Online media company Yahoo has been undergoing tough times. Their founder was out as the CEO, his replacement was unable to turn fortunes around, a botched search-deal with Microsoft, a board that isn’t sure what to do and coming a full circle, the founder wanting the company back. Amidst all the drama in the United States, Yahoo India is has been taking steps to curate video content and offer it free streaming on the website. A few weeks back, Yahoo launched MoviePlex—a catalogue of Hindi cinema. Region locked and very limited in content, the company has now tied up with major television networks like Zee, NDTV and ANI adding TV show clips to their repertoire. A video section on Yahoo’s site will curate sports highlights from Zee-Ten Sports, stand-up comedy acts and some videos that can only be termed as random.
In a separate announcement, Yahoo India said they will be offering regional (Tamil) content to their users in India and internationally. The execution seems haphazard. If Yahoo is really looking to make its mark as an online multimedia company they need to tie-up with big brands and pioneer a web streaming business model in India.
Living room entertainment is huge and everyone wants a share of the market. Be it through television sets, gaming consoles or connected video players.
D-Link India introduced their popular Boxee Box in India to get first mover advantage in the nascent market. The D-Link Boxee Box is based on open-source multimedia software—Boxee. The software can be installed on a Mac, Windows or Linux machine and it will categorize multimedia (images, music, videos) on your system. In addition, Boxee also pulls in content from computers on your network allowing you to have a comprehensive library of your multimedia spread throughout your computers.
In the US, Boxee comes with several applications for 3rd party services like Netflix, Youtube, Pandora, Grooveshark etc. In India however, D-Link’s press release for Boxee Box launch doesn’t mention any of the major content providers. As noticed by Medianama, country-locked service—Pandora—is listed, which is intriguing.
D-Link and Yahoo announced a partnership in early 2011 during CES and looking at how both companies are trying to get a footing in India’s online multimedia market, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to join forces.
