PC manufacturer Dell and Paramount Pictures are opening a new front in digital distribution with an offering allowing consumers to order “Iron Man” preloaded into newly purchased computers.

For now, Paramount is the only studio that has signed on, and “Iron Man” — which will be available accompanied by exclusive bonus footage for $20 beginning Tuesday (September 30), the same day as its DVD release — is the only film being offered.

The offering is the first step Dell is taking toward setting up a broader digital content storefront that could create significant competition for Apple’s dominant iTunes Store.

AMD said Monday it is set to roll out its next-generation “Shanghai” chip–minus the mistakes of the last generation.

The No. 2 processor maker wants to make one thing crystal clear: Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare only to be delayed a whopping eight months (or more, depending how the delay is calculated) due to production glitches and bugs. The chip was also hampered by speed (core clock frequency) limitations. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market.

“We had some mis-starts in getting Barcelona to market and wanted to bring as much velocity to Shanghai as possible. Learn from our mistakes and, as a company, never do that again,” said Pat Patla, general manager of AMD’s server and workstation chip business.

Shanghai–targeted at servers–will be AMD’s first 45-nanometer processor. (Barcelona is 65-nanometer.) Typically, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the chip. Intel has been shipping 45-nanometer processors since last year and these processors now make up most of Intel’s offerings.

TiVo Inc. and Nero AG of Germany were set to announce Monday that they will be launching a package that turns a Windows PC into a TV recorder, just like a TiVo set-top box.

The kit will cost $199 when it goes on sale Oct. 15, and includes a remote and a TV tuner that plugs into the PC. The interface on the computer screen looks just like the one on a TV equipped with a TiVo box.

It’s not the first software that allows TV recording on the PC. That’s been possible for years on computers equipped with TV tuners, and some versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system include the necessary software. But it will be the first time that both the TiVo interface and functions have been replicated on a PC.

The Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC will go on sale initially in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, but it could open up some markets where TiVo does not yet sell its set-top boxes. Joshua Danovitz, vice president and general manager of international business at TiVo, said the plan is to launch it in Europe next year, including in Nero’s home country, Germany. Britain is the only European country where TiVo currently has subscribers.

“It’s really part of a global TiVo strategy,” Danovitz said.

For people who already have a tuner-equipped PC, Nero - a private company mainly known for CD- and DVD-burning software - will sell the TV recording software separately, for $99. Either way, buyers will get a one-year subscription to TiVo’s program guide updates. Renewal will cost $99 per year.