AMD Live!

AMD LIVE! is the name of Advanced Micro Devices' initiative in 2005 aimed at gathering the support of professional musicians and other media producers behind its hardware products. The primary focus of this initiative was the Opteron server- and workstation-class central processing units (CPUs).
AMD subsequently extended AMD LIVE! into a platform marketing initiative focusing the consumer electronics segment in 2006 and focused on performance segment desktop-class processors. AMD LIVE! for consumer electronics segment was announced on January 4, 2006 officially through press release.

Features

AMD LIVE! features away mode (as supported by motherboards), the system hibernates when user is not using, and powers up quickly when needed. The AMD LIVE! also includes a selection of software aimed to enhance the digital entertainment experience named as AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite, see software section for details.

Hardware configurations

AMD LIVE! PC
According to AMD, the minimum requirements of an AMD LIVE! PC platform are as follows:
Dual-core AMD processors, Athlon 64 X2/Athlon X2 4200+ or above, Athlon 64 FX except FX-70 series, and Phenom line processors
Power supply with cooling fan and heatsink
1 GiB DDR2 RAM
SATA Harddisks with recommended NCQ technology support
For FX processor series based systems, RAID array of 2 or more SATA Harddisks is required
DVD+/-RW optical disc drive
Graphic card supporting Aero graphics
For FX series processors based systems, dual or multi graphics card configuration is required (SLI or CrossFire)
Display output: VGA, DVI, HDMI with optional HDCP
Up to 7.1 Surround Sound output with optional S/PDIF output
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows Vista Premium or Ultimate
(Recommended) Wireless keyboard and pointer device (mouse)
(Recommended) TV tuner (ATI HDTV Wonder/TV Wonder, OpenCable)
(Optional) Remote Control
(Optional) Gigabit Ethernet
(Optional) Wireless network connectivity: 802.11g or a combination of 802.11a/g
AMD announced the AMD LIVE! will feature support for Blu-ray discs and HD-DVDs in third quarter of 2007.
AMD LIVE! Notebook PC
Announced in CES 2007, the AMD LIVE! Notebook PC requires:
AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU
Other system components follow the guidelines of subsequent AMD mobile platforms starting from codenamed Kite platform, systems with the platform will be qualified for a better by design sticker as the shown on the right.

AMD LIVE! Home Cinema System

Also launched at CES in 2007, AMD LIVE! Home Cinema is a platform that combines the functionality of a PC with that of a Home Theater system that integrates a high performance amplifier (up to 7.1 channels) allowing owners to access and store high definition content such as movies and broadcasts, along with DVR/PVR functionality, photos and slide slows, music and internet content out of a single device.
AMD has also pushed an MCE system design named "AMD Home Cinema B media center", which is a collaorated project with MCE system builders, including AMD hardwares (AMD processors, ATI Radeon graphics with hardware High-definition video decoding) and pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium, and AMD branded chassis (manufactured by ACE computers), to be released in 2007.
The AMD LIVE! Home Cinema system has the following specifications:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU
ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable
Integrated 5-channel surround sound class-D amplifier system (with at least 100 Watts output/channel)
Mandatory requirement for an infra-red remote control
Systems including the MSI Media LIVE BVI reference design, Alienware Hanger18 system, and ASUS DAV Center A33 system.

AMD LIVE! Media Server

Another item announced in CES 2007 is the AMD LIVE! Media Server, systems including the HP MediaSmart Media server.
Specifications including:
Running on Microsoft Windows Home Server
AMD Sempron processors
DTX form factor motherboard
RAID functionality

Software

AMD LIVE! Entertainment Suite
A selection of software to provide additional features to enhance online multimedia experiences, listed as follows:
AMD LIVE! On Demand by Orb Networks software - TV recording and sharing software
AMD LIVE! Compress - Video Compression Software that compress videos up to one tenth of the original size
AMD LIVE! Network Magic - Network surveillance and management software
AMD LIVE! LogMeIn - Remote Access software
AMD LIVE! Media Vault - 25GB of free online storage
AMD LIVE! Communicator powered by SightSpeed - Instant messaging software
AMD LIVE! Games powered by WildTangent
AMD LIVE! KidRocket - Web browser for kids which filters inappropriate materials.
Several additional software and services were announced in CES 2007, listed below:
AMD LIVE! PodShow TV
AMD LIVE! MyTV ToGo powered by Roxio
AMD LIVE! Fusion Tunes powered by Proxure
AMD LIVE! MCE Backup powered by Proxure
AMD LIVE! TV Genie powered by Proxure
AMD LIVE! Digital Courier powered by YouSendIt

AMD LIVE! Explorer

Back in AMD Technology Analyst Day 2007, AMD had show a prototype of a centralized GUI for AMD LIVE! for easy control and managament of AMD LIVE! exclusicve contents. The software was named as AMD LIVE! Explorer and the beta testing version was released during CES 2008 and available for download. The software features a 3D panorama interface for browsing images, albums and videos as thumbnails, an embedded browser, and a picture-in-picture mode for watching videos while surfing the web at the same time.

Active TV initiative

The announcement of Active TV initiative has also taken place prior to CeBIT 2007, the initiative allows online video watching such as YouTube, ROO, Veoh and VMIX, allowing users to create customized "TV-web channels", and provide to hardware developers a "value-added" solution as software CDs to load as a game in game consoles such as home network connected PS2 (provided by BoradQ), the console then pull video content from the Internet onto the PC screen via the Internet connection from the PC, with the support of such functions for Xbox 360 and Wii platforms coming up at a later time.
AMD has started a webpage about the initiative and provided a simulator for Windows XP and Vista download.