By Intel
Friday, September 25, 2009
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 24
– 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 ability to
simultaneously transport multiple existing I/O protocols.
Personal TV, Intelligent Networks
With the massive amount of TV content delivered digitally today and
in the future, personalization is critical. TV Network CBS
developed a TV Widget, or small Internet application, to help
viewers find and connect to premium content in a more customized
manner. TV Widgets are made possible by the performance of Intel CE
media processors and Widget Channel, a software development
framework.
Delivering interactive product placements, games and on-demand
video on non-traditional TVs, such as digital connected CE devices,
will require innovation in how that content is actually distributed
from TV service providers.
Joining Kim on stage was Malachy Moynihan, Cisco's vice
president of video product strategy, Service Provider Video
Technology Group, to discuss how the company is helping service
providers evolve their current networks to a medianet, which
integrates the best elements of the existing broadcast
infrastructure with carrier-grade IP networks to provide such new
services as unified video experience.
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), the world leader in silicon innovation,
develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually
advance how people work and live. Additional information about
Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom
and blogs.intel.com.
SOURCE