Intel used its Developer Forum in San Francisco to introduce an entirely new way of combining internet video content designed to play on a PC browser, with TV sets ‘ producing a brand new processor aimed to go inside consumer electronics (CE) devices, and creating a software framework with existing Yahoo tools to put internet video on a TV, using a widget interface.
There have been few clues from Intel that it understood the digital home at all, but after years of trying to compete with all the CE manufacturers out there it has finally come up with a component that they can buy into and become Intel partners.
This is a little bit like Intel creating a generic TV converter chip which will replace devices like Apple TV for a just few dollars and be integrated into all the devices out there ‘ DVDs, digital TV sets and DVRs. The additional software layer it is promoting with Yahoo puts the icing on the cake and develops a widget style implementation that will drop browser contained widgets onto TV screens, alongside existing TV content.
The processor, although described as based on the Intel Architecture, is a complicated beast, which has a high-performance processor core and integrated graphics, hardware codec support, I/O and other units on a single chip. This is nothing like a PC chip architecture even if the instruction set of the core is the same, and looks like the beginning of a completely new direction for Intel.
The Intel Media Processor CE 3100 is described as for Internet-connected Blu-ray players, advanced cable set tops, modular DTVs, and combines a high-performance IA processor core with leading-edge video decoding and processing hardware, dedicated multi-channel audio processing DSPs, a powerful 3D-graphics engine, a security processor and support for multiple
peripherals. It looks more like something that Texas Instruments would dream up and steps very much on its territory.
By using the Intel instruction set the SoC gives access to the library of code built up over the last 20 years including tools, compilers and re-usable Internet applications.
The processor is an 800MHz+ Intel Pentium M processor built in 90nm but it has lots of bells and whistles such as a graphics accelerator and shading engine for faster, hardware supported rendering, and can support a vast array of different memory configurations. Intel says it can handle up to two concurrent HD streams and will decode Microsoft’s VC1 video, for all that Windows Media out there, as well as H.264 and MPEG2 for all the traditionally coded cable content. The devices has no support for DiVX, which makes it tough to render all the pirated video which is out on the internet.
Back in 2005 Intel bet on the PC, not the TV, being the centre of the digital home, and tried to invade the sitting room with the ViiV, a PC that could be controlled by a remote control, which it brought to market with a flop during 2006. This took Intel up against all of the CE manufacturers such as Sony, Panasonic and Samsung, and created a rift between the chip supplier and the CE world.
That strategy is now fully reversed and Intel looks instead ready to undermine all of the other invaders of the living room from the PC community, including Apple.
However, so far, none of the truly huge CE builders has signed up to partner Intel in its strategy, but it can boast local software players Tru2way specialist Alticast; Denmark’s DVR marker Futarque; Videon Central, a Blu-ray middleware specialist; VividLogic, another cable Tru2way software house. Hardware manufacturers signed up include Giga-Byte, Tatung and Unihan from Taiwan, while the larger brands wait and see.
But the Yahoo tie up is also a master stroke because it recognizes the work that Yahoo has done with its Widget Engine and widgets, but also turns it into an open architecture that anyone can use, including what Intel calls Content Service Providers (CSPs) or CE manufacturers themselves, laying the foundations for things like an NBC Olympics widget at the next Olympics, or a Sony Pictures widget.
This is an alarming potential change to the entire content landscape and eco-system. Once a new generation of devices are out which can simply identify and play content which originates on the internet, complete with a DRM security system, then it could potentially open the internet content floodgates. Companies will almost certainly decide to put more and more secure content on the internet. The system will make it a simple point and click to put internet video on the TV.
This could provide a unified way of taking internet video to the TV and that will open TV up to a wider distribution for both major programming such as the major TV series, and for local and themed channels that do not have enough of an audience to warrant them being shown on a broadcast TV channel.
There was a murmur at the Intel Forum that both Sony and Samsung will embrace this technology, but even if they do, in our view, it will take around 3 to 4 years before the device penetration is sufficiently high that this will represent a genuine disintermediation of pay TV providers. If enough devices are out there which can receive this type of content, then TV channels will put more content on the internet, potentially charging a fee, or loading it with high value addressable advertising, and bypassing pay TV operators from cable to IPTV. A broadband line will be all that is required.
That may be a long way off, but gradually pre-loading a widget on a TV set would be similar to pre-loading an application on a PC or a handset, and the device maker would be the route to market, not the cable operator.
Intel even raised this issue in its launch materials, saying that the creation of content-aware widgets could arrange to carry content relevant advertising (not quite as good as advertising which knows demographics, but worthwhile) along with interactive e-commerce services that drive off TV programming. A sponsored TV Widget might have one click responses that register interest in TV adverts.
The chips have not actually been priced as yet, but previously everyone that has come to this market has ended up adding an extra $250 product to the bill of every TV home for a box like Apple TV. Part of the reason for that high cost was the fact that chips which were not designed for this job, had to be adapted to a board level product.
The devices which Intel is expecting are going to be Linux based, with a very small kernel (we presume) Flash loaded, for rapid start up, and will appear extremely simple to the user, with the TV or other device, plugged straight into a broadband line.
Intel talked about CE level pricing, by which it means a few tens of dollars, which will be eaten up within the existing price of a DVD player or even paid for inside a subsidized cable set top or DVR.
The exhibition at the forum provided a working example of the TV widgets in what Intel and Yahoo called the Widget Channel, and we borrowed the picture below of a Sharp TV attached to the Giga-Byte Device, which had a number of widgets loaded.
Intel and Yahoo say they are already working with Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Comcast, Disney-ABC, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung, Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba and Twitter, so these widgets will be available in no time at all.
Of course, with a broadband line plugged straight into the TV, interactive widgets will also bring ideas like IM and chat widgets alongside the pure video applications, which Intel expects will enrich the whole experience.
“TV will fundamentally change how we talk about, imagine and experience the Internet,” said Eric Kim, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Digital Home Group. “No longer just a passive experience unless the viewer wants it that way, Intel and Yahoo are proposing a way where the TV and Internet are as interactive, and seamless, as possible. Our close work has produced an exciting application framework upon which the industry can collaborate, innovate and differentiate. This effort is one of what we believe will be many exciting new ways to bring the Internet to the TV, and it really shows the potential of what consumers can look forward to.”
To help create new TV Widgets for the Widget Channel, Intel and Yahoo plan to make a development kit available to developers, including TV and other CE device makers, advertisers and publishers. The Widget Channel will also include a Widget Gallery, to which developers can publish their TV Widgets across multiple TV and related CE devices and through which consumers can view and select the TV Widgets they would like to use.
Intel also announced the formation of The Intel Consumer Electronics Network, a member-based community of hardware, software and services providers aimed at speeding the delivery of Internet-connected CE devices based on IA SoCs.