Comments on: Windows Home Media Center competition now owned by Yahoo http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2006/04/windows-home-media-center-competition-now-owned-by-yahoo Digital Lifestyle Aggregation - helping to establish open source infrastructure Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:05:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Sam Sethi http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2006/04/windows-home-media-center-competition-now-owned-by-yahoo#comment-34766 Sam Sethi Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:51:22 +0000 http://blog.broadbandmechanics.com/2006/04/windows-home-media-center-competition-now-owned-by-yahoo#comment-34766 The last company I owned and recently sold was called Abrocour which pre-installed broadband plus wireless IT fixture & fittings including a media center into every "new" home in the UK - and Meedio was certainly one company I looked at and admired. It seems I was not the only one to have looked and admired. Microsoft certainly copied their UI and features and to protect this new market actually made it cheaper for OEM's to pre-install Windows Media Center Edition instead of Windows XP Home. So Meedio had no chance to approach the OEM maket with their product. Maybe now with Yahoo's financial clout and OEM partnerships we will see more of Meedio but as Marc suggest in the guise of Yahoo TV? Fianlly one thing Meedio did really well - which Microsoft has failed to do - is create a third party add-in ecosystem around their core product. If Yahoo can get their developer strategy sorted out they may give Microsoft a run for their money before the next version of Media Center in Vista sees the light of day. The last company I owned and recently sold was called Abrocour which pre-installed broadband plus wireless IT fixture & fittings including a media center into every “new” home in the UK - and Meedio was certainly one company I looked at and admired. It seems I was not the only one to have looked and admired. Microsoft certainly copied their UI and features and to protect this new market actually made it cheaper for OEM’s to pre-install Windows Media Center Edition instead of Windows XP Home.

So Meedio had no chance to approach the OEM maket with their product. Maybe now with Yahoo’s financial clout and OEM partnerships we will see more of Meedio but as Marc suggest in the guise of Yahoo TV?

Fianlly one thing Meedio did really well - which Microsoft has failed to do - is create a third party add-in ecosystem around their core product. If Yahoo can get their developer strategy sorted out they may give Microsoft a run for their money before the next version of Media Center in Vista sees the light of day.

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