It's Rishi

It sure didn’t take long for Yahoo! to rebrand the media center and DVR software they recently purchased from Meedio. The result is Yahoo! Go Beta. It pretty much has the standard features you expect: photo managing/viewing (via Flickr and Y! Photos…kinda cool), watch video content from Y! video search and also some Hollywood teasers, and stream music from their Launchcast radio service. All of this, of course, is designed for users who have their PC’s hooked up to a TV. This immediately makes Go a niche, albeit growing in appeal, market product. However, what is important to point out is that Go does bring media center functionality to the vast majority of Windows users who are running XP Pro or Home, not the special MCE. That is huge. There has been some media center software packages in the open source community, such as MythTV, but for reasons such as lack of awareness and setup difficulties, they have generally gotten interest only from the geek community.

Initial comments of Go have generally been satisfactory at best with most people indicating that MCE is without a doubt the superior product. That isn’t a huge surprise since MCE has been around for a while now. Clearly, Go is unlikely to be successful if it’s simply a cheaper, but-not-as-good alternative to MCE. You can expect that much of this functionality will be in all versions of Vista and will server as a death sentence to Go if Y! can’t innovate to justify the product’s existence. So how can they innovate?

1) Add wireless streaming functionality – Streaming multimedia content to cellular phones and other wireless handheld devices is gaining traction fast as devices are getting more powerful and broadband cellular networks are becoming ubiquitous and cheap to access. Orb has been offering a free download which enables exactly this functionality from any Windows PC. You can stream your music and video (including recorded DVD content) to wireless devices. The best part is that it’s free and relatively easy to setup. Y! should license this technology and bring it to Go ASAP. The reports are that Vista will have this functionality as well, but Y! can beat them to the punch. Also, you can bet that Microsoft’s implementation will be anal about DRM issues as well as being incompatible with DivX/Xvid out-of-the-box.

2) Create special versions of Y!’s other properties to Go. I want to see Y! Games, Fantasy Sports, News, Mail, and Finance. Sure, since you’ve got your PC hooked up to the TV, you could just fire up your web browser, but because the TV environment is so different from the PC (in terms of screen resolution, viewing distance, input devices), it’d be a lot better to create new UI’s designed specifically for access via a TV. Imagine having customized Financial news broadcasted to you on your TV. Forget the Bloomberg channel, let’s focus on my portfolio and the markets that I’m interested in. Why not overlay my league’s realtime fantasy sports stats on top of the game that I’m watching right now. If you’re like me, when you’re watching TV, you probably have your laptop in front of you. If done right, a marriage of interactive content with broadcast content would shock and awe the TV viewing masses.

3) Integrate simple BitTorrent search and client software. Okay, Okay, this one is pretty controversial since that may suggest Y! endorsing piracy. For me though, BitTorrent is the only DVR I need. I’ve talked about it before but with the combination of BitTorrent and RSS, I have access to all the shows I want, when i want them regardless of whether I get the channel or remembered to record it. Again, I could just use the software I have on my PC already but a simplified, TV-based interface (integrated with TV Guide listings!!! *gasp*) would make it a lot more accessible to mainstream folks.

4) Add video phone functionality. I’d much rather use my TV to engage in video telephony instead of my PC. Y! could do a promotion on webcams. To begin with, they could just support between two Go users. Down the road, maybe somehow tie this in with Y!’s VOIP service and maybe there’s some interesting interopability that may be possible.

I think it’s exciting that another big player is stepping up to this space. Competition should spur some much-needed innovation. All the necesary pieces (broadband in the home, broadband on our phones, HDTV, digital video content everywhere) that we’ve been dreaming about for a decade now is here and it’s about time we try to bring convergence to the masses.

UPDATE: For some screenshots of the user experience with Go, click here and here

In response to supporting Slingbox, Verizon says “What runs on our network are our services.”

OK, fine then I’ll just stream my own media with Orb. Oh wait, I can’t do that either with Verizon. According to Verizon’s Acceptable Use Policy (scroll to bottom) their service “cannot be used (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing”

Uh, so what can I do? Oh, that’s right, what I can do is pay big bucks for Verizon’s mediocre, expensive vCAST premium services.

When will Verizon (and other carriers) realize that while they do own their respective networks, they cannot force their customers to use only their own content services. Sure they can try. Verizon has crippled it’s phone’s browsers by limiting 3GPP support, blocking ports, and even crippling the phones itself e.g. crippling Bluetooth so as to further limit customers to their own services.

Carriers spend gobs of money building and operating their cellular infrastructure and I have no problem paying them handsomely every month for the privilege of using it. However, force me to be limited to that carrier’s content and services? Hell no. Verizon, and other carriers with similar strategies, will realize the same fate as access-providers throughout history that had the same isolationist approach, e.g. Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, etc.

Before the widespread availability of the Internet, you were stuck with whatever your access-provider offered. This is essentially the state that we’re in right now with mobile. We’re really just at that tipping point. As mobile phones are just now really becoming true multimedia devices and with the recent arrival of real cellular broadband in all the major metropolitan areas, the mobile web is ready to explode. And you can bet that the breadth and depth of both free and paid services from third-party providers will blow away anything that any carrier will be able to offer.

Note: I would like to say that from the research that I’ve done on this subject over the past several weeks, Sprint is MUCH more liberal than Verizon. They only officially disallow illegal uses of their network (basically like all ISP’s do) and they don’t block ports or cripple devices in any significant way. They still do not allow (unlimited) laptop tethering however. Needless to say, I can’t wait to switch from Verizon to Sprint.