Viiv doesn't ask, won't tell

We may not have bought into all the Viiv hype, but we've certainly spent enough time poring over the first round of systems bearing Intel's new media-friendly sticker.

While we were busy benchmarking and testing Viiv systems, our colleagues at CNET Australia (or CNET.com.au, as they refer to themselves) managed to get some interesting quotes out of Don MacDonald, vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group. Despite selling Viiv as the answer to everyone's multimedia problems and pushing hard for content partnerships, makers of Viiv systems didn't include any home-grown digital rights management system in them. From the article:

"Interestingly, MacDonald also told CNET.com.au that Viiv won't be testing to see if the content being played is pirated from networks such as BitTorrent. He believes that it's not Intel's job to be policing downloads and that it's wrong to assume that 'all consumers are criminals.' As such, Viiv won't test for 'watermarks' or other red flags that reveal pirated content, allowing any type of media to be played."

On another note, it must be getting close to E3 time, because game companies are hosting more New York media dog-and-pony shows. We checked out Rockstar's Table Tennis game for the Xbox 360 Wednesday night (handily beating editorial types from Maxim and Teen People) and then dropped by Microsoft's Xbox 360 show on Thursday night. There we saw the usual collection of games we've seen before (Oblivion, Dead Rising) and a few interesting newcomers (X-Men III, the new Tomb Raider).