Sitting in the Q&A after the Intel Digital Home Keynote at the Intel Developer Forum.  A few tid-bits:

• Joe Belfiore, GM of Windows eHome Group talked about collaboration and importance of partnership on device interoperability.  Call to action was to participate in the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)
• Dual-Core processors are going to deliver great new scenarios for home entertainment.  Demo'd an Intel-based LRPC with Pentium-D dual core processor and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 playing back WMV HD video while also processing a 3D game (eg. Doom3), recompressing the video into MPEG-2 and distributing it to another device & TV for play in the home.  Not a hiccup in video performance on either system.
• Disney is getting into the Media Center pool with their MovieBeam service coming to MCE customers.  Previously available only as a set-top box in the US, the service uses datacasting to download (cache) movies over-the-air.  They plan to offer support for Media Center PCs via a discreet plug & play antenna and demo'd new UI for Media Center.  Also noted plans to support High Definition playback in their next version of their platform.
• Intel showed cool new small form-factors that will support dual-core and noted Dell is first to be shipping a P4 Extreme Dual Core system (giving away 4 at the event).
• Optical Drive, low power dual-core procesor. Lots of comments about "smaller than Mac Mini".  There was a crush of people trying to get pictures immediately after. One of my co-horts snagged a pic shown here.

More to come I'm sure on these developments/announcements. Soon.  I'll see if I can scare up some screenshots between meeting