gadgets91: Apple ITV

For all those people out there, who are still waiting to make the best out of their living room plasma screen and the cool music system of your's, Apple has finally launched the eagerly awaited 'Apple ITV'. For years, the computer has been the center of our digital life, and TV has been the center of our entertainment life, Apple has now made an attempt to bridge this great divide.
Apple is certainly not the first to try to build a product that crosses the great consumer electronics divide between the TV and all that digital video and audio content taking up ever-larger sections of PC hard drives. Others have sought to cross it, most have failed. However, this cannot be expected from Apple.

This sleek looking box connects ur imac/pc wirelessly to your TV allowing you to watch ur digital media on that cool Home Theatre System of yours.As Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "You can take a movie, download it to a computer, put it on your iPod. But what about that big flat screen TV you just bought last weekend? You need a box to drive that big screen TV. How's the box going to talk to the computer? Do I want to string cables throughout my house? So I'm going to talk to it using wireless network, to get the content from the computer to the box, from the box to the TV."

Priced at 299$, the technical specifiactions of this device are as follows:

Processor and storage

Intel processor

40GB hard drive² for storing content locally
Up to 50 hours of movies and TV shows³
Up to 9,000 songs⁴
Up to 25,000 pictures⁵

System requirements

Mac or PC
iTunes 7.1
Mac: Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later
PC: Windows XP Home/Professional (SP2)
AirPort Extreme, Wi-Fi 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n wireless network⁶ (wireless video streaming requires 802.11g or 802.11n), or 10/100BASE-T Ethernet network

Ports and interfaces

HDMI (video and audio)
Component video
Optical audio
Analog RCA stereo audio
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
USB 2.0 (for service and diagnostics)
802.11n wireless networking⁶
Built-in IR receiver (works with included Apple Remote)

Environmental requirements

Operating temperature: 32° to 104° F (0° to 40° C)
Storage temperature: -40° to 185° F
(-40° to 85° C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3,000 m)

Video

Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile