With the growing adoption of Web 2.0 and user generate content, a clear change is visible in the behavior of online media consumption by end users. User generated content is taking traditional entertainment sources head-on and people are getting more inclined to view their regular media as per their own convenience rather than when the broadcaster plans to air it. Needless to say, online video streaming is hot.
But content distribution is inherently expensive. It takes massive costs in terms of bandwidth and infrastructure to maintain huge setups like YouTube and other similar services. Talking about the corporate environment which also has a lot of media to share in terms of corporate training videos etc., sites like YouTube don’t fit the bill, no matter how much privacy measures they claim to have implemented.
MetaASO Solutions is a startup based out of New Delhi, India which has a lineup of 5 major products collectively called Mermaid. Mermaid is a line of real time P2P products, which include Mermaid Meeting, Multisource, Movie, Webcam and News.
Mermaid allows broadcasting of audio/video content directly from a user’s PC to other computers connected on the LAN. Broadcasting can also be carried out to the Internet and needs a mere 256 kbps home connection. Mermaid claims to have specially designed algorithms to serve content to multiple users even despite the severe bandwidth restrictions. HD video is also supported on faster networks.
Here is a brief of all their 5 products in the Mermaid series -
Meeting - A meeting, text/audio/video chat software
Multisource - connects to any audio/video device connected to your computer, ex. webcam, mic., TV tuner card etc. and broadcasts it
Mermaid Movie - Specifically designed to broadcast and receive pre recorded movies
Webcam - Single click webcam sharing
News - Push based delivery model. Unlike the pull model used by RSS feeds, news item is instantaneously broadcasted around the globe
One major feature of Mermaid is that the basic setup requires absolutely no configurations. The basic installation package should get it up and running in no time. Advanced configuration is possible, but somewhat geeky as the process requires some knowledge of XML and HTML to tweak the configuration files.
Mermaid’s basic setup is currently free to the end user and they plan to keep it that way. Revenue model for this product is mainly advertising based and they also plan to generate revenue from customized software needs, branding etc. For now, Mermaid is available for Windows XP and Vista. Linux and Mac versions are not yet available.
Review posted by Gaurav Gupta
This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
