Today Apple held a special event (read press conference) where they announced changes to their iPod/iTunes world.

First and foremost, movies are now on the iTunes Store. Movies from Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, and Miramax (all Disney owned) are available. With a total of 75 files ranging in price from $9.99 to $14.99 this is going to give Amazon’s Unbox a run for it’s money. Especially since you can download these to an iPod. The movies are encoded at 640×480 (all TV shows are at this new resolution as well).

Secondly the iPod gets some updates. There was size bump. You can get 60 gigabytes at $249 and 80 gigabytes at $349. You can now download new games onto the iPod and all games will work on all 5th Gen iPods. With the software update you also get extended play time out of the device as well as something iPod users have been clamoring for since it’s inception, gapless playback. That’s right, no more ripping those 2 hour techno/house mixes into 1 seamless track.

Nanos and Shuffles were not left out. Nanos now come in 3 sizes: 2 gigs ($149), 4 gigs ($199), and 8 gigs ($249). Not to mention the new shuffle is only available in 1GB size but it’s now the size of the iPod Radio Remote.

iTunes gets some updates as well. You can now have multiple Libraries for the different kinds of media available to iTunes. There are also now different views for iTunes. One lets you browse like normal, the second does it by album and a third that lets you look at album covers to find the album you want. But not to be outdone, you can now download album art from the iTunes music store if your mp3s are missing artwork and this is free. I have to say awsome to that one.

Also included was the ability to sync an iPod to multiple computers as long as both computers are authroized on the same account.

So all in all, I have to say that I’m impressed with this line of updates. They’ve added features people have been begging for and threw in a couple of surprises as well. The long rumored movie store is now no longer a rumor but a reality (I wonder what apple bloggers are going to talk about now).

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