"One last thing" from Steve Jobs...

[Boyd Ostroff]

Well it looks like Apple is going to deliver on the rumors, but not until 2007. It's very unusual for them to preannounce a product so that makes me wonder if they're having some chip shortages or production problems? Or maybe Jobs figured they couldn't keep it under wraps that long?

But regardless, this sounds like a very cool product for $300, iTV (scroll down to the end of this story):

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09...index.php?pf=1

“Apple’s in your den now, right?” said Jobs. “iTunes on a Mac or a PC. Apple’s in your living room with iTV, driving your big flat-screen TV. Apple’s in your car, with over 70 percent of the 2007 model cars offering iPod connectivity. And of course, Apple’s in your pocket, with iPods.”

“Den, living room, car, pocket. And i hope this gives you a little idea of where we’re going,” said Jobs. “Thanks for coming. and we’ll see you all soon.”

To me it looks like Apple has some big plans here, and soon they will be competing with the networks, satellite and cable TV companies. With this box you can choose whatever content you want from their store, download and play it back whenever you want. And also notice that Jobs paraded Disney CEO Bob Iger out on stage with him. Makes me wonder whether Disney bought Pixar or if it was the other way around :-)

[Zack Birlew]

Awesome! iTV sounds pretty interesting, as far as downloading content goes, I'd prefer something like that to just a regular Tivo-like setup. Maybe Bluray and HD-DVD aren't the way to go, at least for home video purposes, maybe they're destined for storage solutions, particularly Bluray.

If you can download movies, keep them, and be able to download them into other things, like Steve Jobs said, cars, iPods/portable players, and the set-top box next to the TV, then that sounds quite convenient compared to digging around in the DVD collection for one particular movie. However, I would first like to see a suitable solution for us filmmakers to get our films onto a service like that for distribution. I would hope there would be restrictions so something like "Dan's Rockin' Home Videos 2007" doesn't accidentally show up on there. ;)

[Greg Boston]

I watched the presentation and saw the demo of the new box. Very cool. Too bad they can't get it out in time for the holidays.

-gb-

[Kevin Shaw]

The only problem I see here is that Apple appears to have missed the trend toward widescreen displays as the new TV/computer standard. Steve says all Apple video will be 640x480, which is not what makes sense for the "big flat-screen TVs" he mentioned. Unless Apple is planning to use non-square pixels to deal with this discrepancy, but so far they seem to be stuck at 4:3.

[Nate Schmidt]

The itunes site says 640x480 depending on the aspect ratio of the movie so maybe they just through out that number for consumers who don't really know the difference. http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/ down near the bottom of the page.

[Dave Perry]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

The only problem I see here is that Apple appears to have missed the trend toward widescreen displays as the new TV/computer standard. Steve says all Apple video will be 640x480, which is not what makes sense for the "big flat-screen TVs" he mentioned. Unless Apple is planning to use non-square pixels to deal with this discrepancy, but so far they seem to be stuck at 4:3.

640x480 is more less a pixel count, not neccessarily the dimensions fo rmovies. TV shows yes, movies no. The Apple web site actually has an asterisc next to that spec and when you read the footnote, it says "Exact resolution depends on aspect ratio."

Any way, I downloaded Enemy of the State tonight and it's dimensions are 640x266 which is the prper 2.40 aspect ratio. What I always wondered, and now have the answer to, is whether or not the movies they would offer would be larger. I've learned how to encode my own 16x9-640x360 movies larger then the publicly stated 320x240 specs that Apple previously offered long before the speculation of the Movie Store rumors were rampant.

You've always been able to play any size movie in iTunes 6, but another nice thing I learned about iTunes 7 tonight is that when you import a movie into iTunes that's not iPod compatible, converting it to an iPod compatible movie in iTunes now produces the largest dimensions possible for the aspect ration of the original. Not just a 320x240. This is nice because before, I was using a combination of custom settings in MPEGStreamclip or HandBrake to get hi res iPod movies onto my iPod.

The way I see it now, Apple was just thrown down the gauntlet to microsoft in the arena of digital convergence in the family home theatre. All of the new Apple home AV stuff is Mac and windows compatible, plug and play, gorgeous, simple, and just works.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Dave Perry

Any way, I downloaded Enemy of the State tonight and it's dimensions are 640x266 which is the prper 2.40 aspect ratio. What I always wondered, and now have the answer to, is whether or not the movies they would offer would be larger.

I'd still like to hear more about that from Apple: so far it doesn't sound like they'll exceed 640 x XXX resolution at appropriate aspect ratios, and they're describing the quality as "near DVD". We'll see how well that works in practice, but it doesn't sound like what I'd want for streaming video content to a big-screen HDTV as Steve Jobs described. I'd rather pay a little more to get something which can play at least 720p resolution through an HDMI connection, and I'm hopeful that sooner or later someone will market such a device at a reasonable price. In any case, kudos to Apple for planning to do something interesting along these lines.

[Wayne Morellini]

This Itv (I used to know people with a company by that name) is a media player. I have been waiting for home theatre Mac, preferably an 56inch 8Mp iMac based on a souped up version of the Playstation 3 (but then again we have to wait to see if Apple takes up the option of releasing Mac OSX for the PS3, so I am not stuck with linux).. Now, that is something that would kick a.. .

http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/pr...20051012111324

For it's smaller 30 inch 4MP desktop brother:
http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/pr...td.jsp?size=30

This 24inch is similar to what apple has?:
http://www.cmo.com.tw/cmo/english/pr...td.jsp?size=24

[Konrad Haskins]

ITV has been Independant Television in the UK since I was a kid and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...UK%7CcountryGB

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

It's very unusual for them to preannounce a product so that makes me wonder

Perhaps it's a response to AmazonUnbox? Interestingly, AmazonUnbox currently only works with Windows.

[Dave Perry]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

I'd still like to hear more about that from Apple: so far it doesn't sound like they'll exceed 640 x XXX resolution at appropriate aspect ratios, and they're describing the quality as "near DVD".

I encoded American Beauty for iPod at 720x304. Obviously not HD but it looks surprisingly good and is watchable on my 26" HD set.

[Wes Vasher]

Dave, what were your encode settings? H264? MPEG4? Bitrate?

[Mikko Wilson]

640 x ??? and a HDMI connector... ... ookies...


- Mikko

[Wes Vasher]

I looked at this and thought, this makes sense and looks pretty good. I might consider just spending the extra $300 and getting a Mac Mini for the living room. I wonder what are some of the drawbacks to this though. Does the Mac Mini output surround sound? If not could you hook up a USB processor? The Mac Mini dual core (which the $600 model is now) can handle 1080 H264 AFAIK from reports but we'll see if the iTV can uncrunch that kind of video. It has "Optical Digital" out, what does that mean? The DVI can output up to 1920x1200.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Some thoughts from Jim Cramer:

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/mark...&cm_ite=NA

I see a lot of things and hear a lot about the hardware and software that is going to win the living room. I thought they are almost all nonsense until I read about the iTunes-PC-to-TV device (nicknamed iTV).