Yahoo takes on Microsoft with free media centre system

Yahoo Go for TV turns a PC into a digital video recorder

Yahoo has released a beta version of its free Yahoo Go for TV software that turns a PC into a digital video recorder, allowing television shows to be recorded onto the PC's hard drive. 

The software competes with Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs as well as computers that feature Intel's Viiv logo.

Yahoo Go for TV also offers a do-it-yourself way for consumers to build a digital video recorder such as a TiVo.

In addition to recording and playing TV shows, the software displays Flickr photo galleries, plays mp3 files and CDs, runs picture slide shows and plays video files stored on local hard drives.

Yahoo Go for TV is available as a free download from the company's website to users in the US.

The service requires a Windows PC with a TV tuner card and sound system, at least a 1GHz processor and 512MB of memory. Storing the recorded television shows requires at least 20GB of disk space.

Yahoo also recommends a high speed internet connection of at least 1.5Mbps.

To allow users to schedule which shows to record, the software comes with a built in television guide. The schedule is localised based on the user's post code.

Yahoo said last week that it had acquired technology developed by a company called Meedio, which makes a software product similar to Yahoo Go for TV.