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Akimbo to Carry Yahoo Video Content

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 January 2007, 15:00 CST

By JESSICA MINTZ

NEW YORK - Akimbo Systems Inc., a video-on-demand service that uses the Internet to deliver shows to television sets, said Wednesday it inked a deal to bring video from Yahoo Inc. to its subscribers.

Akimbo, a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif., said viewers will be able to browse a regularly updated selection of Yahoo's popular videos, then watch the clips on their TV screens, without extra charge.

Video coming from Yahoo includes featured user-submitted clips selected by Yahoo editors and the most-watched clips of the week and of all time.

The most-watched clips could include professionally produced television and movie video, and Akimbo said Yahoo will clear them for copyright issues before they appear on the service. For amateur video, Yahoo's terms of service already give the online company broad distribution rights.

Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. Akimbo's service, which lets customers access more than 14,000 movies, TV shows and other video on demand, costs $9.99 per month. The latest model of its set-top box sells for $199.99 on Amazon.com.

The partnership, announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, further underscores the convergence of TVs and personal computers. CBS Corp. said Tuesday it will broadcast user-generated video from Google Inc.'s YouTube before the Super Bowl.

CBS also is working with Sling Media Inc. to let users post clips from its TV shows on the Web and share them with friends. Sling Media said it hopes to make similar deals with other networks and officially launch the service in the second quarter of this year.

Also on Tuesday, Apple's Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs unveiled Apple TV, a 40-gigabyte hard drive that connects televisions to computers and the Internet.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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