IDF is over but we’re still talking about what went on in San Fransisco last week. One of the companies we never got the chance to discuss was Gigabyte, however that’s not to say it didn’t have anything interesting to say at the Intel Developers Forum. It seems as though Intel and Gigabyte are hell bent on muscling in on Apple’s digital entertainment territory.

AppleTV has been around for a little over a year and up until now there has been little competition for the digital media player from the Cupertino-based company. AppleTV is a box that allows users to view movie rentals, TV shows, music, photos, podcasts, and YouTube videos on their television set and the Intel Canmore Digital Video Player is pretty much the same deal. The Canmore allows users to view photos (including support for Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa), watch videos, listen to music and watch YouTube videos on their TV.

The DVR was revealed at this years San Fransisco IDF and while Gigabyte seems to think the introduction of this product will be instrumental in the company’s break into the digital home entertainment market. Unfortunately AppleTV hasn’t exactly been a roaring success and the company hasn’t sold all that many of the boxes since it launched in March of last year, so it’s really a matter of opinion as to whether or not Intel and Gigabyte are flogging a dead pony with this product.

However, unlike the Apple TV, Intel’s Canmore platform will be available to other ODMs who will build their user interface off of Gigabyte’s hardware. Users won’t be able to go out and directly purchase a Canmore box, and instead, will receive the hardware and associated services through their TV providers.

While Canmore could be another product similar to Apple’s Mac Mini or Apple TV, the demand for nettops and netbooks has been climbing steadily over the last few months and the market has seen a boom in smaller and more portable machines. The Mac Mini came out in 2005 but the demand for smaller PCs didn’t come about Q3/Q4 of 2007. The Mac Mini still isn’t all that popular but it was certainly ahead of it’s time. Who knows, maybe AppleTV and competing DVRs is just a case of history repeating itself.