Nicholas Reville

Democracy Player - Nicholas Reville 9:17 2/13/07 - We caught up with Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation. They are about to release version 0.9.5 of Democracy Player which will be their last big revision before their release of Democracy 1.0.

Benjamin Higginbotham
with TechnologyEvangelist.com.

With me, I've got Nicholas once again,
from a Participatory Culture Foundation.

Those are the guys who make
"Democracy Player".

-Nicholas, welcome!
-Hi, how are ya?

Doing great, how about yourself?

Amazing, thanks.

So, you guys are on the cusp of
releasing Democracy Player 0.9.5,

it just kinda rolls right off the tongue.

Tell us a bit about this new release.

Yeah, this is a big update for us,

it's the biggest update you'll see before
our 1.0 comes out.

We have a lot of important stuff in here,
a lot of it's behind the scenes,

but some of the stuff you'll notice
is a redesigned interface,

it's smoother and simpler and slicker.

We have some nice things like
the MAC users,

it will generate thumbnails automatically.

If you want to download a video and
don't have that yet for Windows or Linux,

that's something that
we're definitely working on.

There's proxy support,
better BitTorrent support.

It does a better job resuming downloads
if something gets interrupted.

And all in all, I just think it's a
smoother and cleaner experience,

and it's a big step towards
the update coming out.

You know, one thing I noticed is that as
each build keeps getting released,

the system seems to use less and less
RAM, and get faster and faster and faster

in its ability to playback files
and download files.

'Cause I remember working with the beta,
I think it was 0.8 or something like that,

and it was a pretty big RAM hog.

How are you coming on with the
optimisation of Democracy at this point?

That's definitely a big focus for us as
you know with the past few versions

we've done a lot to reduce the number use,
improve the speed and that's

going to be something
that we continue to work on.

It's not clear right now whether we will
be doing some big changes before

or after 1.0, but, you know, over the next
6 months we're going to continue to see

much better performance, but using less
resources, feeling faster more responsive.

So, we have to see that as important.

You mentioned that this is one, at least
I believe you mentioned, that this is

one of the final releases before 1.0,
or at least close to your road to 1.0.

What do we have left to get to 1.0?
What can we expect in 1.0?

The big thing that you'll see in 1.0 is
stability and we'll be doing a lot of

bug fixing, trying to nail down some of
the last final bugs that we haven't been

able to fix so far. The biggest challenge
on our end for that is just being able to

reproduce the bugs; finding a system
where we can see it happen because there

are so many different kinds of setups out
there that a bug may only happen in

those specific circumstances, and that
makes it hard for us to track it down

and fix it. Once we see it happening, you
know, we can always fix it, and so

stability, fixing bugs is definitely the
biggest priority.

There's also just a few finishing
touches - we wanna make easier for

people to use remote controls with
Democracy Player if they have something

like that. I have a few more ways that
people can customise and interact with it,

so it's mostly gonna be cleanup around
the edges, but I think it'll feel

a more complete experience.

One of the biggest things that's about to
happen is we're going to be renaming

Democracy Player and we've found a lot
of people get confused by the name and

when they first hear about it they think
that it only has content related to

politics on it, which is definitely not
the case and not what we intended with

the name, so we feel like it's important
for us to find a new name. We have one

that we think is gonna work, we're just
going through some legal stuff and we're

obviously getting a new icon and
website design so as part of that

1.0 process we're gonna be launching a
new name, new style for the player and

that's gonna be big too.

But the final thing, and what I think is
the weakest part of the Democracy Player

experience is the channel guide; we're
rewriting that from scratch.

The version you see now is based on some
existing software that is out there and

doesn't exactly meet our needs.

So what we're doing is starting over from
scratch, making something very fast,

very responsive and once we have a
good foundation built

we're going to be doing a lot of work to
add a rating system, find more ways to

trickle off the best content.

As we've seen the channel guides reach
nearly a thousand different channels,

it becomes more and more important for us
to find ways of filtering the best stuff.

So we wanna make it easier for people to
share channels, rate channels,

and see what people really like and not
just subscribe to stuff that looks

attractive on the surface or on the guide.

It feels like the next natural extension
for Democracy Player's gonna get is

PNP support such as PlayStation portable,
the video iPod or other small portable

video players and I know that's not
currently a feature of Democracy Player,

at least the ability to take the videos
that I've downloaded and push it to these

other devices, mainly because it's
extremely complex.

The video iPod is going to take a totally
different video format than the PSP which

is going to take a totally different
format than a Place4sure mobile device.

Is that on your roadmap to add, and is
that gonna be a 1.0 feature or later?

And how are you gonna deal with that?

Yeah, syncing portable devices like that
is definitely something we wanna do.

It's not gonna happen for 1.0.

We feel like our mission for 1.0 is to
make a solid and excellent desktop app

that you can use every day
and really rely upon.

That's what we wanna do for 1.0;
get a good foundation in place.

From there we'd like to see
Democracy Player be able to get us

content out on more different devices,
get it onto your TV more easily,

on any portable devices that you're using.

So we're going to start tackling that.

It may come in stages and it may
mean that we start with the ability to

sync to the most powerful devices to sync
file formats that they already play.

Then, later on, we add the ability to
transfer from one format into another,

so more of your videos are able to
play under iPod, for example.

That's definitely coming for us.

Nicholas, last time we talked, we actually
went to you and that time, iTunes was

one version lower and it didn't have
good video support.

Since then, iTunes has added a whole new
video catalog, you have episodes of

shows and movies and whatnot, and they've
changed the way they deal with video.

How does that compete with Democracy?
Does it compete with Democracy?

And why are you better and different
than iTunes on that front?

Yeah, iTunes has made some improvements
to the video software but the focus they

have is really on accumulating
a collection of videos, for example,

movies that you buy off of the store,
music videos that you buy from the store,

and accumulating a
certain kind of collection.

Our focus is more on
the flow of the internet.

The flow of videos that is becoming
more and more a part of peoples'

online experience.

I think we're really offering
an experience that's very different and

goes way beyond the approach
that iTunes pitched.

The channel model that we have really
lets you handle lots of videos coming in.

Seeing what's on a variety of channels,
organising that in different ways and

I think we still have them beat
in terms of video experience.

From a publisher standpoint, I think the
big differentiator between Democracy

and iTunes is torrent support.

I can directly download a torrent
video file and as I'm publishing my

high-definition 1080p videos, which we do,
the bandwidth is taken off of me and so

now I no longer pay for the full
distribution of the file,

or maybe a little bit now.

And I think that's really one of the big,
powerful features of Democracy.

You guys get kudos for having that
from the beginning.

That's really what makes you guys
different and stand out from the

rest of the crowd.

Yeah, I think that the BitTorrent support
that we have is definitely something that

iTunes can't compete with and we also have
a lot more flexibility with video formats.

Both on Mac and Windows now, both able to
play Flash video files which are the most

popular online video files now.

And a lot bigger variety of formats than
you can play on iTunes or

Windows media player or anything else
that tries to be a video organiser

or video downloader.

Well, Nicholas, it's a great product and
we always enjoy chatting with you and

I hope you'll come back soon when you
release version 1.0;

whatever it'll be called at that point.

-Thank you so much.
-You have a great day.

I'll definitely come back.
You too, take care.