I ran across an application recently that will change the world.  I see massive media networks like NBC, CBC, BBC and others all stand by and watch as their business models are blown to bits. Everything we know about television, radio and media in general will be re-imagined.  As Jeff Jarvis recently posted quoting Rupert Murdoch, "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it." I’m throwing my hat in the ring and screaming to the world "it’s time, the revolution is here!"  So what is this hot app?  What will change the world??  What could make such a huge dent in the traditional media universe???  It’s simple — Democracy.

The Participatory Culture Foundation is a new non-profit organization that is developing an Internet video ecosystem. The centerpiece of their platform is Democracy Player. For now I’m going to concentrate on the player and mention the Channel Guide, but you’ll really want to check out their other projects as well:  Video Bomb and Broadcast Machine.

So what is Democracy Player?  It is a desktop application for watching TV via the Internet. It acts as a video player that supports Mac, Linux and Windows, has an integrated Torrent engine and an integrated playback engine to view just about any media format. In short, it’s an IPTV solution so simple my Grandmother could use it. Democracy is an online television experience that you can share with family and friends.  Democracy is to television what blogs are to newspapers.

Democracy Player

So what’s the big deal? Democracy takes a bunch of standard technologies and blends them together in a way where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It just makes sense.  First, the Torrent client for downloading media.  This is key, especially if you’re pulling down a 1GB video.  Rather than downloading 1GB from one source, you’re pulling much smaller bits and bytes from hundreds or even thousands of other users watching the same video (you may wish to read our Torrent article for more information).  By being a Torrent client, Democracy enables anyone who wants to host HD videos to do so without getting hit with a huge bandwidth bill.  Democracy is a democracy — the media does not need to be hosted as Torrents, it can also be downloaded directly.  The process of getting media is exactly the same no matter how it’s hosted, Democracy makes this process transparent to the end-user.  In addition to being able to download just about any SD or HD media, this player also can play back that same media either in a window or better yet full-screen.  Without needing to download any additional CODECs, Democracy can play h.264 out of the box, which means you can view any of the Torrent-hosted videos on TechnologyEvangelist.com in full HD quality without having to do much of anything.  You don’t need to be a techie to be able to download our Torrents and play them back full-screen on your computer or HDTV.  The only thing you need is Democracy Player.  It does not get simpler than that. WOOT!

Democracy also includes Channel Guide, which is a lot like ‘TV Guide’ for online channels.  Simply browse for a topic that interests you or search for a specific channel (may I suggest the Technology Evangelist 720p shows) and hit ‘subscribe.’  Once you have subscribed to a channel, that media will auto-download to your hard drive while Democracy is running.  Since these files can be huge, Democracy is intelligent enough to expire old videos and remove them from your hard drive automatically.  After a period of time (the default is 6 days, however you can set it to never), the media will be purged from your hard drive.  If you like a certain clip and want to keep it, that’s no problem. Click ‘save’ and that clip will no longer expire.  This ensures that your computer won’t fill up with gigs and gigs of video clutter; Democracy plays nice with your hard drive.  If there’s a channel you want to watch from a website but it’s not available in the Channel Guide, simply add the RSS feed by manually subscribing and you’ll automatically get that content delivered directly to you.

There are many, many, many more features of Democracy including ‘bombing’ videos, sharing your favorite videos with friends and even a way to host your own videos (consider this a tease for future posts).

WARNING: I must fulfill my obligation to my fellow techies — this player is in beta and is definitely not ready for prime time. I have had it lock up and stop responding at least once a day.  While this is irritating, it has caused no harm to my system. I just force-quit Democracy and relaunch…  no big deal (for me at least).  Each build seems to fix more and more problems, and I have no doubt that by version 1.0 this player will be truly awesome.  Until then, if you’re not comfortable with budding software, this may not be for you.  That said, this player is truly revolutionary if you’re willing to take the plunge. I’m loving every minute of this app.  This is the future of media.  No longer do I have to sit in front of my TV and watch shows when the networks tell me to.  Tivo helped fix that, but Tivo was just a stop gap until something like Democracy came along.  Democracy is the real deal. Open content — What we want when we want it.