UK set top maker Pace says it has a new HD set-top, designed to bring PC games to the living room. The set top design came out of EU funded work under the games@large project and allows game-play using a combination of game servers and streaming technology and was demonstrated at this week’s IPTV World Forum in London.
The Games@Large idea uses the PC as a player to execute games commands and the TV to display the outputs, rather like using the PC as a games console. In fact the playing system can be any one of a number of devices, not just a Pace set top or TV, and we assume that handsets will enter the frame here too.
Pace will demonstrate game-play being streamed to the set-top box from a central server within the home which is PC based. In addition to traditional video compression, the Pace set-top box uses 3D graphics streaming technology which enables a higher level of resolution and places less demand on the games server, by making use of the 3D graphics capability incorporated into modern set-top box chipsets.
We’re not quite sure where Pace is going with this. For the most part games are played by individuals on PCs and they use the PC screen. By shifting it to the TV screen, Pace might be allowing HD viewing, but then again, so does a PS3, but it takes up a TV set that might be used for TV viewing.
‘The set-top box remains the cornerstone of digital entertainment in the converged home; it is robust, secure, increasingly connected, and high definition,’ commented Dr. Paul Entwistle, Chief Technologist, Pace. ‘Pace has always been at the forefront of digital TV innovation, enabling payTV operators to offer the most compelling services through the set-top box. By building this latest innovation into the set-top box, we can enable payTV operators to provide high-end games to their customers and further increase their footprint throughout the home.’
But presumably in order to drive these games, an Intel architecture box of some description has to be present, so perhaps Pace will use the processing power of an Intel driven home server in order to distribute games around the home.
So the fact that Pace has recently launched its ‘whole home’ content sharing system, it makes perfect sense to speculate that a future feature will be to include game caching at the whole home server, almost certainly driven by a games on-demand model from operators.