News

16/9/2003

Intel Delivers Products, Technologies and Tools for the Digital Home

Intel Corporation today showed how the digital home is becoming a reality with new products, technologies and services that move the industry closer to the goal of enabling consumers to enjoy content anywhere, anytime and on any device at home.

During his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum, Fall 2003, Louis Burns, vice president and co-general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, discussed progress the industry has made on developing industry guidelines for distributing digital media in the home. He also previewed innovative new products, product designs and technologies for the digital home. He encouraged the computing, consumer electronics and entertainment industries to jointly make premium content available to consumers as the next step in delivering a true digital home experience.

Burns demonstrated consumer products that are available today or will be in the near future. This included a high-definition video stream running on a previously unannounced desktop processor, the Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processor Extreme Edition 3.20 GHz supporting Hyper-Threading Technology(1), with an additional 2 Megabytes of cache. This new processor will be targeted at high-end gamers and computing power users.

"The industry has made great progress toward developing interoperability guidelines as well as innovative products and services that are helping make the digital home a reality for consumers," Burns said. "The next step in the digital home is enabling the availability of premium content on the home network, giving consumers access to the type of compelling content they want to enjoy. We're committed to continue to work with the consumer electronics, music and film industries to deliver the capability which, in turn, will create new business opportunities for all."

Innovative Products for the Digital Home

Several new and innovative products will provide consumers with a great experience in the digital home. Gateway will soon make available the LCD Media Center, which will serve as an all-in-one digital entertainment device. Intel and Gateway have worked closely to bring this innovative product to market. The media center is powered by an Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology(2), a technology that allows consumers to simultaneously run multiple programs more smoothly and efficiently. For example, consumers can record their favorite TV show in the background while playing a 3D game in the foreground.

Intel today introduced the Intel(R) 815 Digital Set Top Box Reference Design, which delivers a powerful platform for software decode to enable a low-cost solution delivering video-on-demand over a broadband connection. The flexible platform will allow OEMs a fast time-to-market solution for the fast growing IP-video on demand market segment today, serving both digital homes, as well as the hospitality industry. The design allows service providers to add further optional services as they develop these market segments such as voice over IP and residential gateway/access point. The design can also be utilized for applications such as networked digital media recorders and personal video recorders. Products based on the Intel design are available from Wyse technology.

Intel also showcased next-generation digital media adapters (DMAs), devices that wirelessly transfer personal digital video, photos and music from a PC to a TV and a stereo. The DMAs included iCube's Play@TV and Lenovo's Media Link.

Emerging PC Technologies

Other product designs and innovative technologies will help make products in the digital home easy and fun to use. Burns conducted the first live demonstration of PCI Express x16 graphics, the next generation I/O standard that will be available in solutions from graphics vendors in 2004. Intel announced the Balanced Technology Extended (BTX) form factor specification, formerly code-named "Big Water." The new form factor enables the next generation in PC system design, and is expected to supercede the ATX family of motherboard form factors over time. BTX will enable the industry to strike a better balance in thermal management, system size and shape, acoustics, and performance - all critical attributes to innovate desktop PCs for the digital home. BTX supports traditional desktop sizes and ensures industry specifications-based small form factor PCs.

A new technology available from Intel in mid-2004, will help to simplify home networking by including a wireless access point and router functionality as an embedded feature of the PC to help minimize the need for external equipment or cables to build a small home network. Intel also previewed an instant on/off technology, allowing consumers to press the "on" button and the PC is ready in a few seconds. If the PC loses power, this technology quickly recovers without losing data or rebooting the PC under normal operation. Intel plans to include this technology on platforms in the next few years.

Delivering Premium Content to the Home

To make the digital home a reality for consumers, the ability to share protected content between devices will be an important factor. Companies across the computing, CE and entertainment industries believe that Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) over IP, a content management technology co-developed by Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic), is the way to accomplish this. DTCP over IP enables digital premium entertainment content to be delivered between digital home products over wired and wireless networks. The DTCP over IP specification revision .9 is now available at www.dtcp.com.

Tools for Developers

In order to accelerate new product development in the digital home ecosystem, Intel is providing a comprehensive UPnP(TM) technology tools suite for leading industry hardware and software platforms. The Intel 2003 Networked Media Product Requirements (Intel(R) NMPR) document has also been released today and is intended to provide a framework to improve interoperability among devices in the digital home. Intel will also make available an Intel NMPR conformance and interoperability test capability for developers. These tools and further details can be found on the Intel Developer Network for the digital home on Intel's developer Web site.

(1) Hyper-Threading technology requires a computer system with an Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processor with HT Technology, a chipset and BIOS that utilize this technology, and an operating system that includes optimizations for this technology. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use.
(2) Look for systems with the Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 Processor with HT Technology logo which your system vendor has verified utilize Hyper-Threading Technology. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use.

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