It’s taken a little while, but there are three new Thunderbolt devices appearing on the market. Sonnet Technologies will have an Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter which lets you connect older devices to your newer Mac. Blackmagic Technologies has their UltraStudio 3D which provides portable video capture and playback for professional editors. And LaCie will have a Little Big Disk, an external storage device with either hard drives or solid-state drives in a built-in RAID 0 configuration.

AppleInsider takes Apple to task for offering highly-compressed (though still High Definition) HD video through the iTunes Store:

A standard 720p file downloaded either through iTunes or an Apple TV consumes about 4Mbps of data, or just a tenth the total bit transfer rate of the optical format and a fifth of the nearly 20Mbps for over-the-air HDTV; even Xbox Video Marketplace video affords more, at 6.8Mbps.

So don’t throw that Blu-Ray player out the window just yet.

But there’s also some good news…

When announcing iTunes Movie Rentals, Steve Jobs said to expect 100 High Definition, 5.1 Surround Sound titles available for rent by February. Although Apple has made this goal, they are really short in their goal of 1,000 standard definition titles. 396 short, to be exact. Although there are 197 HD titles, of which exactly 100 more »

Shaw Wu of American Technology Research is one of the many analysts making predictions on Apple’s third generation version of Apple TV. His predictions remain similar to those of many others: Apple will most likely include digital video recorder functionality (as reported) and will transform the Apple TV that we know into a TiVo-like device, more »

HDCP is a new form of copy protection introduced with the HDMI platform, it stands for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. According to Jeff Carlson from TidBITS, movie rentals on the Apple TV require HDCP. This means if the TV/monitor you’re using your Apple TV with isn’t HDCP-compliant, you won’t be able to play rented movies. more »

More and more HDMI-equipped devices are appearing – and you’ll probably find that your brand new HDTV runs out of free HDMI ports quickly. Devices like Apple TVs, games consoles, satellite receivers and more are all becoming HDMI compliant because it provides the best quality in both audio and video; supporting Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, and 1080p.

XtremeMac, well-known for making iPod and Mac accessories, have introduced an HDMI switcher that is designed to fit with the Apple TV. The device sits nicely underneath or on top of an Apple TV, as it has the same white plastic and aluminium trim that the Apple TV has, as well as exactly the same footprint. It’s also incredibly thin for an HDMI switcher of this type, and looks great wherever it’s placed.

Included in the box is the HDMI switcher itself, and a 5-button remote control – which is used for switching between the four different sources. It’s a shame that you can’t have the box automatically switch between sources when a signal is detected, but systems that have this feature often don’t work too well. The bundled remote control is tiny, and also about the same size as the Apple remote – although this has a different design.

In a press release noting the MacBook Air’s shipping, Apple announced that the Apple TV Take 2 Software Update is “not quite finished” and that Apple “now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two.” The Apple TV Update, announced at Macworld, will allow the more »

A lot of people were really happy to hear Steve Jobs’ announcement at yesterday’s Macworld that you will be able to rent movies directly from iTunes. The movie rentals cost $2.99 for library rentals, and $3.99 for new releases. The piece that sealed the deal during the keynote was the fact that you would be more »