Comdex 2002 Wrapup - AMD, NVIDIA & Transmeta

NVIDIA's Personal Cinema 2

Albatron had a demo of NVIDIA's Personal Cinema 2 product on display:

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There was a good deal of hype surrounding the original Personal Cinema release but when push came to shove, it didn't have the software or the hardware to compete with ATI's All-in-Wonder line.

Personal Cinema 2 fixes some of the hardware issues behind the original Personal Cinema. For starters there is a tuner on-board, making the breakout box much simpler. The connector to the breakout box is unusually reminiscent of the latest All-in-Wonder cards but we still see no options for component output, even though it should be simple to implement in theory.

NVIDIA has also moved to a remote manufactured by X10 (the same company that manufactures the ATI Remote Wonder) that communicates using radio frequency (RF) instead of infrared (IR) transmission. The benefit, just as we saw with the All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500/9700 is that you don't need to have line-of-sight between the remote and the receiver and can control the machine even if it is sitting in another room.

NVIDIA has effectively caught up to ATI on the hardware side but there are still some key issues that remain even with Personal Cinema 2:

1) Software and ease of use has yet to be proven and was definitely not a strongpoint of the original Personal Cinema. Especially after using Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition it's clear that even ATI has a long way to go before these cards can be used as set-top PVR replacements.

2) No manufacturers have plans to couple the technology with NVIDIA's highest speed cards. It is easy to implement on anything up to even a GeForce FX yet manufacturers insist on pairing Personal Cinema 2 up with GeForce4 MX. There is a much greater market with the GeForce4 MX but there are a good number of folks willing to spend more on a flagship part with Personal Cinema 2 functionality.

NVIDIA is progressing with Personal Cinema, but it seems like they will have to still play catch-up to ATI here.