IGN Gear has a very quick write-up about the Panasonic GameCube unit. Included is information about a feture that even their brethren at IGN Cube managed to miss.

The Panasonic GameCube will feature a timer, allowing parents to regulate how much and when their kids can play games. This timer can be used to regulate movie watching in a similar manner. There's no word if the parental lockouts on movie ratings (common on DVD players) will be extended to limit games that can be played. This would of course, require game ratings to be encoded on the disc ... something that currently only X-Box games do.

They also mention the digital output, and that IF a game designer chooses, they can output Dolby Digital or DTS signals in-game and have them decoded by the user's receiver. However, we don't expect many developers to go this route, since it would necessarily segment the user base.

IGN Gear also reiterates that the Panasonic unit will only allow progressive scan in compatible games, NOT in DVD movie playback.