After having already unveiled its big digital home initiatives at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Intel today filled in some of the details behind its LCOS display technology for platform televisions, its entertainment PC, and chipsets to enable these technologies.

Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor giant delivered the afternoon keynote covering "The Digital Home," in a presentation heavily punctuated by pre-filmed testimonials about the promise of that vision.

"Our vision is actually very straightforward," he said. "It's about giving consumers what they want. Consumers will be able to enjoy content anywhere, anytime and on any device in their home."

For this technology to be embraced by consumers, it has to be simple enough to self configure right out of the box, it must wirelessly connect, and it must offer high definition audio and video, Burns said.

With that in mind, Burns showed two prototypes of Intel's prototype "Entertainment PC." The first platform, code-named "Kessler" is based on the Pentium 4 process and Intel's new Grantsdale chipset running Windows XP Media Center Edition, Intel said.

The device will HD capable and will be able to wirelessly share content with other devices. It will include a TV tuner, DVD player and personal video recorder (PVR) and will be capable of acting as a digital media adapter. This platform will be available to PC manufacturers this year.

Answering the call for an end to the long boot time required by PCs, Intel announced a prototype reference design code-named "Sandow" which will offer "instant on/visually off" capability and a HDTV PVR. The reference design will be available in 2005. The instant on feature answers criticisms from historical players in the consumer electronics industries who have pointed to PC's long boot times as a reason why they were inappropriate for most CE applications.

Intel will offer two chipsets later this year to work with the Entertainment PC. Grantsdale and Alderwood will feature DDR memory, providing higher bandwidth and cooler temperatures. Grantsdale will also feature PCI express, higher bandwidth bus technology and an integrated wireless access point. The chipset will also include Intel High Definition Audio, formerly code-named Azalia.

In a question and answer session following the keynote, Burns could offer few details on Intel's early manufacturing experience with the liquid crystal on silicon display technology that it has said will appear in end products on retailer shelves by the end of this year.

Intel is still working on the process and will have answers on yields in a few months, according to Burns.

"We will say that the quality we will ship will be stunning," he said. "We are working on learning curves on the process. But this will truly shift the economics of this [big screen television] industry."

Intel also unveiled a set of test tools to help designers create digital home products that interoperate, and the company also announced the first building block products validated for the Intel Networked Media Product Requirements (Intel NMPR). NMPR is a set of development guidelines for developing home products

During the keynote, Intel and Dolby Laboratories announced they will work together to extend the CE sound experience to the PC using Intel High Definition Audio.

Dolby wasn't the only partnership Intel announced.

In addition, Intel announced a co-marketing and technology collaboration with Movielink designed to accelerate deployment of premium online movie content to multiple devices in the home and mobile PCs.

Intel will act as a sponsor for Movielink's program for AOL for Broadband users called Winter Movies, enabling them to download films for 99 cents. Intel will also sponsor and promote the Movielink College Site, which allows students to download movies at reduced rental rates.

The industry is working on providing the intellectual property protection that content owners need to make this kind of technology possible, Burns said.

"The music industry didn't initially provide an alternative," said Burns. "So people told music industry I don't want to buy 14 songs for 15 bucks. I just want to buy 3 songs. These new systems give people a way to buy this content in a legal manner. The same is true in the video space. We need to balance the huge opportunity with the protection for intellectual property."

By: DocMemory
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