Acer AT3705-MGW gets the Viiv certification

Monday, December 04, 2006

In a world where every day new hardware for the digital entertainment in the home is released, some manufacturers look for standards to guarantee high quality and compatibility. One of the certifications that are used when this needs arise is Intel’s Viiv. It’s an open specification that guarantees the plain compatibility of the Intel hardware with the certified product.

The latest certified device is the Acer AT3705-MGW. The 37-inch HDTV-ready LCD TV is also the first LCD to pass the Intel verification test. The assessment was done to be sure that the AT3705-MGW was compatible with PCs based on Viiv. This way the LCD TV will be able to receive content from the PCs over a home network.

Intel specifically has verified that the display supports both the UPnP Remote User Interface and the DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over IP). The first allows the user to access remote content to view it on the display. DTCP-IP instead is a system to protect the content sent on the network.

The Viiv certification is not the only interesting feature of the AT3705-MGW though. The display sports a 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution that makes it ready for 1080p. The wide aspect ratio allows the viewer to use technologies like picture-in-picture, picture-by-picture and picture-on-picture. All these features make it possible to divide the screen in up to 13 different regions with different content.

The AT3705-MGW also has both an analog and a digital tuner so the viewer can enjoy both worlds. It has a built-in card reader that accepts several standards (CF, MMC, MS, MS PRO and SD). Lastly it obviously includes HDMI to show uncompressed streams on the screen. The AT3705-MGW can be found online for around $3000 (depending on the shop used).