Apple launches assault on the living room

Apple unveils TV set-top box and movie download service

Apple has unveiled a new movie download service and a television set-top box at a company event in San Francisco in an effort to expand its media empire to the living room.

The television connector box, codenamed iTV, is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2007.

It will feature HDMI, traditional three-plug composite and optical cable video outputs, and can connect to a computer via Ethernet or wirelessly through Wi-Fi.

"This is the missing piece," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, who went on to summarise Apple's new home-user strategy as "iTunes in the den, the living room, the car and the pocket".

• VIDEO: Apple shrinks the iPod Shuffle
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Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research analyst at Jupiter Research, said: "The big news is that Apple wants to be in every room in your home." 

But the analyst warned that delivering high-resolution video through a wireless connection remains a daunting task.

"It sounds like Apple is taking ownership of the problem. If it doesn't work out it is going to have huge issues, but it does have a good track record for making this stuff work," said Gartenberg.

Jobs also unveiled the full-length movie download service that had been predicted by many analysts in recent weeks.

The service, available through a newly-released iTunes version 7, will allow users to download full-length films at prices ranging from $9.99 to $14.99. A European version is expected to launch sometime in 2007.

• Videos of the iTV; the new iPod Nano and new iPod Shuffle are available on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog.

Apple will offer 75 films from Disney-owned studios including Pixar and Miramax with plans to expand the library in the coming months. 

"We have movies, and they're now playing on a computer near you and they're all playing on an iPod near you," said Jobs.

When first introduced, Apple's video downloads were primarily designed for the iPod's small screen. 

To accommodate larger screens, Apple increased the resolution of its video downloads from the current 320 x 280 pixels to 640 x 480, which is the resolution of a standard television.

The increased resolution makes the movies better-suited for larger screens.

The new iTunes 7 also features an enhanced navigation system that sorts music by source lists and allows users to view songs by the album's artwork, as well as a scroll-by album art window similar to Apple's Front Row navigation system.

Perhaps overshadowed by the other announcements was a revamped iPod line. Most notably, Jobs unveiled a new iPod Shuffle that is roughly a third the size of the previous model. It will be available in October.

A second-generation iPod Nano introduces multi-coloured cases and larger storage capacities of up to 8Gb.

New and expanded drive-based iPods were also unveiled. The full-sized iPods sport a brighter screen, larger capacity (30Gb and 80Gb), and have the ability to play games from the iTunes store at a fee of $4.99 per download.

All three iPod lines will feature new headphone models.

Videos of the iTV; the new iPod Nano and new iPod Shuffle are available on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog.