Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Legacy Archives

Intel to Be Inside Philips’ Showline

By
Add as a preferred source on Google
Intel to Be Inside Philips
Image used with permission by copyright holder

At this week’s 2005 International Funkausstellung (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin, Philips demonstrated its forthcoming Showline Media Center, which aims to position itself as a comprehensive hub for in-home digital multimedia without requiring the near-rocket science of managing a computer dedicated to media management.

The Showline Media Center is scheduled to be introduced in Europe in October 2005, and features two integrated TV tuners (so users can watch one thing while recording another), a 250 GB hard drive (for storing photos, recorded television shows, music, and photo collections), and a DVD/CD recorder for saving recorded content. The Showline Media Center connects to users’ systems using a selection of digital interfaces, Wi-Fi, and plain-old analog connections. A multi-format card reader on the front panel can access content from SD, Memory Stick, CompactFlash, and MMC memory cards; two FireWire/IEEE1392 ports (one in front, one in back) and four USB 2.0 ports (two front, two back) support digital camcorders, cameras, and other peripherals.

Recommended Videos

Perhaps more significantly, the Showline Media Center represents the first product from Philips’ collaboration with Intel. The heart of the unit is a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor; also inside are Intel’s 945 Express chipset and Intel-developed software support for multichannel audio and HD video. If the unit sounds like a PC inside, it is: the Showline Media Center comes with Microsoft Media Center 2005 and Windows Media Manager pre-installed. The software is intended to provide easy on-screen control, an on-screen program guide, plus immediate access to video, music, games, and even Internet services; at this time, there no word on whether (or how) the unit can handle security updates or protect itself from Windows now-infamous track record of vulnerabilities.

Intel and Philips both say this PC-like media center represents a first step on a longer path, and future consumer electronics products featuring Intel technology will be less and less like their PC forbearers. Intel is currently focusing on a range of networked consumer electronics devices such as advanced televisions. Intel is currently conducting trails of interconnected consumer products with German firms Bertelsmann and Median.

Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Topics
A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing
Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.
a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Read more
AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users
A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.
Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.

Read more
Etsy cracks down on AI slop listings. Everyone else needs to take note.
Now every platform must decide what counts as handmade.
Etsy featured image

Platforms tend to shrug off AI clutter until it threatens what they sell. For Etsy, that thing is trust in the maker.

To protect that, Etsy has banned AI-generated how-to guides and listings made entirely by bots. Most sellers must show at least one unretouched photo of the item (via Etsy Seller Handbook).

Read more