After weeks of speculation, Apple appears to be sidestepping all of the rumors and charting their own path: iOS 4.2 will be released on Monday around 10am PST (1pm EST), and a companion update for the new second-generation Apple TV will finally bring video playback from those devices via AirPlay as well.

Macworld is reporting that Apple has officially announced the release date for the long-awaited iOS 4.2 update -- and that day is today, Monday, November 22. It’s expected to hit around 10am PST (1pm EST), so you might want to start planning and early (or late, for East Coasters) lunch now.

As always, the iOS 4.2 update will be available via iTunes by connecting your device and clicking on Check for Update. It’s interesting to note that the iPad will actually be getting iOS 4.2.1, which appears to be the same as the second gold master release to developers last week.

iOS 4.2 arrives alongside a companion update for the new second-generation Apple TV, bringing the black box to version 4.1 and finally delivering on AirPlay video playback functionality. As you may recall, AirPlay is Apple’s updated technology for beaming audio and video wirelessly from an iOS 4.2 mobile device to the black Apple TV over a local network.

The Apple TV 4.1 update also adds support for VoiceOver, which enables spoken menus, which can be turned on from the Accessibility submenu under Settings > General. You can even set the speed of the voice, ranging from a pretty fast default setting to very fast and even a slow mode. (Here’s hoping that the ATV 4.1 software also squashes some bugs -- we’ll all know soon enough.)

Unfortunately, all this update love has one downside, and as you may have guessed, it’s the much-touted AirPrint feature, which is now only compatible with a handful of HP ePrint printers -- you still won’t be able to print to a shared network printer unless you rely on third-party programs like Fingerprint or Printopia to enable them. Apple claims “for now, AirPrint is for AirPrint-enabled printers” -- which at least gives us hope that this will change in the future.

There are early Twitter reports that at least iOS 4.2.1 for the iPad is starting to show up on Apple’s servers, so start clicking that update button in iTunes and see what pops up!

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