Ever since Jobs decided to set the digital entertainment world on fire with his declaration of the (still temporarily code-named) iTV, the curious have been asking, "Well, what exactly is the iTV?" We ourselves, among many others, have only been able to give snippets of information as they came. And we're just as curious as you guys are.

Enter Macworld. Even they don't have as close a look as they would have liked of the iTV, but being the Mac experts that they are, have decided to proceed with what Steve Jobs has said about the iTV, gathered stuff from the September 12 presentation, and gave this FAQ on the iTV. So to all who've been asking what exactly is the iTV, here are highlights of their extensive FAQ:

• What is iTV? We've once called it the Living Room Mac, based on the educated guess of a New York Times writer, because it IS a Living Room Mac. It combines the digital media convergence of the Mac's Front Row - which connects your digital TV to a Mac CPU and to the Internet beyond - with the wireless ease of AirPort. A lot easier than hooking up the Mac Mini to the TV. iTV will stream iTunes media running off a Mac or Windows PC and can be operated with the Apple Remote.

• The "temporarily-named" iTV? It can change. Call it Apple's iDevice-prefixing penchant. The thing is, Elgato's already making the eyeTV, a digital TV receiver. Even Apple has an "iTV" branded accessory out there with the Monster iTV link. Steve Jobs called it an internal code-name. It is a snappy, albeit temporary, code-name, though.

• How much will it cost? For now, estimates are $299.

• Is iTV limited to iTunes video media? Macworld's guess is... probably not. Best guess is that it will play both MP4 and H.264-encoded video media. There's a small chance that Apple may let it play other formats as well, such as DivX or DVD's MPEG-2. If not, there's always converting file formats and uploading the conversions to iTunes on your PC.

• What ports does it have? The prototype version Jobs revealed to the world showed the following ports: Power, Ethernet, HDMI, Component Video, Analog Stereo Audio, Toslink Digital Audio, and USB 2.0.

• A USB 2.0 port? Macworld has no idea what it's for, either. Maybe it's there for the iPod dock. Their other, out-of-the-box guesses include external storage media, or even a USB video camera - "Okay, that last one's pretty far fetched." But we don't know. After all, if Apple's doing an iPhone, why not video phones in the living room through the iTV?
  

• And what can't iTV do? Well, for starters it's not a TiVo, so it won't record programs. Despite the Ethernet connection, it won't (so far?) surf the Web. It has no optical drive, so it won't play optical media. And it doesn't have an internal hard drive. Neither will owners be able to buy iTunes music or video straight from the iTV, based on Apple's demo - though Macworld says that it's probably something for the company to reconsider.