AMD announced today the AMD Live PC. A real media center PC. Check it out.

AMD Live is a PC ready for users to organize, distribute, share, and enjoy their content collection home or when traveling.

“The AMD LIVE! PC and AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite represent the culmination of industry-leading companies collaborating around open standards to deliver compelling entertainment solutions,” said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president, Desktop Business, AMD. “With the AMD LIVE! PC, AMD begins delivering on its vision for merging broadcast TV content with interactive, personalized broadband applications and services, all without disrupting the devices already accepted and used by consumers in their homes today.”

Leading OEMs including Acer, Alienware, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Gateway, HP, Sahara, and Tsinghua Tongfang, as well as system builders in North America, Western Europe, and China, will have AMD LIVE! PCs, powered by the award-winning AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor, starting in June.

“Today customers are looking for PCs that will allow them to view, interact and play new content from broadcast television to music to games,” said Tom Anderson, vice president of marketing, global consumer PCs, Personal Systems Group, HP. “By offering AMD LIVE! branded PCs, our customers will have the ability to buy a PC that will meet their evolving entertainment needs.”

“We’ve seen remarkable enthusiasm for Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs, which enable consumers to enjoy their photos, music, TV shows and movies throughout the home,” said Mike Sievert, corporate vice president, Windows Client Marketing at Microsoft. “By collaborating with AMD to deliver a powerful combination of digital entertainment software on a strong media platform, Microsoft is helping to provide consumers with rich, engaging experiences.”

The first solutions to be offered in the AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite include AMD LIVE! On Demand powered by Orb Networks: a service that streams live or pre-recorded television programs, photos, music and movies to many common Web-connected devices; AMD LIVE! Compress: a tool that optimizes recorded television content in order to save space and time, enabling customers to save up to 10 times as many TV shows on their PC; AMD LIVE! Network Magic: an easy to use service that allows users to set up, manage and secure their home network; AMD LIVE! LogMeIn: a service providing users the ability to remotely control their AMD LIVE! PC to obtain access to content, files and programs from anywhere; and AMD LIVE! Media Vault™: a service that can automatically back-up users’ digital content collection to a secure online server. Once registered and activated, AMD LIVE! PC users will receive 25GB of free storage to safely store their personal photos, home movies and music collections.

Here it how it looks AMD LIVE! Desktop PC:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor (65W energy efficient CPU
• Discrete or UMA graphics (DX9, HDCP required if HDMI used)
• 5.1 HD audio with SPDIF output
• RAID 0. 1 with SATA (NCQ support recommended)
• 2 to 4 DIMMs of DDR2 667/800MHz
• Ports: 6 (minimum) USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire 400)
• GigE LAN and optional 802.11b/g (a is optional)
• Slots: 16L & 1L PCIe and 1x PCI minimum

And AMD LIVE! Entertainment PC :

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor (35W and 65W energy CPU)
• Discrete or UMA graphics (DX9, HDCP required if HDMI used)
• 5.1 HD audio with SPDIF output
• RAID 0. 1 with SATA (NCQ support recommended)
• 2 to 4 DIMMs of DDR2 667/800MHz
• Ports: 6 (minimum) USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire 400)
• GigE LAN and optional 802.11b/g (a is optional)
• Slots: 16L & 1L PCIe and 1x PCI minimum

All systems must have at least 1GB RAM. Considering that probably these systems will be used also for video recording, no minimum HDD capacity was given but the bigger the better.

It seems that AMD Live is more demanding that Vista requirements.