While a number of niche hardware manufacturers like Niveus and Okoro are putting out high quality (and high priced) computers designed for the living room, most Media Center PCs you pick up from companies like HP and Dell still come in a typical desktop tower, more suited for placing under your desk than next to your stereo system.If you want a cheap PC for the living room that looks like a PC for the living room, you usually have to build one for yourself. AMD's hoping to change that, with a prototype design for an AMD-based home theater PC. Intel's got its Viiv line, which doesn't really seem to be doing much to convince users that the PC belongs in the living room (probably because there's doesn't seem to be much you can do with a Viiv system that you can't do with a regular Intel system).
It doesn't look like AMD's competing with Intel by putting out a multimedia-specific set of standards here so much as packing everything into a nice box to encouraged computer manufacturers to do the same. Sounds good to me. I guess.
Via Engadget
