Viiv doesn't suck after all?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Apr 25th 2006 5:44PM
posted Apr 25th 2006 5:44PM
That's what CE Pro is suggesting. After questioning Intel's underwhelming initiative, they have nowWe'll wait until we see a Viiv PC with more useful capabilities, although this jibes with rumors we heard earlier about streaming functionality not coming alive until Viiv 2.0.
Meh. This is something MCE and the 360 could easily do today if MS would get off their asses. MS has simple ignored consumer demand in favor of making another push for their own proprietary codec. Like ANYONE is going to be bothered to re encode their entire libraries with those mediocre tools and no gain in quality over h.264 or divx. Hopefully they will eventually smell the toast burning around the time hddvd is out or when the PS3 is out and they realized nobody is buying 360's as extenders because totally lack the complete capabilities that are desired by their customers. I won't even get started on the lack of DVD upscaling and the pathetic windows com client that sucks resources like a bloated wart hog rather then just intelligently using UNC from any location to the 360... sigh.
I agree with poster #1, Why didn't Microsoft ship the Xbox360 with full media centre capabilities, wait - we already know this, its because they didnt want to impact the Windows Media Centre Edition. Oh and they were probably also scared that people would buy the xbox360 and use it without buying games, which is the only place they must be making money on the 360.
I don't think it's fair to say that people questioning the hype of Viiv are being "unduly harsh." When the company doesn't give meaty details that match their level of marketing, it's perfectly legitimate to ask questions and dismiss the hype if good answers aren't given. As for the name Viiv? It doesn't matter what it is called (remember, MCE will soon be Vista something or the other). But a snazzier name is one of the best reasons why CE pros should adopt Viiv? Isn't there some Shakespeare quote appropriate here?
I own a Dell XPS 400 system. It's their first computer using Viiv and I must say it's not really a big deal. The only things it does are Quick Resume (which I never use anyway because something always goes wrong with suspend modes) and the onboard soundcard (but with hardware acceleration down you hear some terrible scretching, possibly because it's not any good)
It wouldn't even pass the Viiv testing when I used the Intel Viiv Technology Test Utility. Eventually I found that getting drivers from Intel, rather then Dell made the thing work correctly. What a joke!