With VIIV Intel Aims at Sitting Near Your TV Set

A fierce battle will be fought for the chosen device that will sit besides the livingroom or even the bedroom TV set.
The competitors are not only companies dealing with gaming consoles, as it has been announced so far, and Intel is also making its way into our homes.

At IDF, aside from the new models of processors, Intel also unveiled the VIIV technology which aims at achieving the producers' long dreamed convergence between PC and entertainment devices.

VIIV is specifically designed for music, TV and movies; the first PCs based on this technology, the VIIV PCs, will try to earn their place near the TV set in the first quarter of 2006. Intel will even apply colored stickers so that everyone understands that the devices are for entertainment purposes only.

And since the company has sworn allegiance to the dual-core processors, the VIIV computers will also be fitted with such models and they will also have instant on/off functions; in addition, they will also work with TV sets and other entertainment devices.

The bottom line is that not only Play Station 3 or Xbox 360 want to become the entertainment hub of the entire family, Intel would also like to join the party. The problem is that from what Intel has revealed so far, it is unclear how the VIIV PCs are better from the ones running Microsoft's Media Center Edition, whose sales have been disappointing.

Intel didn't say anything about the prices of the new VIIV systems, but obviously, it hopes it will sell hundreds of thousands of processors thanks to this invention.