San Francisco: Apple Inc said yesterday that Google Inc's YouTube Internet video site will soon be available on its Apple TV set-top box.
Starting in mid-June, Apple TV will stream videos wirelessly from the internet on YouTube, the company said. Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available then, it said.
Apple TV works with iTunes to play users' content - video, movies, television shows and the like - wirelessly on a wide-screen television.
Apple also on Wednesday launched iTunes Plus, a music download service that has no copy-protection software limiting consumers' use of the songs. It features artists with EMI Group, including Coldplay, The Rolling Stones and Joss stone.
Jobs has called on the music industry to allow online retailers like iTunes to sell digital songs without restrictions to give the digital music sector a boost and give consumers what they want.
EMI said in April that it would allow retailers to sell its music without protection, with its first partner being Apple. Earlier this month, EMI said it would also work with online retailer Amazon.
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Along with the YouTube announcement, Apple said that YouTube members can also log in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save videos.
MTV Networks owners Viacom Inc said it would welcome the chance to license its content to Apple.
If available, users can upgrade existing purchases to DRM-free versions for 30 cents a song or $3 for most albums, Apple said.
We're always vigilant about protecting our copyrights. But we would welcome the opportunity to license our content to Apple as we do with all distributors, a Viacom spokesman said.
Viacom sued YouTube in March for $1 billion charging it with massive intentional copyright infringement after finding hundreds of thousands of Viacom-owned videos uploaded to the service without its permission.
Apple also said it was selling a new Apple TV with a 160 gigabyte hard drive. The drive has four times the storage of its previous TVs for up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.
With a wireless, high-speed Internet connection, Apple TV can automatically sync content from one Mac or Windows PC or stream content from as many as five additional computers to a television without wires.
An Apple TV costs $299. The larger model will cost $399.
We definitely think it's the right thing to do, said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes. In this case, EMI's a leader and we think others will follow.
In the meantime, Apple's iTunes Store will continue to offer songs in the same copy-protected format as today at 99 cents per download and encoded at 128 kilobits per second.
The iTunes Plus versions are encoded at 256 kbps, which Apple says makes the audio quality on par with original recordings.
Shares of Apple rose $4.42, or 3.
9 per cent, to close at $118.77 on Wednesday.
The unrestricted content means some songs purchased from iTunes will work for the first time directly on portable players other than Apple's iPod, including Microsoft Corp's Zune.
Inaugural batch of iTunes Plus songs includes music from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney's classic albums.
The DRM-free tracks feature a higher sound quality and cost $1.29 apiece - 30 cents more than the usual 99 cent price of other, copy-protected songs at the market-leading online music store.
If available, users can upgrade existing purchases to DRM-free versions for 30 cents a song or $3 for most albums.
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