Were you one of the many people who decided to upgrade their broadband from a 2MB to a 8MB service, then wondered why you bothered? Torrent-based files don't download any quicker, most remote servers can't deliver the content to your PC as quickly as your broadband can accept the data and if you try and download on a Sunday afternoon or around 6pm, your connection might crawl to a halt anyhow, particular if you're with and ISP that has a high contention ratio.

Miro 0.9.8 is a player that enables you to watch TV on your desktop. The best thing about Miro is that it will play just about any video format, encoded with any recent codec. It contains support for YouTube and use Bittorrent technology to stream the videos from various locations.

The quality of most online TV players available on the web can leave a lot to be desired, yet this little program actually seems to deliver some kind of service. Granted, some of the channels are unavailable and grainy at times, but not being able to access Estonia's premier rock channel might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Indeed, from
Albania to Vietnam, there's a staggering amount of content to wade through. And, although the UK is limited to snippets of BBC news and shopping channels, there's enough to keep the average person occupied for the 14 day trail at least. The only drawback is it's insistence that you use Realplayer for media playback, but if you can put up with this it's little more than a tenner for the full purchase.

Find it here.

Fancy getting that little bit extra for your license money? The BBC continues to impress with its online endeavours, recently announcing the availability of its news archive as free downloads. Although still in its trail stages, you can freely download over 80 video clips spanning fifty years of monumental history. Whether its England’s defeat of Germany in the 1966 world cup, riots in Tiananmen Square, or the fall of the Berlin Wall; the BBC actively persuade you to use them as you please, telling us “Don't just consume, create!”.

Get them here to do just that.