MINI PREVIEW
LOCATIONFREE TV
Sony jumps into the streaming
audio-video gameOn the road, but desperate for your Desperate
Housewives fix? Sony has two new products
that let you watch TV anywhere there’s an
Internet connection.
Dubbed LocationFree TV, Sony’s LF-X11
is a 12.1-inch touch-screen LCD with built-in
Ethernet and wireless (802.11a/b/g) network
adapters. It plays audio and video streamed from
the company’s LF-PK1 Player Pak base station.
The Player Pak is similar to Sling Media’s
Slingbox (reviewed on page 92). Plug it into your
router and home-entertainment system, and you
can watch TV on any PC with broadband access.
The 5-pound portable touch screen is especially
intriguing. Although its resolution is limited to
800x600, it comes with two features you won’t fi nd
on any PC: a 3D digital comb fi lter and Faroudja’s
excellent motion-adaptive DCDi (directional correla-
tion de-interlacing) algorithm in hardware.
The LF-X11 display will run on either a Li-ion
battery or AC power, so you can use it almost
anywhere. You can also plug in a keyboard, but
Sony has designed its built-in email client, mini
web browser, and photo-album software to take
advantage of its touch-screen attributes. Tapping
a stylus on the onscreen universal remote control,
for instance, sends commands over the network
to the IR blaster, so you can control your TV
tuner or DVD player from afar. Or you can load
a digital photo (stored on a USB thumb drive or
MemoryStick) into the photo-album software, edit
and annotate it, and then send it to friends and
family using the built-in email client.
Sony tells us the base station will use a
MIMO-like but Sony-proprietary dual-band MAT
(multi-directional audio and visual transmission)
antenna, and that it will automatically switch
between the 2.4- and 5GHz frequency bands in
order to minimize interference with other wire-
less devices in the home.
The LF-PK1 base station will sell for $350. The
LF-X11 LCD monitor, including one base station,
will go for $1,500.Preview
W
hen it comes to ATI’s All in
Wonder videocards, buyers
have always had a long wait before
the company’s latest GPUs made
their way into its TV tuner cards. ATI
promises that won’t be the case this
time around: Its All in Wonder X1800
should be on store shelves right
about now.
The new card will be based on
ATI’s 16-pipe Radeon X1800 XL and
will be populated with 256MB of
GDDR3 memory; GPU and memory
will both be clocked at 500MHz. The
single-slot card will have a single TV
tuner on board, and it will be available
only in a PCI Express formfactor.
As with previous All in Wonder
cards, video will be processed via a
fi ve-stage pipeline through two com-
ponents: ATI’s Rage Theater chip will
be used to capture and encode video
from a TV antenna, cable connection,
or ATI’s “domino” connection block
(more on this in a moment), and the
Radeon X1800 XL will decode, pro-
cess, and then display the video.
The domino connection block (so
called because its formfactor lends
it the appearance of a domino tile)
plugs into the mounting bracket and
includes inputs and outputs for ste-
reo audio as well as composite,
component, and S-video.
ATI will include the
usual software
for turningyour PC into a digital video recorder,
as well as for capturing and editing
video so you can create your own
home movies. You’ll be able to con-
trol many of your PC’s functions from
across the room with ATI’s RF Remote
Wonder Plus—which will even func-
tion as a wireless mouse pointer.
Although ATI has made a lot of
noise about its support for real-time
H.264 video decoding, this feature
won’t actually be available when the
card ships (not that it really matters,
because the HD-DVD and Blu-ray
drives that will use this high-defi ni-
tion video-compression algorithm
aren’t available either). ATI promises
the feature will be enabled in a future
driver release, currently scheduled for
February 2006.
The $500 X1800 XL will be followed
by the $200 All in Wonder 2006 PCI
Express. The cheaper board will be
based on ATI’s X1300 XL and will be
compatible with the Remote Wonder,
but the remote won’t be included in
the box. Both cards will operate under
Windows XP Home, Professional, and
Media Center Editions.All in Wonder X1800
ATI promises TV fans won’t have to wait for its next-gen tuner
MemoryStick) into the photo-album software, editThe LF-PK1 base station will sell for $350. Theit the appearance of a domino tile)
plugs into the mounting bracket and
includes inputs and outputs for ste-
reo audio as well as composite,
component, and S-video.
ATI will include the
usual software
for turningATI’s latest
All in Wonder
card will feature its
next-generation GPU—
the X1800 XL—and 256MB
of GDDR3 memory.r&dBREAKING DOWN TECH —PRESENT AND FUTURE
74 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2005