5 Things Akimbo needs to change right away

Friday, October 28th, 2005 @ 3:34 am | Tech, Game, MCE, griffon

1. Add a filter to hide all pay content in all modes and all channels that only have pay content. Lets see what is really being offered.
2. Fix the navigation bugs. Right now there is not a way from the UI to even submit bugs.
3. Make the UI hi res and fit better into the MCE experience. It’s fuzzy and ugly and slow. Why can’t I just get my akimbo content with a filter to recorded shows in MCE?
4. Season pass? Maybe I’m missing how to do this… My little girl seemed to like High 5 (made my teeth hurt, but not as much as Elmo). So how do I say go get some more of that and Q it up? Do I really have to dig around a and say DL each of these? Maybe I’m just a newb and missing it though.
5. Remove the show expiration dates. If you are going to ask folks to give you rent every month, you really can’t be taking away the things they download, that is just silly. I get that this is probable an IP issue, but jeez, maybe you can make the owners see that this make their content LESS valuable and your service along with it.

I won’t start the HD comments. Akimbo has said they want and plan do it. Good. I’ll judge it if and when they do…assuming my preview period has not expired :) . I’ll be curious to see what compression they use. I’m guessing mpeg 4 type files but that would not win much MS love so maybe not. The current resolution on stuff looks pretty bad on my 50″ Pany. Worse then the standard def coming across my HDTivo… but not so bad as to not be watchable. HD would add a lot of value, it might even be enough to get me to occasionally (very occasionally) open my wallet for some of the never ending sea of pay content. Though then I’m going to very quickly have a problem with paying a monthly if that is what is expected to get anything decent. Akimbo simple can’t have it both ways, Apple and the other music and what providers all sea that and ofer one or the other.

2 Responses to “5 Things Akimbo needs to change right away”

  1. Steve Says:

    Thanks for the comments – we at Akimbo agree with most of them (except for the part about being ugly ). We do need to make it easier for folks to spot the free content versus rental. And we will continue to look for other ways to simplify our pricing. Of course, our challenge is getting all content providers on the same page with a common pricing scheme. Feel free to submit bugs to customercare@akimbo.com, but we also need to make that more obvious. We will add a lot of bug fixes in a few weeks (again, this is a preview release), but in the meantime, it’s important that users install MCE Roll Up 2 for the best experience. We do have a “subscription” feature which is very similar to TiVo’s season pass. It’s used today for channels like Major League Baseball and Turner Classic Movies. We only use this for shows that get new episodes regularly, not for permanent archives. Indeed, HD is on the way. The selection will start out with a few dozen titles and then grow with time. Be sure to let us know what kind of HD content you want us to carry, either on you blog or through our web site.

  2. WalkerPad » Some more Akimbo thoughts, long ramble and response Says:

    [...] Steve from Akimbo was nice enough to stop by again and made a few comments. [...]