomb, a community-rated shareable guide, or automatic feed, of the internet's freshest free video. Democracy will not interfere with a computer's use of any existing video software.

Go to www.videobomb.com  or www.GetDemocracy.com for more information.  

For more information about topics, issues and technologies mentioned in this story go to the flashing icon in the upper left corner on this page or go to the iAppliance Web Views page and call up the associatively-linked Java/XML-based Web map of the iApplianceWeb site.

Enter the appropriate key word, product or company name to list instantly every news and product story, product review and product database entry relating to the topic since the beginning of the 2002.