Despite Apple's familiar credo, "Think Different," CEO Steve Jobs and his comeback-kid company have nothing but conformity in mind. Why else would he create audio software (iTunes) that encodes music so that it can only be played back on Apple products? This hat trick of technology — turning hardware, software and content into a closed system — is historically a scheme that fails (Sony Betamax, anyone?), but with roughly 75 percent market share for both iPod and iTunes, it's been working very well for Apple for the past three years.

Now the company has turned its sights on video. Last week Jobs held aloft an iPod that also plays movies and recorded television shows. Its introduction left some critics (including this one) wondering if perhaps Apple hadn't gotten ahead of itself. While the iPod is hands-down the best MP3 player ever made, who wants to watch video on a 2.5-inch screen? The iPod Photo never came close to outselling the music-only model, so why should the iPod video fare any better?

That's all moot, actually. The new iPod is still a music player and since Apple has been selling well over six million of those a quarter, Jobs doesn't really have to worry about it.

What's more important are the deals Apple has struck with Hollywood. Disney and its broadcast whipping boy, ABC, are already offering TV shows on the iTunes music store as well as a few animated shorts from Pixar. If you've missed this week's episode of Lost or Desperate Housewives, you can catch up for $1.99. That's not something I envision myself doing, but I know a lot of people who would. And if this works the way Jobs wants it to, you can bet several other broadcasters will jump on.

Furthermore you don't really have to watch the video on iPod. You can connect it to a TV (with the right cable) or watch on your monitor using iTunes 6 (though, right now, some of the video quality is pretty poor).

Technologically there's nothing stopping Apple from offering better resolution video. If the company gets the right kind of content deals, iTunes could become the NetFlix of the computer world. Perhaps that's what Jobs is really after. But he's not going to conquer Hollywood the same way he did the music industry. Services like TiVo and other digital video recorders (DVRs) already make it pretty easy to keep up with "must-see" shows. And communications giants like Comcast and Verizon are already offering broadband

movie downloads. Apple doesn't have the advantage with video it did with audio. (Legal downloading services were scarce when iTunes came on the scene.) If Apple's game here is control, it's going to have to make the video experience on iPod a whole lot more magical than what it's got going at the moment.

David Dritsas is the editor of Philadelphia-based consumer technology magazine E-Gear.