CRUSHING THE COLLECTIVE SPIRIT OF WOULD-BE COMPETITORS

Just a few days ago Apple threw its yearly "lets crush the collective spirit of our would-be competitors by announcing a new slate of hardware and services. If you want in on all the tech-geek babble surrounding all the new iPods, the movie store that every studio in Hollywood will be trying to get in on by this time next week, I'd recommend that you check out WIRED. Here at THIRD WAVE CENTRAL, we're only interested in how Apple's newest offering will affect the online short film market we've clearly become totally freakin' obsessed with.

Well, our initial impression goes something like: This is great news for Channel 101 fans.

First of all, video iPod screen resolutions are going up and hard-drives are getting larger. On the video front everything is moving up to 640x480, (basically four times the resolution of previous iPods and hard drive capacity is being upped to an impressive 80 gigs.

Besides which, Apple announced a new "iTV" set top box (see below) that will allow you to play iTunes content on your TV without going on a mad scientist wiring binge first (which might attract the attention of the FBI these days). To sum up: When I read all about it all, the words "user friendly" and "inevitable success" sprang immediately to mind.

TV ON THE DESKTOP

In what has to be considered an almost bizarre turn of the worm, Apple recently pre-announced (yes, you read that correctly) a wireless video streaming set-top box scheduled to hit streets in 2007. For the moment the whole thing is known as iTV, and looks a bit like a flattened mini Mac – but according to the grapevine the iTV is around half the height of Mac mini – features a built-in power supply that hopefully won't overheat, Ethernet, USB 2.0, 802.11 "wireless component video", HDMI plus optical audio ports, and just plain RCA stereo audio ports besides. Compatible with Apple's standard remote, the iTV box will ship with an updated (right-handed?) version of the Front Row interface.

Reportedly, iTV will work with iTunes on PCs and Macs alike, and will retail for $299.00