VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform - PC Games with the Living Room Experience

The Personal Gaming Console is a new category of device that bridges the gap between high performance gaming PCs and game consoles and brings, for the first time, thousands of PC games to the living room.

The VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform is a suite of silicon and software technologies optimized for PC gaming, that extends the boundaries of living room entertainment by enabling the powerful graphics and digital audio available on the PC to be experienced through a TV and Hi-Fi set-up, with easy installation and playing of PC games and digital media.

Part of the VIA Spearhead Platform Initiative, the VIA Glory Platform will enable OEMs, system builders and consumer electronics manufacturers to reduce product development costs and time, and so drive this exciting new market.

The VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform

The VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform is a suite of silicon and software technologies that enable consumer electronics quality digital media entertainment with the performance of a gaming PC. This is achieved by incorporating highly specialized components, each of which perform critical performance applications such as 3D graphics processing for games, MPEG-2 decoding for watching DVDs or audio processing for 6-channel surround sound. The platform supports third party software instructions that facilitate easy installation of PC games.

The VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform looks set to open up new markets, from gamers playing their favorite PC games on the big screen, families wanting both gaming and a high quality digital media player, businesses demonstrating training games and digital presentations and even academic establishments for playing educational game programs.

PC Gaming
The VIA Glory Platform introduces the performance and high definition DX9 graphics associated with PC gaming to the ease of use and wide screen experience of console gaming in the living room. As a native x86 platform, it is compatible with Microsoft® Windows® and Linux operating systems, offering more game titles than any other console on the market.
PC gaming devices built around the VIA Glory Platform are able to use PC game pad controllers as well as keyboard and mouse combinations that provide additional functionality and scope, e.g. for strategy games. Furthermore, they can have up to eight USB 2.0 controller ports for multi-player games.

Video Player
VIA Glory Platform consoles can play all the most popular digital video formats, with crisp, clear 6 or 8-channel surround sound and DVD player like remote control operation via an infrared port. Digital movies can be viewed from a CD, VCD, DVD, hard disk drive, network or through streaming media.

Audio Jukebox
With support for all the most popular digital audio formats, including MP3 and wav files, VIA Glory Platform consoles are ideal for storing and enjoying digital audio content with the best quality 6- or 8-channel surround sound in the living room. VIA Glory Platform systems are also great for listening to Internet radio as they can be connected directly to the Internet via a modem or 10/100 Ethernet cable.

Slide Show Presenter
With high definition PC graphics, VIA Glory Platform consoles can also be used for viewing slideshows from a hard drive, over a network or directly from a digital camera without forfeiting clarity or texture.

VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform Key Components

VIA C3 Processor
The cool running 1.4GHz VIA C3® processor in the Glory Platform requires minimal active cooling. This is key to the console's low profile and quiet operation that is so important in the living room. As a native x86 processor, the VIA C3 is fully compatible with the Microsoft Windows XP embedded operating system, enabling the Glory Platform to connect easily to other personal gaming consoles and PC devices.

VIA CN400 Digital Media Chipset
The VIA CN400 is VIA's flagship core logic chipset for digital entertainment devices, featuring the S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro 2D/3D graphics core with integrated hardware MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 acceleration for exceptional playback of various digital video formats.

The VIA CN400 North Bridge is accompanied by the highly integrated VIA VT8237 South Bridge that is also used in all of VIA's high performance PC gaming platforms. The VT8237 relies on VIA's high speed Ultra V-Link for its high-speed connection with the CN400 of up to a blistering 1066 MB/s. The VIA VT8237 South Bridge provides a whole arsenal of multimedia and connectivity options, including support for VIA Vinyl multi-channel audio, and Gigabit Ethernet through the VIA Velocity controller.

S3 Graphics DeltaChrome GPU
The S3 Graphics DeltaChrome GPU's powerful DirectX 9.0, high precision programmable architecture featuring four Vertex Shaders and eight pixel shader pipelines has positioned the Glory Platform as a powerful PC gaming console with graphics features far exceeding any current game console.

DeltaChrome's Hi-Def native HDTV output enables users to experience the richly textured and precision rendered PC Game titles at 720p, 1080i or 1080p using YCbCr component video outputs. The Chromotion programmable video engine brings features like per pixel adaptive de-interlacing to the big screen for a multitude of video media formats - bringing PC flexibility and media compatibility into the living room.

Allowing for connection to various types of TV, the Glory Platform has a 15-pin external monitor (DVI) connector and also has two TV output ports, one RCA and one S-Video. For the full DeltaChrome specifications, please refer to Appendix III.

VIA Vinyl Audio
VIA Vinyl Six-TRAC audio provides crisp, clear high quality sound with advanced sound positioning that maximizes a gamer's immersive environment for the greatest realism possible. 6-channel surround sound is effortlessly achieved through six standard speaker ports in the rear panel of the Glory Platform personal gaming console.

VIA Glory Personal Gaming Console Platform Diagram