Today, as many of you have no doubt heard, Apple released a bevy of updates to its popular iTunes and iPod products. Every iPod line was updated; an all-new Shuffle, seriously updated Nanos (now with colored bodies), and refreshed full-size iPods — along with price drops across all the lines — keep the products competitive. Although there was no wide-screen, touch-screen iPod as some hoped for, it is no doubt still in the wings due to the emphasis on the new wide-screen downloadable movies. That’s right, you can now buy near-DVD quality movies from iTunes for prices ranging from $10-$15, and you can view them on your iPod, your computer, or — starting in the first part of 2007 — a new device currently code-named the iTV that will stream anything in your iTunes library to your television, all controlled through a typically slick Apple interface. Driving all of this new video greatness is the most significant update to iTunes since it was first released. The new iTunes 7 has too many new features to possibly list here, but my favorites are the new ways of viewing your media collection (an album list view, and a cool new “virtual shelf” view called Cover Flow where you can flip through all your album covers — which iTunes will now download for you, automatically, for ANY media you have in your iTunes library), the better organization of the different iTunes features, and the very handy, fully-integrated management center for your iPod. No more hunting around the web for firmware updates for your iPod, or digging through the cluttered general preferences window to decide what gets synced and what doesn’t.

As Steve Jobs said during his keynote today, once the iTV arrives (under a different name), it will “complete the picture” — the same stuff you buy will be available on your computer, on your iPod, and in your living room. If it works as well as it did in the demo today, this may actually be a product integration scheme I’d be interested in. The only downside I see right now to purchasing movies through iTunes is that they’re not technically in HD, and they don’t have DVD extras. But other than that, it looks like Apple has managed to do what other major tech companies (Microsoft, HP, Gateway, Dell) have been struggling to do for the better part of five years — truly bring the entertainment value of a computer into the living room in an easy-to-use way.

If you use iTunes, I encourage you to get iTunes 7 and play around with the new features.