That's what CE Pro is suggesting. After questioning Intel's underwhelming initiative, they have now softened their stance offered an alternate perspective and given us some food for thought on why Viiv might actually be worthwhile. Chief among those reasons is transcoding. For example, your second-gen Viiv equipped PC should come with the capability to stream any type of media to an Xbox 360, without any workarounds or extensions.


We'll wait until we see a Viiv PC with more useful capabilities, although this jibes with rumors we heard earlier about streaming functionality not coming alive until Viiv 2.0.

Intel's new platform that so far has provided more questions than answers is the subject of an interview by the CE Pro Weblog. Installers and resellers are just as interested as everyone else in what Viiv can do, so will this quell the "Viiv is DRM" rumblings?

Not exactly, although they do talk about transcoding, why Viiv is necessary despite DLNA, and Intel Virtualization Technology, so check it out.

*Shrug*, sorry Intel, but no matter how many partners you have, I just don't think I'll be impressed until you show me some muscle to justify wearing the "verified Viiv digital device" yoke. We prefer our high definition content DRM-free, but who knows how possible that will be in the coming year.

ATI has already shown their flexibility by partnering with JVC to put their chips in TV's, are now spreading the benefits of that technology across their product line with their newly-announced "Avivo" technology.  Simply put, Avivo is a set of image enhancement, display, and connection specifications that you'll be able to find in many of ATI's future products.  MPEG-2, H.264, HDCP or otherwise, if it is high def and you want to play it or output it to a TV, you will be able to with full hardware support on Avivo compatible products. Video cards equipped with the technology will support progressive scan output and hardware-assisted video encoding so you can convert for other devices without wasting precious CPU cycles. 

I'm glad to see this, as my home PC currently has an ATI Radeon 9200SE that is great, however setting everything up to work properly and output to my monitor and/or TV when and how I want has been more difficult than necessary.  Now that they are designing such connectivity in from the ground up, it will be good for everyone.  Expect Avivo labeled products to be available in the next month or so.

Will it do your laundry, dishes and homework?  No, but it will let you play that high-definition movie you just downloaded on your big screen TV with no loss of quality and leave you with CPU power to work with at the same time.