New York — AOL venturing into capture new audiences has announced a new version of their creatively named AOL HD app, which is now available for instant download on Samsung Smart TV and Google TV platforms.
The announcement comes on the heels of AOL HD’s July 2011 launch on Roku, Boxee, DivX TV, and Yahoo! Connected TV.
The expansion indicates AOL’s commitment to the online video in the living room movement as they now cover just about every major way to do that, providing high quality content at scale, and innovating and engaging on new platforms in the connected TV industry, which accounts for 30% of US households.
“Consumers are increasingly using the living room as an extension of their online viewing behavior and the trajectory of growth in the connected TV space is what led us to expand AOL HD on the biggest and most engaged platforms,” said Robert Delacruz, General Manager for AOL HD. “We know consumers want high-quality free content delivered to their televisions, and meeting that demand fits within AOL HD’s strike zone.”
Although Samsung, the leading TV brand in the United States, has recently been gaining momentum for some time on its Smart TV platform, was the first company to offer an application store for the TV and is committed to delivering applications specifically designed for the TV experience. AOL only just managed to get their app over there in this latest expansion.
In fact, AOL HD provides high-definition video content that is revised constantly from various properties across AOL Huffington Post Media Group, such as technology sites like Engadget, TechCrunch, and Translogic; entertainment (celebrity news and interviews from franchises like Moviefone and Huffington Post Celebrity); as well as home cooking, lifestyle and home improvement videos from celebrity partners like Eric Stromer, Sam Talbot and Carter Oosterhouse. In addition, AOL Music’s full CD Listening Party (CDLP)–which lets listeners hear free previews of newly released albums – is also available.
Moreover, the AOL HD app is available now for download on 2010 Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, with support for 2011 Smart TVs and Blu-ray players coming soon. Besides, the app consists of all the latest series that they recently disclosed as well so you would be left out on what is new in all of those shows either.
They also hopped on board Google TV which has released a new version of its smart TV platform today. The update includes a cleaner and simpler UI, a more TV-like YouTube experience, a new TV and Shows app enabling discovery of shows relevant to consumers from over 80,000 movies and TV episodes, as well as Android Market.
Delacruz added, “We are continuing to append amazing content to these channels to build a robust smart TV experience. The living room is at the nexus of online and offline entertainment and AOL HD meets consumer’s needs with its wide array of video content.”
These relationships further boost AOL’s efforts in video. Earlier this year AOL unfurled its original programming slate of more than 15 original web series targeting key audiences including women, teens and young adults, and announced a partnership with Vivaki to innovate and drive the next generation of video advertising.
Nevertheless, with major online media companies, like AOL, finally embarking onto fully embrace connected TVs and online video in the living room, we can probably anticipate a flood of new apps coming over the next couple months. They have probably all been in the works but just not priorities. Now, it seems that it is all quite legit and companies need to be there.