Gizmo Geeks

Intel had been waiting for the right time to unravel it’s brand new mobile platform. Intel calls it the Montevina platform. Montevina is the fifth generation Centrino platform, on which you not only get integrated WiMAX capabilities, but also benefit from chip-level support for both the upcoming laser-disc technologies, Blu-Ray and HD DVD. This almost aggregates the ongoing “format war”, since dual support for the formats is being preferred by an increasing number of manufacturers. It is good for the consumers, but Sony will be disappointed as this is going to nullify their efforts to make Blu-Ray the monarch.

Displayed at the Intel Developer Forum for the first time, the Montevina mobile computing platform has been specially designed to take over the company’s highly successful Santa Rosa notebook architecture. Montevina will host the new 45nm Penryn processor architecture, which means integrated WiMAX capabilities but could not opt for one choice in the ongoing high definition format war. Consumers will win in the end with this approach, as they will be able to watch movies that are exclusive to either format, while Toshiba and Sony sit down, bubbling in a corner.

This is a very appreciable effort from the Intel factories, since it is a chip manufacturer and to offer such support for both disc formats is simply a burden as the two formats commonly share the same codecs: H.264, VC9, and MPEG-2. It is this onboard support for either of the two platform that makes system makers choose either HD DVD or Blu-ray capability, or even both.

Seen overall, this HD format hype shall be easily overtaken by the on-board WiMax support that Montevina caters to.

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