ABC Adds More Shows to iTunes

Disney/ABC were the first to offer television shows via iTunes on the day the video iPod was announced. NBC followed shortly after but raised the bar by adding more content and across more of its properties than ABC offered. Now Disney is bringing in some of its big guns like ESPN and ABC News to iTunes, which I think is great for Apple.

ABC News will be the first free content available and will include ads. It would be nice if this leads to the ABC World News being available every day immediately after airing. Segments from Good Morning America and World News will be the initial free news available, I assume they’ll add more if those get good traffic.

Most interesting in the announcement, to me at least, is the ESPN Bobby Knight show that will make its debut through the iTunes store. I hope enough people take advantage of viewing it before everybody else by paying the $1.99. Personally I’d buy episodes of certain shows, Lost for example, as soon as they were available if it meant I got to see them a week or two before they aired on television. About the only thing I imagine is better than time-shifting with Tivo would be the chance to purchase shows early, now that’s time-shifting and I’d pay for it.

While I think these are great additions and should help keep Apple out in front of the VOD race at least for now, I’m still not convinced that I want to watch shows that are at 320x240 resolution. With MacWorld just around the corner and the rumors of the new Mac Mini sporting DVR capabilities maybe we’ll see the iTunes store offering higher resolutions for a slightly higher price. While I’d love HD quality right now I’d be content with 640x480 until HD is more feasible.