It’s less than 2 days away till we find out what Apple has in store for its Showtime event. Everyone’s been talking about it so I thought I would add my 2 cents worth.

Think Secret was one of the first rumour sites to predict new iPods and a 23″ iMac. However, Apple jumped the gun and announced updates to the iMacs the week before the event. If you think about it, this has to mean that Apple has got so much stuff to announce tomorrow that they needed to get the iMac announcement out of the way first. Hmm…

Anyway, I think it’s quite obvious that the announcement will have something to do with the iTunes store and the sale/rental of movies. The theme of the event implies as much (see the movie premier-style invite) and it’s already been leaked that iTunes already has a movie deal in place and is just waiting to be announced.

I’m not so sure that Apple will introduce the long-rumoured video iPod because I think they’re announcement is bigger than new iPods. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a visionary and if Apple is going into movie distribution, they’re going into it in a big way. They’ve already revolutionised personal computing and digital music, and I’m betting that we’ll see them revolutionise digital movies at the Showtime event.

How are they going to do it? The problem with digital video now is that most of us watch it on our computers. The geekier (and richer) ones among us may own media centre PCs and may hook them up to their TV, but for the majority that’s just too complicated. So, in typical Apple style, I think that they will introduce a very user-centric device to bridge that gap between the PC and the TV.

This device (let’s call it iTheatre) will be a set top box with a hard drive that will hook up to the TV, the internet and to your Mac (or even PC). Users can then browse and buy movies through the TV or Mac. Movies will then be downloaded directly onto the iTheatre. Users can watch their movies or TV shows on the TV through a Front Row-like interface. If their Mac is connected, they can even browse iPhoto and play music from iTunes. For added portability, users will be able to copy the movies to their iPods and their Macs.

The iTheatre will be Apple’s foray into the living room and they will bring with it their Apple style. If implemented successfully (and Apple has a knack at that), it’s going to totally revolutionise movie distribution. It’s going to be for digital movies what the iPod was for digital music.

I’m sure there will be DRM involved, but I can’t imagine that Apple will slap really restrictive and crappy DRM on the downloads. The worst thing they could do is to be super-restrictive and hijack your computer, like Amazon has done with their new Unbox movie download service. Check out Tom Merrit’s blog post and rant on the Buzz Out Loud podcast Ep. 308 about Amazon Unbox.

Back to Showtime - prepare for Apple to revolutionise video-on-demand. That’s all I got and we’ll see how far I’m off when Steve makes his announcement.