Yahoo treads on Media Center turf

Yahoo followed up on its recent acquisition of video technology from Meedio by launching a new service that links people's computers to their television sets.

Yahoo Go TV allows users to send photos, videos and music from Yahoo sites to their televisions. It also offers TiVo-like features for recording TV shows and movies, creating TV listings and searching for shows.

Bloggers pointed out that the real competition here is Microsoft's Media Center software. On the one hand, the Microsoft product has the advantage of coming preinstalled in most new computers. But Yahoo has the compelling price point--it's free.

Blog community response:

"It's going to be hard for Yahoo Go to compete with Microsoft's Media Center for the simple reason that it won't be built into millions of PCs like Media Center is. But at least they are now in the game."
--TechCrunch

"Still, when Media Center is so cheap, and ships as the default operating system these days with most new PCs (and this download is only available for PC users, sorry Appleheads) from places like Dell, you have to wonder about the demand for Meedio. I mean wouldn't most of the PCs with TV tuners in them these days already have Media Center installed?"
--Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

"Go TV is a PC-based PVR application that integrates with media already stored on your PC or with any built-in tuner hardware, much in the same way as Windows Media Center Edition, which could mean some tough opposition for Microsoft, given the freeness of the app."
--PVRWire