Apple goes digital TV, Disney downloads and new iPods

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 13 September 2006 04:49

Your IT - Home IT

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.

• Announcements

The big buzz is about Apple's US$299 iTV device, which will be available in the first quarter of 2007. The iTV, about the size of a book, will connect to the TV and use 802.11 wireless networking to stream videos and music from a Mac or PC to the TV.

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.

Finally, there will be a new 1GB iPod Shuffle, which has shrunk to about half-size, which will be available next month for US$79.

The iPod owners who worry about their precious devices being scratched will be pleased to know that all new iPod models will now be housed in scratch resistant aluminum cases.

A new version of iTunes to accommodate the new Apple offerings is now available for download and, while the new iTunes 7 store was reportedly down for a couple hours during the switch, it is now up and running.