Load DRM-free media on the Kindle Fire with Miro

Nicholas from the Participatory Culture Foundation:

Although Amazon tries to push their users towards DRM’ed media, the
new Kindle Fire can in fact play your DRM free videos, if you can
get them on there. Amazon doesn’t make it easy to convert and sync
videos and music to your device without going through their
servers, but a new version of Miro, released today, does just that.

First, Download Miro.

Second, plug in your Kindle Fire with a USB cable and it will
appear in the Connect tab in Miro.

Third, drag any videos or music to the Kindle and they will convert
and sync. That's it!

Note that videos that aren’t purchased from Amazon will appear in
the ‘Gallery’ app on your Kindle, not in the ‘Video’ tab.

Miro is free and open-source software, so if you'd like to help it
reach more devices and add more syncing features, you can <a
href="http://develop.participatoryculture.org/index.php/Main_Page">Join
the project here.

(Disclosure: I am proud to volunteer on the board of the Participatory Culture Foundation)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Jeremiah McCoy

hmm. I wonder if you can do the same with the Nook Tablet?
s2redux

For those who like clickable links: Download Miro and Join the project here.
- digi_owl
  
  Yep, the link in the article quote is borked somehow.
scatterfingers

The Kindle Fire is genius. The only thing about it Amazon doesn’t control is the actual content production, though I can imagine they must have their eye on that too.

Imagine a completely vertically integrated entertainment pipe. Amazon makes the content, Amazon sells the content, Amazon makes the device the content is viewed on, and Amazon makes a killing.

They’re moving into Apple’s territory, the same way Apple moved into theirs.
waetherman

It’s a little unfair to say that Amazon “doesn’t make it easy to convert and sync video” – like most other devices it’s as easy as drag-and-drop. There is no need to “go through their servers”. It may not support a lot of formats but it certainly is capable of loading apps that play obscure formats.

Miro sounds like a fine app, but the creators shouldn’t be spreading false rumors about the Fire just to make their app seem necessary.
- txvoodoo
  
  Exactly. I’ve been doing just that – dragging & dropping. So far, it’s played MP4 and AVI formats perfectly.
Stephen Dennis

Why even bother.
http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton

Miro is an awesome concept, an RSS compatible Bittorent client and media manager and player, and the Mac version is finally robust and pretty bug free. I wish I could say the same about the Linux version. Every time they fix one bug they seem to create at least one new one.

One nice feature that is not well known about Miro is that it is the easiest way to share media on your local network. You can easily set it so that all the computers can see and play each others media. It is the only simple way to share media between my Mac and linux box since Lion broke Samba.