Maybe the most interesting part of the latest NVIDIA PowerPoint presentation (beside their revenue growth stats) is what is NOT in the Xbox.

NVIDIA has all along claimed that Microsoft came along and asked for something our friends in green were already on about - The Digital Appliance. No, not finger sized dollhouse kitchenettes, but the FUTURE. You know, when everyone in China can compute faster then you because they completely bypasss the keyboard and use a nifty pen and voice combo along with onboard cameras, wireless internet/telephony and global positioning to get late night sandwiches delivered from Pink Dot.

Yup. NVIDIA has seen the future and it looks like your granny learning Swahili with her custom interactive fully skinned 3D facial model, voice recognition & feedback Etch-a-Sketch (in this year's color of paisley eel skin, no less).

NOT in use for the MCPX chip but resident and available for the next DA customer (providing Microsoft didn't bash NVIDIA into signing some "first right of refusal" clause), are some nifty bits that round out the whole Digital Appliance kitchen:

• 1394 Devices - that means the best method of getting video (or other fat data) from here to there, intact.
• PCI Bridge - yup there are still some things that PCI will be best for, even in the FUTURE. (How else would you plug in your Voodoo12 4500?)
• Digital DSL/Wireless - online all the time. What good is your digital toaster/stock tracker if you have to use dialup?

But what about the things you can do NOW? Where is NVIDIA's roadmap and how can we get epileptic fit speeds out of Quake 3?