Now that is a bit more like it! - finally, some tech news with some weight to it, and from Apple which is always a good thing.
The video iPod was kind of expected, but still welcome. They've ditched firewire for USB2 only, which is a shame, but otherwise this looks like the next generation of personal media devices done perfectly, as is Apple's way of doing stuff.
The most significant thing in my opinion though is the supporting infrastructure and services, notably the iTunes music store now offering video content including TV shows (only in the US for the time being) and FrontRow (only on the new iMac at the moment).
Don't get me wrong - that new iMac is a thing of beauty, but it is just a product update. The iPod video on the other hand is a market-leading product evolution, and the video content delivery (iTunes music store) and multimedia management (FrontRow) is an industry-changing revolution.
What this really does is starts the ball rolling on a whole new way of doing stuff, just like the original iPod, iTunes and iTunes music store set the bar for online music distribution and playback. It's especially great to see the Apple Remote and FrontRow deliver a solid kick in the nuts to Windows Media Centre. Apple were a little late, but they have done it better because they designed it well. There is no way I'd consider Windows MCE now.
So, you can now use iTunes on your Mac to buy TV shows online and then watch them from the sofa using FrontRow. This is a new delivery model, and might well turn out to be to BitTorrent what the iTunes Music Store was to Kazaa; a delivery mechanism that is karmically better and cheap enough that most people will pay the fee instead of downloading for free from P2P. There's similar DRM to iTunes music (although you can't burn to disc), and I can see this snowballing like the iTunes Music offering did. It doesn't work like Tivo and Sky+ subscription services, and can co-exist with those so there's really no competition yet - once again, Apple are ahead of the curve, and by the time everyone else wakes up and gets an offering to market, Apple will have a comfortable market share advantage.
The question is, after the success starts snowballing, how long before feature movies become available?..... BlockBuster should be watching this with great interest.