News and Reviews....

    IN2TV the next Frontier    April 2006

Bob Lieto

        AOL and movie studio Warner Brothers are launching IN2TV, claiming to be "the first broadband television network", on AOL.com. It is said, the network will offer the Largest collection of FREE ON-Demand TV shows on the Internet, and the lineup will include full episodes of Warner Bros. programs from the past 40 years. Shows like "Welcome Back Kotter", "Chico & the Man", "Alice". "Growing Pains", "Sisters", "Kung Fu", "Lois & Clark", and lots more exciding made for TV entertainment. AOL and Warner Bros. say the programs will have interactive features that will enable the audience to experience and interact with the programming in an entirely new way.

    The shows will be organized into six genre-themed channels (and two more are expected to be added this summer): LOL (Laugh Out Loud) TV, Dramarama TV, Too Topia TV, Heroes and Horrors TV, What a Rush TV, and Vintage TV (which will show episodes of "F-Troop", among other all-time favorites").

    All episodes can be viewed full screen with Windows Media streaming technology as well as AOL's new AOL Hi-Q video format which the company says "can deliver DVD-quality videos directly to consumers quickly and efficiently."

HOW CAN THEY AFFORD TO DO IT ???

    How can they afford to do all this for free? In2TV will sell in-stream broadband ads (What a great idea) as well as sponsorships and banner ads. The good news is that the inserted 15 second and 30 second spots will be limited to a total of 1-2 minutes of advertising within each 30-minute episode. The first time we sat through these broadcasts on TV each show typically included eight minutes of advertising. (Isn't technology great?)

For a chart of available internet TV providers click on the thumbnail to the right   

Comment ....  I think this is two great things. One it combines a major TV studio with an big Internet provider and two... It is FREE or so it seems. We only have to watch 2 minutes of advertising per 30 minute of program. Sounds great...but isn't that the way our current TV viewing started? Advertisers paid the programmers so that we could watch free Off-Air programming. Then cable provided us with a better picture and more channels within a controlled environment (Cable Feed), added programming without advertising and charged the premium directly to us. After some time, they not only added their own advertising but charged us to see it. Unfortunately, this is the way I see this going. It starts off very good and then everyone involved gets greedy. They steal away the customers from cable and satellite and when we think we are OK, they start the money machine. My suggestion is to get the most of it in the beginning and expect the free-bees to dwindle in the coming years.

Providers of VOD:     "www.movielink.com"

                                 "www.netflix.com"

                                  "www.amazon.com"