Home entertainment news: Lots of it

Apple has big plans to own the entertainment parts of your house, but so do Amazon, Microsoft, and NBC in a way. The biggest piece (at the moment) is iTV. To be released early next year, it's designed to connect to your TV … and play - without wires - all of the movies, videos, photos and music that sit on your Mac or PC elsewhere in the house," the New York Times reports. Enabling that is the iTunes 7 "extreme makeover," providing movie downloads – joining CinemaNow, Movielink and, as of last week, Amazon.com. Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro lays into Hollywood for making movie downloading so complicated but says Amazon and iTunes are a real improvement. The Los Angeles Times has the story too. NBC will "offer episodes of some of its new prime-time shows for free online viewing on personal computers," Reuters reports. Meanwhile, Microsoft unveiled Zune, which it hopes will compete with the video iPod, the Wall Street Journal says, and maybe steal some thunder from those new iPods Apple also just debuted.