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Building Your Business With Intel CE Platforms

Take a rich menu of digital media, add powerful computing and communications technologies from Intel and leading consumer electronics vendors, and you have the recipe for energizing new opportunities the digital home.

Compelling new opportunities are beginning to emerge for the consumer electronics industry as telecommunications carriers (telcos), multi-service operators (MSOs), other service providers and content owners build their IP broadband infrastructure to deliver a spectrum of compelling new services.

The widely shared vision of ubiquitous content is being made possible by the worldwide proliferation of digital technologies that will enable content to move easily between devices of all kinds. With continuing advances in broadband bandwidth, digital rights management and home networking technology, consumers will ultimately be able to take their entertainment with them wherever they go, accessing their favorite content on a TV in the family room, on a PC or on a mobile handheld device.

This is the vision, but where are the near-term opportunities?

In the competitive arena of the digital home, the ultimate winners will be OEMs and service providers who can provide the high performance, flexible and cost effective set top boxes and other networked consumer electronics platforms designed to complement digital TV displays. Intel is providing the platforms they need.

Intel’s consumer electronics platform architecture will begin to make the digital home vision a reality. Intel’s flexible, highly integrated, high performance consumer electronics platforms are designed to receive and decode compressed video, as well as run other IP-based applications and services delivered by service providers over broadband ‘pipes.’ The first platform is based on the Intel media processor code-named Olo River, Going forward, Intel will expand its consumer electronics silicon portfolio with the addition of Intel® architecture (IA) based SoC solutions to address the emerging requirements of the consumer electronics industry.

In addition to IPTV and video on demand, Intel consumer electronics are transforming the TV experience from the ordinary to the extraordinary by enabling usage models ranging from voice over IP and video phone to online multiplayer games and immersive Karaoke. Intel’s flexible consumer electronics platform architecture can help OEMs and service providers build new opportunities in the digital home.

As telcos enter the IP services arena, providing IPTV and on-demand video alone may not provide enough of a boost in average revenue per user (ARPU) to offset their already hefty investments in network infrastructure. Telcos face the double challenge of forging relationships with content providers while competing for the business of cost-conscious consumers.

This challenge can be especially tough in countries that impose ceilings on the amounts service providers can charge for TV and video content. In China, where maximum monthly charges for IP video are strictly limited, it could take years for an IP video service provider to recoup capital expenses through video services alone.

The same dynamics may apply in highly competitive market segments where MSOs and telcos compete on price. In each case, service providers will need to provide differentiated value-added services with significant revenue potential, in addition to IPTV and video.

Alex Huang is Vice President of Digital Media at Hwacom Systems*, a leading system integrator in Taiwan, and he sums it up this way, “As we look at silicon development through 2007, we see most vendors of set top box silicon focusing on IP video. While this is an improvement, it represents only a small step when you consider what is possible. When we compare Intel’s Olo River platform to the others, we see a more powerful application processor with headroom for value-added applications and services that also enables excellent video quality.”

Recent statistics show that Taiwan has a relatively advanced infrastructure for network-delivered digital media and services, with more than 7 million Internet users, 4 million Cable TV subscribers and 4 million home broadband users in 2005, representing a penetration of 59.8 percent. The government of Taiwan has set a goal of 6 million subscribers by 2007 (source: In-Stat 3/06, 5/06). It is projected that the Taiwanese IPTV penetration will grow to over 2 million households by 2011 (source: In-Stat 3/06, TDG 7/06).

The good news for service providers is that millions of consumers are buying large screen high definition TVs, and the significance of HDTV goes beyond great looking video. With its crisp definition, HDTV can now provide a viewing experience from the couch in the living room that compares with the image quality PC users have come to expect from graphically rich applications.

So while IP broadband connections begin to provide the bandwidth and return path needed for communications and other interactive services, the HDTV is becoming a true ‘monitor’ in the living room, providing a bright high resolution display for an exciting range of new applications beyond video. In addition to their PC and handheld phone, the HDTV display will provide consumers with a big screen where they can enjoy a rich new menu of services that blend the fun of TV with the interaction of Mahjong and online poker, or immersive Karaoke, all enhanced with the extra dimension of personal text, voice and video applications.

With the enormous popularity of the Internet, many of us have become comfortable with our PCs for online games, digital photos, personal video and communications. With the arrival of HDTV, games, video chat and other Web-connected applications that have been popular on PCs will become even more compelling in the living room. The added advantage is that enjoying these applications from 10-feet away on the couch in the living room can bring the entire family together, including family members who may not be comfortable using a PC.

One cautionary note is that until these new usages gain mass acceptance, manufacturers of high-volume digital TVs are not likely to integrate application processing capabilities directly into their products. In this context, the multifunction networked set top box provides an ideal platform for usage models that consumers already engage in on their home PCs – such as Java*-based and Flash*-based games, chat and sharing photos and home videos with family members.

As William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel’s Consumer Electronics Group, observes, “High-performance Intel platforms position OEMs for design wins by providing service providers with the flexible high performance solutions they need to deploy a steady stream of differentiated services. The processing performance of Intel’s Olo River processor means that multiple applications can run on a single device.

Intel also provides a platform that is re-usable to enable the marketing of multiple devices, from entry-level set top boxes to advanced hybrid set top boxes with personal video recording capability. Flexible platform design means that OEMs can customize solutions that meet a wide variety of service provider requirements, now and for the future.”

Another significant advantage is that the ample processing headroom of Intel’s consumer electronics platform design helps service providers add new services through cost-effective software downloads, with no need to replace the set top box. At the same time, Intel’s platform architecture supports generations of new services so service providers can maximize average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering the latest high-value services.

Intel is also redefining the consumer electronics from a traditional pure hardware platform to an integrated hardware and software platform. The ability to support rich user interfaces, applications, IP service middleware and media building blocks in software saves revalidation and requalification costs when service providers need to deliver alternative platform configurations. Another important consideration is that media protocols and digital rights management standards continue to evolve, and flexible platforms can help the industry keep pace with the latest changes.

Helping consumers feel at home with new digital home usage models will require sophisticated new software applications including user interfaces and applications designed for browsing and selecting the thousands of new content choices that will ultimately become available.

The demand for sophisticated interfaces illustrates one of the major challenges facing the consumer electronics industry – the ever-increasing demand for processing performance. Robust application handling performance will become even more important as connected usage models such as online games with VoIP, text chat or video phone all arrive on the set top box.

Traditional single-function set top boxes that were designed for traditional TV viewing fall short when it comes to providing the performance, headroom and flexibility needed for new applications and usage models. Intel is addressing this demand by providing consumer electronics platforms with a combination of media processing performance for high quality IP video, graphics and audio with application processing performance to support new services.

CE manufacturers and their service provider customers will soon find themselves competing in fast-changing market segments – defined by geography as well as consumer demographics. What may be a ‘killer application’ in one area of the world may not be so popular elsewhere. Applications may be extremely popular for a period of time only to be pushed aside by the latest ‘must-have’ usage model. In their continuing quest to deliver differentiated high-revenue services, providers will need to flexible platforms designed for reuse across multiple market segments and with ample headroom to enable down-the-wire software upgrades to support the non-stop roll out of new applications and services.

Connected usage models are coming soon. The industry is already thinking about new opportunities for media sharing made possible by home networking technologies. Consumers will need to easily deploy networks and interoperable consumer electronics devices without rewiring their home. Set top boxes and other networked consumer electronics platforms will need to handle digital content encoded with a variety of codecs and encrypted within a variety of DRM schemes. And all of this should be transparent to consumers, who should not need to grapple with added complexity.

In addition to their processing performance, Intel consumer electronics platforms support industry networking standards including those created by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). These standards are supported by devices that are verified with Intel® Viiv™ technology, designed to share digital content with Intel Viiv PCs and other devices over a home network.

When it comes to new opportunities in the fast-changing consumer electronics market segment, the flexibility of Intel consumer electronics platforms provides a growing ecosystem of hardware and software vendors with a platform they can build on. The opportunities are not limited to important new applications, but also include opportunities for CE vendors and service providers to explore retail distribution of set top boxes client devices co-marketed with bundled applications and services from participating providers.

This platform strategy also enables service providers to introduce a basic set top box and add a rich menu of revenue-generating services. Intel Consumer Electronics Platform Group is working together with hardware and software vendors, as well as service providers, to redefine a world of new opportunities in the digital home.

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