Intel Technology, Processing Power Key to TV Revolution

The television, both the device and the experience, has arrived at an
inflection point. In keynote addresses today at the Intel Developer
Forum, Intel Corporation executives Eric Kim and Justin Rattner
discussed what happens and what’s needed when the full Internet
converges with broadcast networks. The executives laid out the
opportunities, both short- and long-term, to make the TV experience more
visual, more personal and more interactive.

Kim, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Home
Group, took the wraps off the Intel Atom processor CE4100, the newest
system-on-chip (SoC) in a family of consumer electronics (CE) media
processors, and announced efforts with several key industry players
including Adobe, CBS, Cisco and TransGaming which are helping to make
the vision of interactive TV a reality in the short-term.

“At the center of the TV evolution is more processing power, which we
deliver with the CE4100 media processor, built on the Intel Atom core
and optimized for IPTV digital set-tops, connected media players and
digital TVs,” said Kim. “With its performance and high-resolution
graphics capabilities, CE manufacturers and software developers now have
a platform for real innovation.”

According to Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer and Senior
Fellow, that innovation will accelerate in the next few years.

“By the year 2015, you can expect 15 billion consumer devices capable of
delivering TV content with billions of hours of video available,” said
Rattner. “We’ll need much more sophisticated ways to organize content
and provide it on demand. Intel Labs researchers are working on evolving
technology so people can get the TV content they want, when they want it
and wherever they want it.”

3-D, Advanced Graphics and More

As consumer devices deliver more and more TV content, developers will
need to blend together video, 3-D animation and rich graphics. And in
turn, the importance of graphics and audio/video decoding in CE
platforms becomes increasingly critical. Kim disclosed that Intel and
Adobe Systems are working together to port Adobe Flash Player 10, a
key tool for content developers, to the new family of SoC media
processors. This will result in future CE devices that are optimized for
playback of graphics and H.264 video to enable for the first time a wide
array of Flash Player 10-based applications on the television.

Rattner predicted that high-quality 3-D video will someday soon be
consumed in the privacy of your own living room. Onstage, he spoke to a
life-size 3-D version of 3ality Digital CTO Howard Postley about the
intense computation and bandwidth required for capturing and managing
3-D TV in real time. Both executives discussed how a new high-speed
optical I/O technology from Intel, codenamed “Light Peak,” will improve
bandwidth and flexibility while greatly reducing complexity and cost for
PC users downloading videos and other digital media. Postley said 50
copper-based cables on the set of a 3-D shoot today could be replaced
with a single optical cable with Light Peak technology. In addition to
its extreme speed, Light Peak technology has the unique