Tuesday August 1, 2006 Scottsdale, Arizona
Genwi.com releases Media Center Application for television access to top videos and podcasts. The application is a downloadable media center client that further bridges online media and television. Podcasts and syndicated internet videos represent the fastest growing new forms of media on the internet. Bringing these content categories to Microsoft's Media Center is an exciting goal for Genwi.
Genwi.com is an aggregation service for syndicated media. It is the company's goal to facilitate these fast growing media forms by expanding the audience. Part of doing this is placing this content on screens beyond the PC. Killian McKiernan, Genwi's CEO, says, "the idea of making this content centrally searchable and delivered across devices in a consistent format will help expand the audience for syndicated Web media eventually contributing to a viable advertising model around the content." Further Mr. McKiernan points to the "promotional value for music and offline programming" and pure sponsorship of syndicated media as very new spaces that several companies are already exploring. Genwi hopes to do its part in achieving a critical mass for this content.
Microsoft's Media Center represents an important component in the convergence of Web media and television.
Genwi.com is proud to be the first company to offer a basic application for accessing podcasts and syndicated video. The first release is a beta version offering access to the most popular programming on
Genwi.com. Future releases will continue to expand the programming available.
While Media Center is a fast growing and important component of convergence, Genwi aims to be platform agnostic as it expands the reach of its services. "The major problem we run into," says Dr. PJ Gurumohan, Genwi COO, "is the walled garden mentality present in the digital ecosystem, not all formats can play on all devices. This seriously confuses consumers but also creates an incredible inefficiency for producers." The most obvious difficulty with the Media Center is that all of the producers who have released content in an Apple Quicktime format are unable to get their content to play on the Media Center.
Despite these complications, Genwi's management believes in pushing ahead with creating universal access to its directory of syndicated content. "At present we are all held hostage by some outdated business thinking around walled gardens but we all know that improvements in technology and the desire to provide consumers the best experience will drive convergence toward a more seamless ecosystem," says Mr. McKiernan.
Genwi.com is an evolving searchable directory of syndicated Web audio and video. The Genwi application for the Media Center can also be found at
Genwi Media Center Application
