AMD Airs Digital Media Plan

AMD is answering Intel’s digital media strategy with one of its own.


The No. 2 chipmaker announced Live! as its plan to make it easier for consumers to access, save and share audio, video, photos and more onto their PCs, TVs and portable electronics devices.

AMD said Live! will let people access digital media content from PCS and TVs throughout their home, transfer it to portable devices such as handheld computers and MP3 players, and take the content with them when they leave the home.

The move is part of AMD’s plan to compete with top rival Intel, which has a similar effort in the works, called Viiv. Intel yesterday promised to “Leap Ahead” into 2006 with a platform-oriented approach.

Both vendors are in a race to be the dominant platform provider for digital media consumers who want to be able to move freely about their homes using digital media, as opposed to being stuck in front of computers.

For example, AMD said: “With an AMD Live! branded desktop or notebook PC, consumers should be able to extend their PC to stream music through their entertainment center, view and share photos on the TV, burn recorded TV shows, videos, music and pictures to a DVD or CD, or transfer this same content to a notebook, MP3, portable media player or PDA.”

Several personal media players based on AMD’s embedded Alchemy processor offer DVD-quality video and hours of video playback time on a single battery charge.

AMD will formally unveil the new incarnation of Live! at the International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas today, and said it plans to feature the platform technology on consumer multimedia desktop and notebook PCs in mid-2006.

Alienware, ATI Technologies, Broadcom, Motorola, Nero Inc., NVIDIA, and VIA Technologies, are supporting Live! from the outset.

Live! has history at AMD, originally created as a plan to foster adoption of AMD64 technology by top film, broadcast and music professional artists.

In related news, AMD and STMicroelectronics today promised to work to bring new entertainment experiences to the TV through a network-connected set-top box reference design based on ST’s new STB710x single chip set.

AMD also announced that Chinese computer maker Tsinghua Tongfang will offer a series of computer systems powered by AMD processors, and that it has added a new chip to its Turion 64 mobile technology processor family, the ML-44.

The newest addition to this popular mobile processor family is available now in the HP Pavilion dv8000 Media Center notebook.

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