Digital Diversion

Having spent over 12 years with Intel, the last 4.5 of them spent working on consumer platforms and digital media, I figured what better place to kick off my blog than with the role of the PC as an entertainment platform in the home. My involvement for Intel in expanding the role of the PC into home entertainment goes back to 2001-2002 when we foresaw an opportunity driven by the convergence of four major trends:

1. the penetration of broadband into the home,
2. the proliferation of home networking,
3. the increased availability of content being offered online, and
4. the power and flexibility of the PC to manage and distribute diverse forms of media.

The ultimate vision was for any content to be shared seamlessly on any device within the home – a simple statement that belies the complexities of establishing industry standards between the PC and CE industries through collaborating with behemoths with competing interests in the home, namely Microsoft and Sony. As with any standards activity, the concept is that by all parties contributing to a greater good, the market develops faster and the market opportunity is bigger for everyone (the recent Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle is a great case study in how a lack of standards can stymie growth). I’ll save the politics of this undertaking for another day and jump straight to Intel’s motivations.

Very simply, Intel makes money by selling chips. In its vision of the Digital Home, Intel wanted to drive computer density (more PCs per home), drive the need for higher-end/more expensive microprocessors into PCs, expand the types of devices that would require the power of an Intel microprocessor (e.g. networked consumer electronic devices), and ideally get a share of the content revenue much like Steve Jobs was able to achieve with Apple’s iPod and iTunes. We would never say this to our partners, but Intel’s vision was for the PC to be the center of the digital home; the device to which all other devices must connect and through which would all content and services must pass. In order to achieve this, Intel defined and drove three models for how the PC would be used within its view of the digital home: (continue reading…)