Intel Corp’s naked ambition to move into the American living room is hardly a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. But Intel’s new plan--sketched out this week by Erik Huggers, the head of Intel Media--apparently goes far beyond what was originally viewed as just another Google TV-like Internet television platform.
 
Intel's plan involves not just the end-user consumer box but the service business. The company's goal, according to Huggers, is to launch in 2013 a new Internet-based TV service and box, designed to offer both “live TV” and “catch-up TV” as one coherent and seamless experience.

While declining to reveal a name for the service, Huggers, speaking at a media conference this week, called it “a proper TV experience.” It will be a much easier, one-input device experience, compared to today’s Internet TV, which often involves a lot of “hard work” on the part of users, Huggers said, since “viewers need to cobble together” a cable set-top (for watching live TV), turning on a DVR (to search for recorded programs) and setting up Roku (to watch Internet TV).

“Not many… no, nobody … has cracked this yet,” Huggers said.

Just as broadcast TV has evolved from free-to-air to cable, satellite and telcos, Huggers hopes Intel’s new Internet TV service will be viewed as “a new distribution platform” that programmers will embrace.

By “catch-up TV,” Huggers means something similar to BBC’s iPlayer, an Internet TV and radio service. BBC, Huggers' previous employer, offers viewers an opportunity to catch up on the last seven days of BBC TV and radio programs without using a DVR. These programs are stored in the cloud and made available on demand.

With the whole TV viewing experience rapidly moving to a multi-platform world, “Intel has a narrowing time window” for this [Internet TV service and special box for it], explained Rick Doherty of director of Envisioneering Group. “The majority of the IT universe now watches video on pads, PCs and TVs.”

Huggers believes the time is right for Intel to roll this out, noting that the “broadband capability is already here; and HEVC [high efficiency video coding] can now achieve video compression that’s 50 percent more efficient than H.264.”

Intel’s box, powered by an Intel chip, will feature a video camera so that it “knows” who is watching the programs and the programs he/she prefers. Featuring a camera on a TV to change the user interface was something proposed by Panasonic at its press conference during the Consumer Electronics Show last month. But Intel will take that idea a step further, in an attempt to offer a much more attractive and tailored programming to viewers.

Huggers drew a comparison to today’s electronic programming guide which, he said, looks more or less like a “spreadsheet.”

While stressing a more advanced and intuitive user interface as an advantage for its Internet TV platform, the “curated bundle” is another feature Intel is pitching for its service. When pressed about whether Intel’s new Internet TV service will finally allow viewers to pick and choose what they want to watch, Huggers demurred. “I don’t think the industry is ready for pure a la carte.”

He said, “I think there is value in curated bundles.” However, Huggers declined to say how much more freedom the company’s new service may allow consumers. Asked if viewers will be able to make their current cable bills cheaper by going with Intel’s new Internet TV platform, Huggers said, “This is not about a value play.”

Without actually knowing more details about Intel’s Internet TV platform, it’s hard to judge how deep an inroad Intel might be able to plow. One question dogging Intel is this: After failing with its previous TV initiatives, what proof does Intel have now that things are different this time around?

Huggers' answer was simple. “People,” he said.

Intel Media, which has been in existence for about a year, is a unit separate from Intel, housed in a separate building. It consists of a “new type of people,” said Huggers, including a female marketing executive who joined Intel Media from Apple, where she spent her last 12 years launching i-products. Also on the “new people” team is someone from Jawbone, famous for its Bluetooth headset, and an escapee from Microsoft, Huggers said.  

By: DocMemory
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