James Delahunty
24 Sep 2009 20:40
At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel Corporation executives Eric Kim and Justin Rattner discussed what is needed when the full Internet converges with broadcast networks, laying out the opportunities to make the TV experience more visual, more personal and more interactive.
As the senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Home Group, Eric Kim unveiled the Intel Atom processor CE4100 SoC, the newest 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."
"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."
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 3D video will someday soon be consumed in the privacy of your own living room. Onstage, he spoke to a life-size 3D version of 3ality Digital CTO Howard Postley about the intense computation and bandwidth required for capturing and managing 3D TV in real time.