AppleTV gets primed for Youtube

SPEAKING TO an assembly of high falutin' tech execs at the WSJ's D5 conference, Steve Jobs delivered the not-so-stunning news that Youtube will be integrated with AppleTV in June.

A software update for existing boxes will see a new menu appear on the box's home menu, enabling the browsing of videos on the popular video site. Since YouTube is now owned by Google, and Google and Apple are working closely together on projects such as the iPhone (not to mention the fact that Eric Schmidt sits on Apple's board, and the pair of companies share another man in Al Gore), this is not exactly a surprise.

No surprises elsewhere either, as the content is one way - there's no uploading to YouTube from the AppleTV, just as there's no way to purchase content from the box from iTunes. Jobs was quoted as saying that he imagined the AppleTV as a 'DVD player for the internet', which means getting stuff on to the TV, not a notably two-way process.

Sporting his usual trainers, Jobs also announced that a 160GB version of the device would hit the market soonish, confounding no one that saw that coming a mile off. µ