In2TV: iTMS integration cloudy; ask again later

You've probably heard of In2TV, AOL's ad-supported television on demand Internet service for watching old shows for free. It's a very cool service that I am eager to see launched and fully functional.

Keith McDuffee of TV Squad fame and I realized that Weblogs, Inc. has certain connections to AOL and decided to see if we could get some answers about the service. Being primarily an Apple blogger, I was curious to know whether AOL had considered or attempted to approach Apple's iTMS as a distribution medium for In2TV. Jennifer Rankin Byrne from AOL Corporate Communications replied, "Our plan was always for In2TV to start as a free, advertiser-supported business model–where users would view the episodes on AOL.com. Thus, we didn't approach the iTunes music store as a means of distribution."

This makes sense for AOL, but curious to know if we would see future shows in a downloadable format that I could perhaps squeeze on my video-capable iPod, Keith and I asked about it and received the following reply from Byrne: "We do at some point plan to also offer paid downloads of television episodes through In2TV, but it's too early to say whether we would look to make them playable on a video iPod. We are focusing first on making our free, advertiser-supported service the best it can be when we launch in January."

If it's downloadable, then that's a step in the right direction, as it should, barring any odd DRM be transferable to an iPod-compatible format. If it is downloadable for dollars, then I hope they do consider iTMS as a place to release the shows, and I also hope that Apple is open to offering their content.

I, for one, love that big media distributors are starting to provide content over the Internet in this way, but I would really love to see them do it in as open a way as possible. I think whoever comes to the game with free streaming ad-supported content, available for download in both PSP and iPod friendly flavors, is really going to hit a home run.