The LinuxDevices site has an excellent review of what is called the Digital Media Adapter device - which Intel showed, demonstrated and released technical specs on at their developer's conference in September.
The article is written by Rick Lehrbaum and he certainly gives a clear, straight forward, well written description of something that's going to change all our lives.
For years - the challenge has been - "how do we connect our PCs to our TVs?" I even wrote a song about it - which was my theme song between '93-'96. And now it's finally happening! Thank you Intel!
Here's a pretty - albeit small - architectual drawing of the system components. The 'magic sauce' is something called UpnP (universal plug and play) which was originally designed for plugging cards into a PC bus or USB devices (such as keyboards or mice.) But now they have a 'stack' to route A/V info to the Digital Media Adapter. I wonder is UPnP can sense out I.P. addresses like Apple's Rendezvous (otherwise known as ZeroConf) and make setting up Home LANs easy to do?
And here's a screen shot of the back of the box. Notice: the RJ-45 Ethernet connector and wireless antennas (digital in), the composite video and RCA jacks - (analog out) connectors. There's even a USB port. They say it's S-video out - but the jack is currently only a composite jack. The diagram below also shows separate audio channels out - but this box only features video audio jacks.
And finally - here's a block diagram - for all you TRUE nerds - ready to go build one of these puppies yourselves. Cost of buildable materials (BOM) = $79. So expect to see products for sale in the $200 range next year! Do I sound happy?
Well - no I'm not happy. The Giants got their asses kicked last night, and tonight is THE night - so I'm a little nervous - but seeing details like this brightens my day.
