VIA and Niveus have announced a digital lifestyle product, the Niveus Media ONEbox. The 1GHz machine runs Windows XP and is based on VIA mainboard and chippery, providing the functionality you would have imagined,
- Connects to your TV and HiFi
- PVR functions – record and playback TV
- Play DVD’s
- Play/rip CD’s & MP3’s
- Display digital photo’s
- Pull content from other machines on your network
- Interfaces for Ethernet, Firewire, USB, serial and parallel ports
- Controllable via a remote control
Niveus Media have developed their own software, ONEbox Media Center, to control all functions and have integrated the TitanTV‘s Electronic Program Guide (EPG), which will mean it will only cover US TV programming.
It has a reasonable, non-PC looking case but doesn’t appear to have native support for WiFi and, as its single PCI slot is taken up with an ATI All-In-Wonder VE TV tuner card, it doesn’t look can unless it’s via USB. The expected price is $999 US and they plan to ship it in June 2003.
There is a growing number of these lounge-ready Media Hub/Digital Lifestyles devices appearing, which is further testament to realisation of media/computer convergence.