I don't understand how the writer supposes Intel can acquire unbundled content and sell it per-channel or even per-show.<p>Yes, that's the consumer's dream, to be able to subscribe to and pay for only one's preferred channels (or even shows), but that well-known desire has been consistently opposed by the cable and satellite systems. And content producers have, I believe, always cooperated with the cable and satellite providers in this. It's one more item for negotiation: "we'll charge less for our material if you'll bundle us with a popular group of channels", etc. Hulu, iTunes, et al only get to rebroadcast single shows only as reruns, so providing a trickle of secondary income but never threatening the main cash cow.<p>So it seems highly unlikely that even Intel could acquire the right to broadcast first-run material in competition with other systems. Also the cable and sat providers have plenty of pricing elasticity acquired from years of semi-monopoly, and could easily compete on price if they wanted to.
There is no check sufficiently large to convince a $130B industry to smash their business model into bits. And the second they unbundle, half of their content pipeline evaporates overnight.
I'm pretty doubtful. Intel have been doing in-out dance for TV solutions for a few years. They don't have consumer product experience or media market experience. Would be stunned if this happened on a substantial scale.
This article doesn't say anything about where the content will come from. Possibly Intel hasn't got that resolved, unless they will front for the content providers as an independent initiative (you bring the hardware, we bring the content).<p>Apple is just toying around the market. It's obvious for everyone that:
a. People would <i>love</i> having a huge Apple display in their livingroom, playing nicely with their mobile stuff and Apple-ized life
b. When Apple goes into this market, it will go with an entire TV set and not just a set top box; this TV will not be bound to the low margins of mass market TVs, either<p>As for Google, they are the long term winner. You WILL need to feature Google services if you want your product to be more than just a dumb streamer. Now they are doing their little fiber experiment which, in my eyes, is just a precursor to a massive rollout of infrastructure fast enough to support high quality IPTV.<p>I'm sure we will see Youtube stuff coming to our livingroom in few years.<p>In my eyes, Intel got nothing to bring to the table here. The problem was never hardware, that exists for many years now. The problem is content first, software second, hardware in a very distant third.
Intel has been willing to work with Hollywood in the past. There was a lot of controversy over their inclusion of "DRM" hardware in their Sandy Bridge Chips.<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/01/shows-over-how-hollywood-strong-armed-intel/" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/01/shows-over-how-holly...</a><p><a href="http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-_what_is_it_no/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-_wh...</a><p>I'd love for more competition in this space. If real IPTV could finally happen it would be great. I use a HTPC with Windows Media Center as my main TV, and I'm tired of dealing with the issues. Cablecard is a pain, Comcast is a pain, commercials are a pain. I just want to watch the few shows I care about.<p>The only thing stopping me from cutting cable and just watching shows on iTunes is live sports.
Eugh, more abuse of the term IPTV. IPTV is a standardised term requiring a managed QoS network (i.e not the Internet) so you can match the QoS provided by managed RF spectrum or dedicated cable frequencies.
All the perceived problems that Intel 'solves' are all legal and copyright issues. Tunnel technology just works. Hell, there's even an autodownloader for TPB on one of the open source media players, so this stuff isn't theoretical.<p>I'm gueasing this is some sort of hackeneyed scheme to get DRM embedded in more of our devices.