Ever wanted to watch TV… on your computer? Well, not exactly TV, but possibly a superior (in some ways, at the very least) alternative to it. Meet Miro, soon to be your new best friend.

Miro is what is known as a “podcatcher,” meaning that it works as a sort of RSS feed for videos. Said videos can be downloaded from what Miro calls “channels,” which are created by people, artists, companies, TV channels, etc. These channels contain the videos that they, whoever they is, upload for your viewing pleasure. Miro allows you to subscribe to these channels, allowing you to browse through tons of videos with ease. Once a channel is added, a user can choose to have all of the videos from the channel auto-download, only new videos (new videos being ones that are added after subscribing) auto-download, or turn auto-downloading off, allowing you to pick and choose which to get. With almost 5,000 channels to choose from, the possibilities are nearly endless already, and as this is an up-and-coming app, I can only imagine that number will only increase.

Hell, just browsing through the channels in itself is fun. There is an enormous variety of channels likely to satiate any user, ranging from National Geographic to TED Talks, HBO stand-up comedy to Comedy Central stand-up comedy, weekly Digg videos to The Onion; there’s even a High Times channel, if you’re into that. Today’s featured channels are “Citizen Engineer,” (an online video series about open source hardware, electronics, art and hacking), a series about astronauts’ last return to the Hubble telescope, and Ronald Jenkees’ LINK own channel, to name a few. There are also educational channels, like Photography 101 and Web Design, for instance. So variety is a non-issue.

After downloading and watching a video, it will “expire” after a certain amount of days (which you can set manually), unless you choose to keep ‘em, in which case the “Keep” button will do you right. Miro plays a huge variety of video filetypes, so don’t be scared to use it as a media player, as well. It’s simple to upload your media collection, as it prompts you when you install it, and you can also choose folders to watch. Miro has a robust search engine built into it, allowing you to search Miro channels, Youtube, Veoh, Google Video, and a few others that are a bit more obscure, but I’m sure will make a good amount of people happy.

The interface is about as simple as it gets, listing your subscribed channels on the left side, as well as the Miro guide, video search, library, new videos, and downloading videos. Speaking of downloading videos, it works a lot like BitTorrent; you can set the amount of downloading videos at once, pause them, etc. You can also use Miro as a torrent client, as well. So all in all, Miro pretty much does everything. Might even cook ya some breakfast, if you’re nice to it. And since it spans Windows, Mac, and Linux, nobody gets left out of the party! Do yourself a favor and download this free application at once. You’ll find yourself considerably less bored.