A quick refresher… Akimbo produced set-top boxes that allowed one to subscribe to a basic tier of Internet-delivered content on demand, in addition to upselling premium content. Oh yeah, the boxes had upfront hardware fees too. Basically, to get the good stuff you had to pay three times. And obviously that business model didn’t work out for them. Beyond marketing their own (and RCA’s) Akimbo stand-alone hardware, they’ve also provided content for AT&T Homezone and even dabbled in PC-based video delivery. And now their latest initiative is powering other site’s video offerings:
Akimbo™, the Silicon Valley company that was first in Internet video delivery, is now first to develop a complete Internet VOD solution for content providers’ own websites. The Akimbo solution has a comprehensive advertising system and supports multiple business models including ad-supported, transactional, subscription, download-to-own, download-to-burn, pay-per-minute, gift cards, account credits and more. The first content provider to utilize this revolutionary new solution is MavTV, a multi-platform programming venture targeting male viewers.
Given the screenshot, I wonder if they launched a day too early… That QA test video costs 99 cents! Having said that, this service might provide a variety of new players access to the web video arena without the burden of rolling their own solution.