Tvmama

1 Comment Written by Atila on March 19, 2008 – 10:35 pm

Most convergence devices on the market work from the television end with a box that sits on your TV set and grabs information out of your PC.

AMD’s new technology, Active TV, lets the computer do the work instead of the television. The computer seamlessly sends videos to your TV and even reconfigures video formats to formats the TV can support. The computer can be used as usual for word processing, Internet browsing, etc., while Active TV is functioning.

Active TV also has an open html platform, meaning that adding to the list of content that is displayed on your television is simple, much like adding a favorite to your web browser.

Active TV not only sends internet video content to your television, but it can also display videos, photos and music that are stored on your computer.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Here’s the catch. Both computer and TV must be formatted for Active TV. The computer only uses a browser plug-in, but the TV requires a chip and a network jack that don’t exist yet.

(Editor’s note: Similarly, SanDisk’s USBTV, which we have mentioned a few times here, is working on getting next-gen TV’s in 2008 and beyond to contain the company’s proprietary new generation USB connection with extra pins for transmitting video and other information.)

AMD purchased ATI, which manufactures the “guts” of 40 percent of TV’s, with the hope of manufacturing properly equipped televisions soon.

For now, they have released set-top boxes in Europe and are planning on releasing them in the states as well. AMD is also hoping that soon you will be able to use the Active TV technology with Playstation 2.

Check out the above interview from the Bleeding Edge with Graham Kinahan of AMD.