Sony to offer PS2-based home server dubbed PSX

TOKYO — Sony is rolling our a home server called PSX that employs the PlayStation 2 processing engine. The server will be the first in a line of products that Sony intends to promote as a new digital consumer electronics device that integrate game and electronics technology. "We'll show how digital consumer electronics will make a drastic metamorphosis by using the PS2 engine for PSX," said Ken Kutaragi, executive vice president of Sony. The pearl white PSX server measures about one foot square. It integrates a DVD+/-RW drive, an R drive, 120-Gbyte hard drive, TV tuner and PlayStation2 game console into one box. The engine is called "EE+GS@90nm," for a one-chip solution for the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer fabricated on a 90 nm process. Sony said it plans to introduce PSX by the end of 2003 in Japan and next year in the United States and Europe with an appropriate TV tuner for each region. To avoid copyright-protection issues and direct digital content recording, PSX will initially come with an analog TV tuner, Sony said.
By Yoshiko Hara
EE Times