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Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ooh-shiny dept.

necro81 writes, "As anticipated, Apple announced several additions and upgrades to its iPod and iTunes lineup. The iPod now comes in an 80 GB model, with a $50 price drop for the 30 GB model. The 2nd generation iPod Nano harkens back to the iPod Mini with metallic, multi-colored shells (though as diminutive as ever) and comes in an 8 GB model. The Shuffle has been completely redesigned and shrunk down to the size of a matchbook. All of this comes with the release of iTunes 7, which includes support for downloading full-length movies from iTMS." All 75 movies initially available are from Disney-related studios. The new iTunes will download cover art for all the songs in your library, no matter where you got them from, as long as you have an iTunes account. (A confirmation dialog says: "Information about songs with missing artwork will be sent to Apple. Apple does not keep any information related to the contents of your music library.") There's a new album-cover browsing view of your library. And Steve Jobs gave a sneak preview of a project code-named iTV: a Mac Mini-like wireless set-top box. Engadget has a blow-by-blow of Steve Jobs's presentation.

3 of 710 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gapless Playback! by tji · · Score: 5, Informative

    I haven't finished sync'ing my video iPod yet, but after installing iTunes 7, it brought up a dialog as it went through my library saying it was updating for gapless playback.

    This would imply that it's done within the audio files themselves, perhaps making it usable on all iPods.

    I'll see shortly.

    The new music view/organize modes in iTunes are great. One is divided by albums, showing a small image of the album cover along with all the tracks. The other looks like they licensed "Cover Flow", it looks like flipping through albums in your old physical collection. Definitely better visual feedback then scrolling through a huge text list of songs.

  2. This is lame by dangermouse · · Score: 5, Informative
    I sort of assumed that when Jobs said you could transfer music between iTunes libraries using the iPod, he meant all of your music. Nope.

    Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, from your computer to your iPod.

    I know this is not new, but enabling this functionality for iTMS tracks only is a real dick move.

  3. Just downloaded a movie... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Informative

    I downloaded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a test.

    - The movie is 1.22 GB, and downloaded in about 20 minutes on a 100 Mbps connection (Internet2).
    - The movie was able to be played before downloading was finished, and could skip to anywhere in the content that was already complete.
    - The content shows itself as being protected by "FairPlay Version: 2".
    - The bitrate is 1.5Mbps.
    - The framerate is 24fps.
    - The audio on this particular movie is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz.
    - The video on this particular movie is Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated).
    - The video looks very good (indeed, "near DVD quality") on a high quality 20" LCD. (I'm not a "videophile", but this is absolutely more than watchable on a nice quality large TV or monitor, and I suspect most consumers would agree).
    - The video can be played in QuickTime, and uses QuickTime Chapters for DVD chapters; chapters are also accessible in iTunes.
    - The video file can be burned to a DVD, but you cannot burn the file as a video DVD.
    - You can play the file on multiple computers (I *believe* up to three as opposed to five for music), or on an unlimited number of iPods (if the usage rights haven't changed with iTunes 7; I haven't looked through the terms - if someone knows this to be different please correct me. In any case, it's already less restrictive than Unbox).
    - iTunes 7.0 requires QuickTime 7.1.3.
    - Pretty much every movie I looked at was $9.99; some new releases were up to $14.99, but were cheaper if preordered.
    - When used on a Mac in a media center configuration, or with the forthcoming iTV solution that will presumably be much like a video AirPort Express (and yes, I know it's not an AirPort Express, but it will probably act a lot like a AirPort Express functionally, except allowing the streaming of video to your TV), this will be a pretty compelling and vertically integrated solution for most consumers.