Apple today announced the immediate ability to purchase movies through iTunes the same day that they are released to DVD. This takes away another hurdle that Apple needed to get over to increase the number of online movie rentals through iTunes, and comes only months after the initial launch of the ability to purchase movies at all through the online service.

Apple says they will be providing new releases for sale from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Lionsgate, among a couple others. The new release purchases are priced at $14.99 each and can be viewed on a Mac, PC or any iPod with video and require iTunes version 7.6.2 which is available now as a free download.

The studios won’t like this device one bit. The MZK-NAS02SG1T network attached storage device from Planex. The $524 1TB Gigabit Ethernet block claims “universal access” for all your devices, courtesy of its DigiJuke browser, searching and tagging BitTorrent and YouTube content you want downloaded in the appropriate PSP and iPod (MPEG-4), Wii (FLV), or TV (MPEG-2) format for in-home or portable viewing.

The NAS will also stream audio and video to your iTunes laptops or desktops, DLNA TV, Xbox 360, or other compliant device in the home. A USB 2.0 jack offers one-touch dubbing of USB sticks while a second around back offers storage expansion. It ships with a pair of 3.5-inch 500GB drives, which you may want to swap out for higher capacity drives at a later date.

Pioneer over the weekend announced new additions to its line up of AVIC-F advanced in-dash navigators. These new offerings, which join the AVIC-F500BT shown off at CES, are the AVIC-F700BT, AVIC-F900BT and Premier branded AVIC-F90BT. Pricing is set at $850, $1,100 and $1,200, respectively, and all units will be available in June.

Pioneer is describing these in-dash units as going “beyond navigation” by offering “enhanced navigation and entertainment features paired with sophisticated voice control.” While you may read that however you choose there is no doubt Pioneer has packed these units with a ton of features, including “Apple iPod connectivity, Bluetooth, MSN Direct, HD radio, XM and SIRIUS Satellite Radio, single CD, DVD video playback and compressed audio and video playback through USB and SD memory devices.”

For the full details, check out the press release after the jump. These Pioneer units definitely look to be the cause of many wonderful distractions as you cruise down the open roads.

Starbucks and Apple’s iTunes continue to expand the relationship which shows synergy between latte drinking customers and the iPods they love. The latest incarnation is the announcement of a weekly free music download which will be made available to Starbucks in-store customers.

This new promotion, dubbed Pick of the Week, debuted today with a song from the band Counting Crows. Customers who are in-store on a Tuesday will be offered for free a card with the latest song information as well as a code to download that tune from  iTunes. A music video looks to also be available, though its not clear if that will be a weekly choice as well. Whatever the download, customers will have 60 days from the week the card is distributed to cash in their code for the download.

Alpine recently said it was set to make available a new advanced audio/video head unit for use in cars. It is called the IVA-W505 and you’ll find it pricing at around $1,100.

The Alpine IVA-W505 offers up an on-screen graphical user interface with touchscreen controls and a seven-inch display. It can offer support and control of satellite radio, HD Radio, MP3/WMA digital audio players, mass storage devices and Bluetooth hands-free calling. It also tags HD Radio music at the touch of a button (and optional tuner) and transmits the tagged information to an attached iPod for later purchase through iTunes.

The digital music revolution is definitely here, all you need to do is look around and it seems that everyone is using an iPod or other PMP device. Digital tracks have quickly outpaced traditional CD sales and online digital music sales have skyrocketed.

Back in February we reported that Apple’s iTunes store was the second largest music retailer in the United States. Apple announced this week that it was now the top music retailer in America, surpassing Wal-Mart.

It looks like Sony’s next firmware update for the PS3 might include even more than the BD-Live interactive content on Blu-ray discs and the loss of the max file size for some video media. According to PCWorld the 2.20 firmware upgraded for the PS3 will also bring the ability to transfer Blu-ray movies from discs on the PS3 to the Playstation Portable.

This would be a nice feature for Sony to add sounds like it would be not unlike the Digital Copy we saw from FOX movies for iTunes. Instead of taking the time to convert each film into a special version for the PSP, some Blu-ray discs would have a “portable copy” of the movie that can be transferred to the PSP.

Tivo this week released a paid update of its software which will make it easier for its customers to download video to their Tivo boxes. It is known as Tivo Desktop Plus 2.6 and it will run you around $25.

The Tivo Desktop Plus 2.6 software, available for Windows users only at this moment, makes use of the Tivo Season Pass functionality to let one manage web video content. With it one can subscribe to RSS feeds over a range of video content. This is done in conjunction with Web browsers, RSS video clients such as iTunes podcasts, or other video download software to automatically copy to their TiVo DVR’s Now Playing List alongside recorded broadcast and cable TV shows.

We all like our music without DRM and many places from iTunes to Wal-Mart are now offering tracks with no DRM. SanDisk announced that it will able be offering exclusive tracks that are DRM free pre-loaded onto microSD cards.

SanDisk says that it will promote more than 50 new and emerging artists on microSD cards to help launch the new 8GB Sansa Fuze PMP. The “Sansa Sessions” microSD card includes music across several genres including rock, pop, hip hop and the cards include music videos and photos from more than 30 record labels.

Lionsgate said today it is working with Apple to make use of the latter’s Digital Copy for iTunes so select DVDs will also be available for digital viewing. The first Lionsgate film to get the iTunes treatment will be Rambo on May 27th.

Lionsgate said that by using Digital Copy for iTunes, those who purchase select DVDs or Blu-ray Discs will be able to insert the disc into a computer. The customer then enters a unique code into iTunes, and the movie is automatically copied to their iTunes library.

According to a number of UK-based online sources, Paul McCartney has officially worked out a deal to bring the Beatles back-catalog to multiple music download sites including a $400 million agreement with iTunes to offer the tracks. All of the Beatles currently have works available for download through iTunes, but the likely most popular tunes have thus far eluded the mammoth music download service.

According to reports, albums including Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Help and the White Album could be available from iTunes on possibly other online services “within months”. Now that the deal has been worked out, officials for the Beatles are reportedly in the process of creating digital versions of the songs to be available for download.

Apple’s iTunes online music download service has moved into the number 2 position as the second largest U.S. music retailer, beaten out this time only by Wal-Mart. We had seen just last July that iTunes had moved into the number 3 spot, beating out Amazon and following both Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and the trend so far is continuing in Apple’s favor.

The iStick is designed by Alexei Mikhailov and is roughly the size of a lipstick tube, with four touchscreens. The white cube on the end does tend to ruin the look some, but it still manages to look pretty neat. It has Wi-Fi, so you can browse the iTunes Store on a screen the size of your finger.

The designer admits that the iStick isn’t for viewing movies and the screen is too small for effective photo viewing. He thinks of it more as a brother to the iPod shuffle. It’s interesting, and for some reason makes me realize that this is the way that product packaging will be headed in the future.

Today Apple announced the release of a new 16GB iPhone giving double the storage capacity in the device. The Apple store was down for a while this morning, just in the U.S., which especially on a Tuesday indicates the company had something new coming. When the site came back up the Apple store now shows two models, one with the original 8GB capacity for $399 and a new 16GB iPhone model for $499. All the specs aside from the increased storage capacity appear to be the same, and no, there was no 3G added into the 16GB model.

In addition to the iPhone getting some more storage, the iPod touch also saw an increase in its capacity to store music, pictures and video with Apple also announcing a 32GB version today as well. The 32GB iPod touch was added to the Apple store this morning retailing for $499, along with the existing 16GB model priced at $399 and the 8GB model going for $299.

Amazon today announced plans for an international rollout of the Amazon MP3 music download service to take place sometime yet this year. This announcement is probably the biggest threat to Apple’s mammoth iTunes to date as it likely to cause the reining media download leader to make some changes in coming months to keep up with the competition.

Once Sony BMG came onboard Amazon became the only online retailer to offer downloadable MP3′s from all of the four most major music labels that are all also DRM-free. Amazon MP3 now boasts over 3.3 million songs available with no restrictions on what player or computer the songs can run on, and no restrictions of how many places users can copy it to.