Viiv almost alive

By Alun Williams

Posted on 12 Dec 2005 at 16:31

We can expect the arrival of Viiv, Intel's platform for home-based digital media entertainment, early in the New Year, and a number of Taiwan PC companies will be in the vanguard.

Small-form-factor specialists AOpen and Shuttle and the likes of Acer, Gigabyte Technology, and MSI will be in on the launch, with mass production slated for early February, reports Digitimes

According to its sources, the officially-sanctioned Viiv platform will consist of a dual-core Pentium D 800/900, 945 and 955 chipsets and Intel Pro/100 PM/PL/VE/VM network cards.

Expected in Q1 2006, the official launch will be on 9 January, according to Digitimes. This places it just after the Consumer Electronics Show, which will be held in Vegas 5-8 January.

At the beginning of this month, Intel lined up content partners for Viiv, such as BSkyB, TiVo, Napster and Tiscali.

Intel's technology works with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition, but also add extra connectivity options. The hardware that the chip-giant provides - under the Viiv platform logo - will effectively be the digital technology that controls access to the digital content.