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Will Yahoo! Go Be the Next Media Bridge?
wh0pper writes "Digital Trend has an interesting take on Yahoo! Go. With Yahoo's acquisition of Meedio, Yahoo! Go will be in the position to be everyones media bridge. With Yahoo!'s intended arrival in the TV environment, it aspires to become the user's guide to all media." From the article: "This would appear to be the worst of nightmares for traditional PayTV operators. Suddenly, they become part of a Yahoo!-defined walled garden of sorts, hidden behind the Yahoo!-branded user interface and reduced to a simple pipe that delivers broadcast television. Without their own proprietary IPG being used, how can they sell pay-per-view and VOD movies?"
Clearly Bittorrent is their worst nightmare already... Yahoo is one step behind on this one.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Yahoo Go seems like a good idea--on paper. The software sucks, though. Anyone who's downloaded it should know what I'm talking about. It can't use my tuner card. The purple hurts my eyes. The menus are just a bunch of text without graphics. The music playback portion seemed to work ok. And, the whole interface was much more responsive than MCE/BeyondTV/anything I've tried for Windows.
IF you happen to have a Nokia 6 series phone, IF your TV is close enough to your PC that they can be connected, IF you happen to have a video card that uses a connector that matches your TV, IF you don't mind your Windows XP (only) desktop being cluttered with Yahoo's tool...
This isn't a bridge, it's a landfill! If I had all these wonderful pieces of technology, I'd already be able to use them together without needing Yahoo! Go.
With Apple, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all pushing heavlily on the media market and trying to deliver new distribution methods I wonder how long it will be before one of them cuts out the RIAA entirley and starts signing up artists directly.
It makes sense if you ask me, plus it would give them leverage over the industry.
However, this is the first time a system operator (be it a virtual one) has attempted to embrace their users in every facet of their lives.
if (TV == every_facet_of_our_lives) we_are_fucked();
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Or does anyone expect cable TV and the **AA sit and wait?
I bet my rear that as soon as it cuts into their sales and ad income, we'll see heavy lobbying towards some regulation.
*sigh* What happened to good ol' capitalism? Regulations and legal red tape springing up everywhere to protect outdated and obsolete markets. I sometimes wonder if communism finally won.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it did all those things, it would be everything. It doesn't, though.
"it seems that this is a piece of software that will turn you computer into a dvr"
I don't see this on their website, rather, I see instructions on how to connect your computer to your TV so that you can view media on your TV. Anyone with the right video card, TV, and a cable long enough to reach both can do this anyway without installing Yahoo! Go.
"and act as a google desktop search sidebar"
The most important feature in Google Desktop is its Spotlight-like indexing. Again, I don't see this listed as a feature of Yahoo! Go. All Yahoo! Desktop really does is bring various Yahoo! online services (contacts, messenger, mail, music) together on one screen. Save the space and your desktop and just use those services online.
"allow your mobile phone to access media files at yahoo"
Firstly, this will only work if you have a Nokia 6 series phone (Yahoo supports no other make/model). You can use "Go Mobile" to access your Yahoo! Contacts, Yahoo! Photos, Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail. Anyone who's used WAP on their cellphone will recognize all these as services Yahoo! already offers all cellphone users as online tools.
OMG OMG PONIES!!! i'M AN VULTURE FUNDING GUY and OMG this is teh GREAT and OMG I want to throw cash! PLS tell me where to throw the CA$H!
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." (Diderot)
I don't mean for direct-tv or a big dish, or broadcast. When can I realistically get my network tv shows, discovery channel, sci-fi channel, and HBO shows via some reasonably friendly interface and get the quality of broadcast sound and video to replace what I'm paying Time Warner for now via this set top shitbox?
iTunes sells a few shows. Yahoo may be doing something. NBC, ABC, and CBS are making some shows available. The quality, picture limitations, speed, and pain in the ass are all still prohibitive for this being workable. iTunes at two bucks a show is at least twice the price it should be, and the other avenues still basically stink.
When I can just buy my network pipe for connectivity and shop for my own content providers for video, music, phone, and whatever else....then I'll be happy.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
First came myHTPC, a clunky but serviceable bit of software which allowed me to run music playlists and (more importantly) watch anime fansubs on my (moderately) large television and (again, more importantly) listen to them on my nice audio system in the living room, all controlled by something like ATI's Remote Wonder.
Then came Meedio, which we had to pay for (and I did, gladly) but reduced the clunk-factor by (let's pick an arbitrary fraction) 2/3 and did a much better job of playing nice with the remote control hardware available to me at the time, namely the aforementioned Remote Wonder as well as Creative's LiveDrive IR remote.
Over the weekend, on a whim, I selected "Check for updates" and, hello? "A new update is available. Visit www.meedio.com to download." Righto! And yet... no. Yes, there's a 1.41 release. No, you can't have it (from regular channels, anyway; thank the gods for Google, natch). Now it's Yahoo! Go, a slick, useless lump based on a fair portion of Meedio's code but without any of the configuration capability (short of hand-editing the XML, which... um, no?) and, by the way, no apparent support for reading tags in music files. But hey, it's free!
I won't say "I want my thirty-five bucks back," 'cause I don't, and I'm generally pleased with my Meedio experience. I am, however, deeply chagrined that things have taken a turn for the blah.
Oh, by the way: If your current Meedio version reads Ogg Vorbis tags correctly, DON'T hunt down the 1.41 upgrade. Updating broke Vorbis tag reading on my system...
I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker.
Will! Yahoo! Go! Be! the! Next! Media! Bridge?!