On January 9th, just as the Consumer Electronics Show is revving up its annual bacchanal of electronic goodies - Steve Jobs will stride on to the stage at Mac World in San Fransisco and officially release Apple's iTV device.

The name is unknown, but in rare Apple form, the device itself has already been revealed.

The devise is significant, perhaps even game changing. And so it seemed worthwhile for the state of the market for Consumer Electronics, and the impact that the Apple living room device could have on advertising and media consumption generally.

First, a look back. The iPod itself is just five years old. Announced just a month after 9/11 - (as Steven Levy's book "the Perfect thing" so poignantly reminded me). And in 5 years the device has done what no other has been able to do. It turned the music industry upside down. It changed pricing of music from albums to songs. It created an iPod eco-system, and along the way almost accidentally created podcasting.

Today the iPod has 88% of the market for digital music downloads, and the ITune music store virtually owns the sale of network television series episodes. This, despite the fact that watching video on an iPod is not a great experience (even Jobs admits that).

Hmm.... something's got to happen, right?

So now we've got Apple iTV. A few stats. It's priced like a consumer device ($299), it's got HDMI so it's a simple single plug into your "Big Flat Screen," as Jobs calls it. And it's pre-wired with 802.11b WiFi. So for the digital early adopters it will literally plop into your home digital set up.

Oh, and it will connect directly to your living room PC or Mac and then to the Apple iTunes store.

Few things it's not. It's not a tivo. No hard drive. And it's not a cable box replacement. No cable card here.

So, why does this matter sooooo much to marketers?

First, because iPod lovers are fanatical, and they WANT to buy stuff to jazz up their iPods. So this isn't going to languish on the shelf like the Microsoft home-media center pro extender whatever you call it. This thing will SELL. It will create an economy just as the iPod did.

And second, because the passion that has driven the adoption of YouTube (100,000,000 video views a day) is hardly near saturation point. In fact it's just begun. Because while some percentage of web visitors will be content makers (2% 15% ? who knows) - the large majority will be content consumes of UGC. Which means that the real explosion in UGC has been waiting for a playback experience that is more TV like.

And my bet is that Apple is about to unleash this experience on the world. They will use their brilliant marketing and super-hip market position to make their iTV device and extension of the most popular consumer electronics device in history (the iPod).

That means that for marketers - there's an opportunity to grab hold of a new trend that has every thing they've ever wanted in TV and Direct Marketing combined. Narrow Niche Casting. Focused User-Generated Video (and advertiser created video, and of course video from all the sources we've come to know) directly 'discovered' on the net, and brought home via the net, and then streamed wirelessly to you Big Flat Screen TV.

It's the starting gun. The race is one. Media will be made for you. Delivered to you. And Shared among you and your friends. Apple's iTV is the missing link. Last mile to the living room from the den. The connection that turns web video into consumer entertainment.

It's going to be cool. Steve Job's said so. And I'm not betting against him.