Akimbo coming soon

Akimbo Systems is getting set to launch their television-via-internet service. They're working with a smattering of sites that provide video (including, of course, a porn site or two) that are instantly accessible via your television, thanks to a big silver box.

It's an interesting attempt to circumvent the cable/satellite/over-air broadcast model entirely by using the internet in a new way, and it's great to see a new company innovating in the space. However, unless they sign on some pretty significant heavyweight content providers, they'll have a tough time luring customers with their current offerings (which seem too niche and not that extensive). They're also limited to DRM-laden Windows Media 9 video, so don't expect to be playing your own DVD backups captured as MPEGs anytime soon.

Comments

[pb]

I think someone like Tivo, who has a much better story for getting into your living room, is going to have a better time with this service than Akimbo.

[Bill]

There are other online sites that are streaming unique video like www.muzility.com. They seem to be steadily developing as there are new videos up each week. SOme very interesting and professional video can be found here.

[Kelly]

Looking forward to check television via internet service :)

[britboy]

I think this is a big deal because it is the first set top box
that plays windows media video, a format that is much smaller than mpeg2 and therefor streamable and downloadable.

There are programs that encode tv content to wmv files, such as Beyond tv. Combined it would give people the ability to create thier own content also.

I wrote to akimbo to suggest this but they are only focusing on thier own $10 a month content. Were they to allow users to also access other content I think it may prove successful.