| Apple goes digital TV, Disney downloads and new iPods |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 13 September 2006 | |
  
Apple came out with guns blazing at its showtime event today, unveiling a US$299 set top box that will wirelessly stream downloaded movies and music to living room TVs, new Walt Disney movie downloads for US$12.99 and new iPod models, including an 80GB video iPod.
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If you want to know more about how iTV works, however, you will have to wait until next year, says Apple. However, the device appears to provide the missing bridge between computers and TVs as some had predicted Apple would announce today. As far as iTunes movie downloads are concerned, those who predicted that Apple would start with just movies from Walt Disney studios because of Steve Jobs' boardroom connection were right. However, the new Disney videos will cost just US$12.99 in their first week of release and $14.99 after that, while older movies will be US$9.99. Unlike the Amazon Unbox offering, iTunes will not offer rentals but will allow multiple downloads at once. According to Apple, a 5 Mbps broadband service will take 30 minutes to download a movie but you can start watching within one minute of starting a download. Disney executives have predicted that it won't be long before other movie studios join them on the iTunes services. If there was one slight disappointment with today's event it was the lack of wireless connectivity for the new iPods that were announced. However, the new versions do offer significant performance and storage capacity improvements. Apple's new iPod range includes new video iPods, which boast 60% brighter screens, with a US$349 80GB version that can hold up to 100 hours of video and has a 6.5 hour video battery life. There is also a US$249 30GB version. The new video iPods can also play a range of games.
The best way to sum up the new iPod Nano range is to take everything
that you had up until now and double it. The three new Nano models are
a 2GB version for US$149, 4GB for US$199 and 8GB for US$249. For
reasons known only to Apple's market research department, only the 4GB
models will come in a range of pastel colours. |
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