During yesterday's Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs announced that Twentieth Century Fox would be the first movie studio to implement its Digital Copy DRM technology on Fox's DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The first DVD to feature this technology is "Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest", which is now availalble for sale.

So how does it work? I was curious. So for you, my readers, I forked out $12.99 + 7.75% CA tax to buy the DVD from my local Target just to demonstrate this technology . Anything for you, my friends.

No doubt iTunes Movie Rentals received an enormous amount of press yesterday. With this feature, iTunes customers can now rent blockbuster movies and watch them all without leaving their home. However, there are even more films out there by independent filmmakers, many of them from other countries. These movies are not available on iTunes and most likely will never be part of its catalog. This is where Jaman comes in.

Jaman features over 1500 independent films from around the world and the catalog is growing daily. These are great movies; they're just not produced by big studios. However, Jaman is not only a movie rental service but it is also a community of independent film enthusiasts. You can join in on the conversation with other members to recommend films or just talk about your movie watching experience.

To play movies from Jaman service, you need a special player to facilitate viewing and renting. The player is availalbe for Mac, Windows and set-top boxes (even Apple TV). If you use Macs, it is the ONLY other movie rental service on that platform.

So check out Jaman if you feel like you need a break from those blockbuster movies from iTunes. You'll be surprised at the selection and the quality of movies available from Jaman.

And, NO, Jaman didn't pay me to write this.

Now that movies are available for rent from the iTunes Store, I just couldn't resist trying out this new feature. I also thought that I might as well document the whole process so I could share it with you guys.

By the way, I was about to put up this long post about it with all the screen shots last night. But I got too tired and was going to just finish it up today. However, I found out that Engadget already put up a post about their experience with iTunes movie rentals. So, not to repeat what they have done, I've decided to just bulletize important points and give you an overview of the whole thing instead. Save you time too.

• New releases $3.99, otherwise, $2.99. No HD titles. Those are only for downloading directly via Apple TV.
• You have 24 hours to watch once you started the watching process. Don't worry that you'd forget, iTunes nags you quite a bit, reminding you of the time left to watch the movie.
• Not all movies are available for rent. Some are for purchase only, some are for rent only and some are for rent AND purchase.
  
• Average download is around 1.5GB for a two-hour movie.
• Movie watching can start while the rest of the movie is still downloading. It can be played almost instantly, requiring about 100mb to start the play.
• Movies are stored in a new folder called "Rented Movies".
• Rented movies cannot be shared across computers. My entire library on my main computer is shared, but it didn't show up on the other computers.
• Movies rented on one computer cannot be played on another. I tried this by physically copying the movie file to another computer. I successfully added it to the library but it refused to play.
• Only iTunes can play the rented movie files. I attempted to play one via the QuickTime Player and received "Authorization Needed to View Content". I also tried using the Preview window under File Info; that didn't work either.
  

Users of iTunes were a little disappointed earlier today when they opened up their brand new iTunes 7.6 to find that there were no movies for rent as promised by Steve Jobs.

Well, it only took a few hours. Now, selected titles are now available for rent. New releases like Live Free or Die Hard, Underdog, 300 and Pirates of the Carribbean are available for $3.99 as promised with older titles like DodgeBall available for $2.99. Interestingly enough, these newly-added movies are available for rent only. The movies that were already part of the iTunes catalog before today are available for both purchase and rental. Also, not all movies are available for rent (yet).

As many of you now know, the "new" Apple TV will feature the same exact hardware as the existing one. The only difference is that the new software will be preloaded and the price is cheaper ($229 vs. $299). Since existing Apple TV owners will get the same update as the new Apple TV at the same time as the new ones wil be available, are there any compelling reasons to buy a new one? My answer is a firm "no".

You can save $20 $30 if you bought a refurbished Apple TV from Apple ($199). Wait a couple of weeks and, voila, you have a brand new Apple TV. Same hardware, same software and same warranty. I have confirmed this with an online representative from the store. The only drawback is that the 160GB version is not available.

If you want it any cheaper, you can always buy a used one from eBay. However, the warranty left on it would most likely be less than one year.

So there you go, just saved you a few bucks.

Apple has posted a video of the new interface walkthrough on the web site. From the video, you can see the brand new translucent pop up menu instead of the old one. The menu floats on top of the content allow using the user the select the desired function.

The walkthrough showcases how a user can browse through the movie rental catalog, rent them (even with HD), how to access photos from Flickr and .Mac accounts, and more.

It's a good day in Apple TV land. "The Steve" has announced that Apple TV will get a host of new features in two weeks, along with some new Apple TV models. The software update will deliver a brand new user interface for the Apple TV. Along with this, iTunes Store will be able to be accessed directly from the Apple TV without the use of any computers.

Not only can Apple TV owners rent DVD-quality movies right from the Apple TV, iTunes Store will also the HD version of the movies along side the regular ones. The pricing of the HD version is $1.00 more than the DVD-quality ones.

Other features that will come with the software update include the ability to view photos from Flickr, podcast directory (including HD), and the long-awaited full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound support.

The pricing of the new Apple TV will start at $229. Yahoo!

[Update] I have chatted with a representative of the Apple online store and she confirmed that the new Apple TVs will be exactly like the current ones.  The only difference is the sofwtare and the price.  Oh well.  So I guess we will all have a new Apple TV in two weeks then.  However, I am assuming that the new software will be Leopard-based instead of Tiger-based like the current ones.

Fresh off Steve Jobs' mouth. iTunes Store will be offering movie rentals from major studios like Touchstone, Paramount, MGM, Miramax, Lions Gate, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Studio, Universal, Sony and Fox. The movie selection will also include first run movies that are still in theaters.

Steve Jobs promised to have 1000 movies for rent by the end of February. The pricing starts at $2.99 for most titles and $3.99 for new releases. The rented movies expire in 30 days. However, once the movie watching starts, there is a 24-hour windows to watch it (without limit in the numer of plays in that 24 hours).

A few months before this site came into existence, there was another blog that covered Apple TV news - CouchApple.tv (by Guy McLimore). Guy's site was reporting on Apple TV news even before Apple TV was released. I was actually checking on Guy's site quite a bit for news to report. Then, a few months into it, the updates just stopped. I was left alone to report on Apple TV-related news.

Then today, I was just browsing through Digg posts for some Apple TV news and noticed that there were a lot of posts from CouchApple.tv . Apparently, the site was relaunched a few weeks back. However, the content is no longer about just Apple TV but about "Apple Personal Entertainment Products & Services"; I'm sure that includes Apple TV.

Welcome back, CouchApple.tv . It's been very lonely reporting on Apple TV alone for a long time. Now, at least I have some company. Again.

Sony BMG is the latest to announce its partnership with Amazon to offer their music catalog to Amazon MP3 Download service. The label, which represents artists like Bruce Springsteen and Foo Fighters, will have their music available on the service by the end of this month.

The move by Sony to add non-DRM MP3 music to Amazon's service is great news for consumers since the format is compatible with virtually all digital media players on the market. Music from Amazon's #1 rival, Apple's iTunes Store, is encoded in AAC format, in which the DRM version could only be played Apple's iPod, iPhone and Apple TV devices.