Vendors Dumping Intel Viiv For AMD

Vendors are dumping the Intel Viiv Media Centre platform in favour of AMD. The move comes as several new media centre vendors including Hi Fi Companies look for alternate technology than Microsoft and Intel.

Media Centre vendors are starting to move away from the Intel Viiv platform. Earlier this year Intel Australia executives admitted that “This is not the year for Viiv we will not be investing any marketing dollars in Australia into Viiv”. Instead vendors are moving to AMD and in some cases Linux as opposed to the problem plagued Microsoft Media Centre software.

Alienware which is owned by Dell is set to launch the Hangar 18 Media Centre based on an AMD chipset.

It’s the first product based on the new Home Cinema Media Center reference design from AMD. SHN knows of several other vendors including Hi-Fi  companies that are set to launch Home Cinema-based DVR’s in the second half of this year, based on the Linux OS and AMD chipsets.

As one vendor said “Intel are a pain in the arse to deal with. They are demanding and what is hot today like Viiv is dead tomorrow. this year Intel is all about the SMB market and notebooks. they don’t want to know about Viiv so one is immediatly put on the backburner”.

The new Alienware Hangar 18 looks very much like the HP z560 series, except that the Alienware product also includes a Blu-ray drive and, more significantly, a 1,000-watt amp (5 channels with 200 watts peak power output). It is not expected in Australia untill late 2007.

Alienware has tried several times to deliver a media centre but issues with the Microsoft software has led to problems. Way back in 2004 Alienware launched the DHD integrated LCD television with Media Center built in. Then came a series of CE-looking standalone Media Centers, the DHS Series, which were fairly well received by the press, but not a big seller .

Alienware had hoped that its bread-and-butter customers, the technology-savvy gamers, would be equally as enamored of Alienware’s Media Center PCs as its renowned gaming machines.  According to CE Pro Magazine, at CES 2005, the PC maker announced a tie-in with gaming technology developer Discover, which put a My Games tab on the Media Center home page. From there, users could access games immediately when they slid a disc into the PC.

Alienware explained, “Simply put, Discover Technology turns the Alienware DHS 2 series of media center systems into a console video game machine for your PC games. For years, to play PC based games required a bit of technical knowledge about PCs: what resolution, what directory, what human-interface-device, etc. Alienware and Discover change all of that.”

Evidently, however, gamers were unimpressed. They already got what they needed from Alienware’s gaming machines, and probably didn’t care much about other MCE features, like sharing photos through the television.

This time under Dell management Alienware is determined to make Media Center work using AMD’s Live platform, which competes with Viiv. The new models will not be sold direct but via the CE channel.

Would dealers be interested in this product? Duh! The Alienware brand carries some strong cachet, and I can’t imagine any CE dealer or distributor — at least any that are interested in Media Center — passing up the opportunity to carry an Alienware line.

But Alienware still has a lot to learn about the channel and about consumer electronics. Still, they seem committed, the timing is right, and the Hangar 18 will probably cost significantly less than Sony’s XL3, even with the Hangar’s built-in five-channel amplifier.