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With Macworld coming up, I cooked up a theory. I’ll lay it out right now. Apple’s going to update the Apple TV with Blu-ray playback and HD content in the iTunes store including movie rentals.

The last two mentions (HD content) are kind of part of the package, but I’ll explain my Blu-ray theory.

Three major studios jumped to Blu-ray in the past week (Warner, New Line and Paramount with Warner and Paramount leaving HD-DVD. Sony and Apple have always had a close relationship. Apple’s said they would support Blu-ray if they got into the HD game.

With such sudden and active response in the HD market (which, granted, could be due to holiday sales), it seems too clear that there’s some insider info we don’t know about. If I’m right, you can expect Apple to increase its customer support (1-on-1s) to handle educating customers on how to create HD menus for Blu-ray, which (again, if I’m right) was probably a contractual agreement with Sony.

If this is all true, and let’s be serious – it’s probably not, then let’s hope the price of the Apple TV drops a bit too. $200 would be a great price point if it included a Blu-ray player.