Pace announces Home Gateway
The long lost Dreamcast connection
Remember the name "Pace"? Back at the beginning of February, when Sega first announced that they were pulling out of Dreamcast production, Pace emerged as the company that would build on the technology Sega left behind, incorporating it, they said, into a set-top "Home Gateway". Finally, in a press release this morning, Pace announced the unveiling of amongst others, the new "Pace's PVR Home Gateway With Integrated Games Technology". All the usual set-top box options for cable television are included along with the ability to "timeshift" television by pausing it then continuing from the same point (with the data just ahead recorded and streamed from a built in 40Gb hard disk). The other job for the hard disk is to store games, downloaded from the cable service on a pay-per-play or pay-per-time basis. The HDD acts as a "games jukebox" apparently, and could (in the future we'd guess) be "wirelessly downloaded to a portable, hand-held device for game playing". The box does not give Dreamcast owners the ability to insert GD-Roms and play all their old classics, but as it's built on the same technology, we can be assured that several things will be true: it will line the pockets of Sega, handsomely, it will line the pockets of PowerVR manufacturer Imagination Technologies handsomely, and games will be able to take advantage of Dreamcast-like graphic and gameplay options. We don't know anything about the controller yet, but presumably it's the same or at least similar to current Dreamcast tech. The Home Gateway will be on display at the Cable 2001 national cable show in Chicago, June 9-13, along with various other devices. See the full press release for details if it rocks your boat to do so. Related Feature - Sega to become platform-neutral, Team up with Palm