AOL to Port Broadband Video to TV Too
Some time ago AOL forged a partnership with Intel — I don’t know whether it was ever announced — to leverage the latter’s ViiV technology for AOL broadband video. I was having a casual conversation with an AOL corp. comm. person about how it would allow PC video downloads to be transferred to TV in February of this year. Until today, I had forgotten entirely about that conversation. (See, your secrets are safe with me.) 
Now CNET’s Michael Kanellos blogs about a forthcoming announcement regarding AOL video content being watchable on TV. One of the key missing pieces in all the broadband video frenzy is the ability to transfer that video to the TV. The Apple announcements of last week revealed such a device in “ITV” (working title). (More coverage here from CNET.)
It appears that the Intel ViiV PC will work with any video content from any provider. Telco IPTV also promises the ability to download video from the Internet to the set-top box for viewing in the living room. Eventually the cacophony of online video will be available to consumers’ TVs.
That will be the breakthrough, allowing all the Internet’s ad targeting capabilities to come to the living room.
Recently, AOL (like many others) launched a “download to own” service. Finally, here’s an article from the NY Times (reg. req’d) that provides an overview of the online video arena.
October 23, 2006 at 11:48 am
[...] But the big deal in movie download arena is getting the content on to your television. AOL is moving toward making that happen, although apparently that’s not yet publicly the case. [...]
October 23, 2006 at 1:42 pm
[...] But the big deal in movie download arena is getting the content onto your television. That will help open this market up. AOL is moving toward making that happen, although apparently that’s not yet publicly the case. Here’s more on the announcement from MediaPost (reg req’d). [...]