Clearly, things have been slow around here for the past few days, in part because of my computer problems but also because I was in Houston for a wedding Friday through Sunday. We had a great time during the weekend, although I was disappointed yet pleased that we didn't encounter anything stereotypically Texan while there. Instead, we spent Saturday afternoon visiting the more sophisticated side of Houston.

First we hit up the Rothko Chapel (it is what it sounds like), then moved on to the Menil Collection of modern art. The last culture stop was at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel (pictured on the right), which is an incredible modernistic chapel consisting of stolen Byzantine frescos later recovered and reassembled coupled with a plexiglass frame hanging from the ceiling. Neat. The neighborhood around the museum could have been airlifted directly from Cambridge, MA for all I knew -- it had that kind of academic feel.

Coupled with the iPod item below, Apple also released iTunes 6 today (otherwise there'd be no way for the iPod Video to get content). So I upgraded my iTunes and checked out the new version.

Not only are they offering television shows for $1.99 from ABC, they also have a collection of Pixar shorts and 2,000 music videos available, all for the same price. This is a little strange since I imagine the market price for a 3 minute video is different from that of a 50 minute show. Nevertheless, that is Apple's approach.

This means we're one step closer to the extinction of broadcast television, whose existence is slowly becoming obselescent with the encroachment of on-demand viewing (something David Foster Wallace got sort of right in Infinite Jest). I see this as a good thing, since it seems so ridiculous to pay for so many cable channels only to watch a handful of them. But since the tv show selection on iTunes is minimal at the moment, such a revolution in television is not yet upon us.

Expect Apple to make more television deals, and for some competition to crop up in the near future. In the meantime, their biggest worry might be Participatory Culture's DTV, which offers free Internet TV (although it's likely that their software will be used most for pirated television than legitimate free content). In fact, given Apple's announcement today, I wonder if they're shaking in their boots a little.

Update: After reading more about this, some problems have bubbled up. It looks like the maximum resolution available for these $1.99 downloads is 320 x 240, which obviously wouldn't look good on a TV, let alone an HDTV. So it seems like Apple is for now emphasizing viewing these videos on the iPod itself, despite the mention of component video output in the tech specs.