Ellington

This week Apple whipped its hype machine into full gear to introduce a series of new iPod and iTunes related products. The most exciting offering might be the rare preview that Apple gave of its upcoming device—codenamed "iTV"—a set-top box designed to allow you to stream iTunes videos from a Mac or PC running iTunes 7 to your television. The bad news? It won't be ready until the first quarter of 2007.

Products available now include a new iPod Nano and updated the video-capable iPod for the holiday season, both offering increased battery life and storage. The Nano is now even thinner and lighter, while sporting more color options—all at the same price point as the previous generation. The iPod nano comes in 4GB and 8GB capacities for $149 and $249 respectively; the new iPod comes in 30GB and a whopping 80GB model for $249 and $349. A new iPod Shuffle was introduced as well, with a 1GB capacity at $79.

Perhaps more exciting than that is the update to the iTunes software, which has reached version 7.0. The key new feature is support for downloadable movies—Disney is the first to sign on, offering movies that are released simultaneous to their DVD releases for $14.99. (Many movies will be available for $12.99 if they're ordered in the first week or during special pre-release order periods.)

With the Disney deal comes titles but out by other movie companies owned by the studio including Miramax, Touchstone Pictures and Pixar. Tiles available now include titles such as "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "Shakespeare in Love," "The Princess Diaries" and "National Treasure." iTunes 7 also sports some new classic-style arcade games available for download, such as Tetris, Pac-man, and some newer offers like Texas Hold-em Poker.

Behind the scenes, iTunes 7 represents an update to the technology that Apple uses to push movies and TV shows bought by users, with videos now being offered at what Apple calls "near DVD" 640x480 resolution. (Standard-definition DVD resolution is 720x480 in North America.) That should make the movies good enough for playback on TVs … at least, standard definition TVs … when the iTV makes an appearance. Of course, in the meantime, you could opt for one of the new 24-inch flat-panel iMacs that Apple just announced last week and watch your iTunes movies on that. Yowza.

Todd Stauffer is the publisher of the Jackson Free Press and co-author of three dozen books on the Internet and computing. His latest is "The PowerBook and iBook Field Guide" (Wiley and Sons, 2006) with co-author Dennis Cohen.