Jason Dunn
03-02-2006, 09:04 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD36G5M.asp' target='_blank'>http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD36G5M.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Media Center PC with Viiv Technology. Enjoy the power and versatility of a modern PC, in your living room. Experience the complete home entertainment experience of movies, games, music and online content, with the XPC SD36G5M. Build your own small, quite, and stylish PC system ready to tackle your everyday computing needs. With the power to run the latest office productivity applications, reference software, games, and more, the XPC SD36G5M offers all the functions of a traditional PC system, in a chassis one-third the size."</i><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/SD36G5M-feature.jpg" /><br /><br />Looks like another slick release from Shuttle - this time, based on the Intel <a href="http://www.intel.com/products/viiv/">Viiv platform</a>. What is Viiv exactly? well, just like Centrino, it's simply a catchy (well - sort of!) name that describes three cornerstones: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, a few different Intel chipsets, and a dual core Intel CPU. That's all stuff we've seen before, but what's new is a greater focus on making sure that it all works together. I haven't seen anything about the Viiv platform that impresses me as being an improvement over what we have now, but I'm keeping an open mind - and it's certainly the case that if you're going to have a PC connected to your TV, you want it to be stable, fast, and easy to use. If Viiv can make that happen, then I'm all for it.