AOL Streaming Movies to Your TV

Further opening up the once heavily guarded "walled garden," AOL on Monday announced it has launched a developer program for its video search engine product. The company will make available a number of APIs upon which developers could build search functionality into their own products.

In addition, AOL has added new features that allow for the easy uploading of video feeds by content owners to the search service through something called a AOL Director account. Videos submitted would be searchable within minutes of submission. The service, which will put AOL in competition with the likes of YouTube and Google Video, is provided at no cost.

"With more and more video content coming online each day, we believe video search will become increasingly important as a way for consumers to find all of the rich content on the Web," AOL executive vice president Kevin Conroy said in the announcement.

The APIs would be included in both REST and AJAX, and would allow developers to tap into many features, including: advanced keyword searching, sorting, and filtering capabilities; support for user ratings, tagging, and favorites; support for user sharing; and full RSS support.

AOL Director Accounts allow for the submission as well as management of feeds included with AOL Video Search. The product is fully-self service, AOL said.

In related news, AOL announced it will partner with Intel to bring video content to Viiv-enabled PCs and other devices. Users will be able to browse through the company's video library, which is free to view. Videos are encoded in AOL's Hi-Q format, which they claim provides "near DVD quality."

Other AOL services will additionally be made available to Viiv users, including AOL Radio and AOL Pictures. In the coming months, AOL will also port its MusicNow service to the Viiv platform, the company said.