AMD Crafts Chipset for Portable Video

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced another product in direct competition with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), a chipset designed for portable video devices. The AMD Alchemy Au1200 is a low-power, high-speed processor that AMD said will allow for the speedy transfer of video files without sucking up too much electricity.

The Alchemy Au1200 will be built into TiVo's (Nasdaq: TIVO) DVRs to support TiVoToGo, the companies said. The chipset uses the MPEG format, making possible the direct transfer of programs from Series2 TiVo DVRs to personal media players (PMPs), laptops and other portable devices. Intel offers its Xscale chipset for the same purpose.

Supports Multiple Formats

GoVideo is also using the chipset in its newest player. It will support MPEG2/4 video, WMV9 and DivX, among other formats. That means that files will not have to be converted from the format in which DVRs record them.

In order to play most video formats on small players, the files must be converted on a PC from an MPEG or other large file into Windows Media Video format to be viewed on devices using Windows Mobile media software. That process is time-consuming and reduces the quality of the videos.

"The video player market is nascent, of course. This is a good move to get into it now," Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg told TechNewsWorld. "There is a lot of consumer interest in mobile video, but there's a lack of legal content."

Keep It Legal

Gartenberg said copyright holders haven't yet released a lot of content for PMPs because of concerns about piracy and the lack of a standard format.

"So far, it's mostly for people who downloaded from the Internet and a lot of that was downloaded not necessarily legally. Consumers don't have the same ability as with CDs to just record. DVDs are protected and most people don't have TV tuners to record content."

For those reasons, he said, it will take some time before there's exponential growth in this market, but he said he believes there will be a lot more of the devices on the market as 2005 progresses.

AMD said it imagines the devices will plug into DVRs so that consumers can download content and bring it to the gym or on their commutes, just as they do now with audio files. Content may also be viewed on a larger TV screen, allowing consumers to bring content to friends' homes to be watched.