AMD unveils living room PC reference design: world squints in wonder

The days of finding brands like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and Cisco limited to the office-space are long gone. Windows Media Center devices designed around Intel's Viiv platform and soon, Apple's iTV (or whatever the final name will be) are perfectly happy to snuggle up with the living room TV and a bowl of WiFi. So no surprise to find AMD coveting a cut of that turf too, with this, their new living room PC reference design -- a prototype AMD hopes will be copied by manufacturers to bring AMD's Live! entertainment platform to market that much faster. AMD's VP of Consumer Business, Joe Menard, said that these living room PCs "may come out next year" and might even include quiet running, fanless designs if we read into his comments just a bit. With Windows Vista Media Center installed, the device will then be capable of storing all your digital media for pumping back out the TV or other PCs on the home network. Yeah, we know, that's a lousy picture but it's all that AMD is offering -- come on AMD, nobody dances with the wallflower.

[Arno @ Nov 17th 2006 9:52AM]

Haha "squints in wonder" is right. They couldn't bother to release a little higher-res pics?

[obricko @ Nov 17th 2006 9:56AM]

Yeah... Another media center PC... Thats all we need... I would put up the cash if they promised a HD/Digital Cable tuner HDMI out and component out along with optical audio out... For lets say under 1,250k

[Jason @ Nov 17th 2006 10:08AM]

1,250k? You'd buy it as long as it's less than 1.25 million dollars?

[Ian Jardine @ Nov 17th 2006 10:22AM]

It's npot a small picture. I think it's a "small" sized device with a system on a chip by AMD so it can be the ultimate 3 inch DVR.

[Alexandre Souza @ Nov 17th 2006 10:26AM]

I solved all my problems of a GREAT media center PC, and it is called XBOX. XBMC rox.

[Sean @ Nov 17th 2006 12:22PM]

This IS the iTV... why do you think Apple is ordering those AMD parts...

[dm @ Nov 17th 2006 12:30PM]

why buy this whn all the other one are on the market and aldo all the free os system that can and maby do so much more!!!

[Michael @ Nov 17th 2006 6:29PM]

With this talk about Apple and AMD teaming up, Now we hear about this AMD device and before we heard about Apple's iTV, makes we wonder if the iTV with have AMD inside and if this is just AMD's branded version of it. Kinda like the panasonic version of the GameCube.
Oh well I'm just taking stabs in the dark.