Apple’s iTV Project - The missing piece

As speculated yesterday, Apple announced their “iTV” project - a set top box for your TV set. The new kit will provide a seamless bridge between the new iTunes 7 movie download service on your Mac, and the living room.

With a similar size to the Mac Mini, but much flatter, the iTV box sits by your HDMI (or old skool component plus optical audio connectors) equipped TV. The top of the iTV (prototype name) features a glowing white Apple logo.

It connects to your computer via Wi-Fi, Ethernet cables, or USB and allows you to browse through all your music, photos, and video content stored in iTunes.

In a demonstration to the invited guests at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Jobs showed off the new iTV, which features a more polished Front Row-like interface, undoubtedly a sign of the improvements yet to come to other Front Row-supported Macs when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard ships next year.

While Apple is hoping the iTV will encourage more customers to purchase television programming and movies from the iTunes Store, the iTV will not be limited to playing purchased media only. Photo slideshows with accompanying music will be be supported, for example, as is the case with current Front Row Macs.

The (currently named) iTV device is due for release Q1 2007, with a price around £160.

Apple’s move into movie downloads - priced at a minimum of $12.99 for new releases and $9.99 for older films - comes several days after Amazon’s launch of its own system, Unbox, aimed only at PCs.

In a presentation in San Francisco, Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs said the films would be sold at “near-DVD quality” - with a resolution of 640 x 480 quoted by Jobs - not quite high definition, sadly.

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