Yahoo! Platinum - Subscription Internet Audio/Video Entertainment Network Launches In The United States
Yahoo! Platinum will feature never seen on TV features, out takes from "Survivor" and "American Idol".

With the Yahoo! Platinum SportsPak, users can watch 56 of the early rounds of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. Yahoo moves into this space after noting the high numbers of Yahoo broadband consumers. 43 million of Yahoo!'s 105.6 million unique visitors use a broadband connection. Yahoo! believes high quality broadband entertainment content is key to broadband users satisfaction.

Streaming Magazine talked to David Mandlebrot – Vice President of Global Media Entertainment, and Finance for Yahoo!

"Narrowband is a lesser quality experience, but we have optimized the network to provide the best quality audio and video. We will be offering events happening in the news. Audio news will be provided by ABC news. The audio quality will be fine for narrowband customers.

We are not using progressive downloading – but the traditional buffering, because we have so many clips in the service."

What players are you using?

"Mandelbrot says they are "using window media and RealPlayer embedded in html page, and all being done by our customer care team directly in Dallas. The team in Dallas is hosting the infrastructure.

For the vast (users, Yahoo! Platinum serves) 56kbps, 100kbps and 300kbps.

One of the things we have done at Yahoo! – very carefully is to develop and easily customize to devices. The interfaces we are developing on Yahoo!, backend development are offered on alternate devices. We are exploring devices other than PC."

Is the content on-demand or live?

"With exception of sports content, all content is on demand. With the live content that we're offering with NCAA with men's basketball coverage one can watch live programming not available in local market on TV. It's for users to watch programming on their schedule and to watch live content not available – having both of those combined provides a compelling offering to users.

Can you serve all users at one time for a live event?

"For an event such as the men's NCAA basketball tournament, (we have) made steps to ensure bandwidth and streaming capabilities."