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Intel's Linux Based Home Media Gateway
An anonymous reader writes "This article at LinuxDevices.com takes a look at a new 'home media gateway' design that was unveiled today by Intel at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, CA. The device is expected to be manufactured by multiple consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, and will enable the distribution of PC digital media to TVs and stereos throughout the home.
The gadget is based on one of Intel's new XScale processors running a customized version of Linux, provides support for JPEG, MP3, and WMA digital content, utilizes 802.11b wireless networking, and supports NTSC/PAL/S-video TV connections and AC-97 stereo connection. The home media adapter is a key component of Intel's 'Extended Wireless PC Initiative', which is part of Intel's greater Digital Home initiative."
I bet this one will be as popular as Indrema.
Whatever happened to Indrema, BTW? I know they closed and went out of business, but for some reason I thought they'd written a bunch of code and given it out under GPL after they went under...
So here's what we have so far:
Sony's new PS3 may have some digital media capabilities, but no one's quite sure. But it would seem to make sense considering that there are rumors all over that the MS XBox 2 is going to serve as a hub for digital family entertainment. Course, that's running the XBox OS (or Linux depending on the hack). And now Intel is coming out with something that's running Linux? Intel and Microsoft are usually in bed together, and suddenly they're releasing competing products and Intel's is even running Linux? People are fleeing Microsoft in droves... maybe their tactics are coming around to bite them in the butt? At first it was "Game Console Wars," and now it's "Digital Media Center Wars." Let's sit back and watch.
Wow, talk about using you're 802.11b spectrum. Imagine having at home the following devices (assuming they detected the correct clear band!): 1. Intel's new fangled wireless media gateway on channel 1. 2. Your access point on channel 3 with your other PC's. 3. Your wireless home alarm system on channel 5, burgulars love this one! :)
4. Your cordless phone around channel 7.
5. Your wireless headphones on channel 9.
6. Your X-10 video camera blowing away channel 11!
Sounds crowded, then again who will have so many wireless gadgets at the same time? Oh wait I do!
(channels spaced according to 802.11b standard 20MHz+guard band)
Ho
The interesting surprise for me is the idea of WMA-enabled applications running under Linux. Is this a first?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Yeah, but you know you've got the mojo crackerjack when you're a geek in a studio apartment -- and you have a a Murphy bed.
...)
That said, I have to wonder if Bill Gates (for once) was right when he suggested several years ago that "media convergence" isn't really a thing that people want. People want to compute on computers, watch TV on a television, and watch movies in a movie theater. Converging the three into the single PC -- or the PC breakout box hooked up to a PC -- is nifty and very George Jetson-like (and who can forget his boy Elroy spiralling down from the old man's hoverbug in a mini-hoverbug of his very own?) -- but it seems that technology (in this case and others [palladium and MS's MediaPC's especially) is thinking too far ahead for its own good.
Watching TV on a computer is (for me, at least) much like reading e-books on a palm or an Ipaq or on the computer screen in a library -- it gets the job done, yes, but it's not very enjoyable. (I'm trying to figure out why the only ebooks I'm able read at any length are non-fiction. I can't, for example, bring myself to read fiction electronically. It seems, well, not right. And not comfortable. Yet I can sit on my little ragged sofa -- feet up, trusty Bawls soda beside me -- and can read deadtree fiction until the cows come home. But that's another story for another day