Sundance Film Festival

As a follow up on Trevor’s January 21 posting on Intel’s new Viiv platform (”Intel Digital Experience Zone”), I’m suggesting interested readers turn to John Furrier’s useful podcast interview with Raj Puran of Intel. Puran, interviewed at Intel’s Sundance headquarters, talks about the Viiv platform, Centrino Duo dual core laptops, and the dual core desktop Pentium D.

(Furrier’s podcast page has other interviews you might want to check out–see the right hand column–as he chats at Sundance with Adobe and HP reps.) (www.podtech.net/?p=289)

Intel announced its Viiv platform late last year, with the first, big roll out at the CES show earlier this month in Vegas.

I have to give credit to Intel on this one. Viiv looks to be more than just some tricked out scheme to sell CPUs. Instead, it’s a very big operation that represents a serious bit of repositioning on Intel’s part. They’re making a bet on their future that the real money is in the digitally desirous masses, not the increasingly steady state market of supplying commodity chips to the business world.

Simply put, Intel wants to be the company to provide the chip technology enabling a new generation of home entertainment computers that will morph into tomorrow’s multimedia dens. (See Intel’s Viiv page for more: www.intel.com/products/viiv/description.htm)

Designed for machines running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center software, the Viiv platform includes “Core Duo” dual-core 64-bit processing (you can also use a Pentium D or Pentium Extreme Edition, but how 2005 is that?); improved chipsets for audio (up to 7.1 Surround), graphics, and video playback; and support for a multiple hard drive array.

This might be just the right move for Intel, which hasn’t had a very clear home media strategy up until Viiv.

Part of the problem? Software. Until this past year, Microsoft’s Windows Media Center didn’t have much of a buy-in from the public, even though it’s been around since 2002. But the Redmond company says that sales in 2005 suddenly skyrocketed, with some 5.5 million media centers sold (i.e. media computers with MS’s software loaded). Displays held things back too. A flood of cheaper LCDs, plasmas, and projectors coming in over the past 12-18 months probably are helping this Intel/Microsoft package make inroads now.

Look for Intel making other major noise for Viiv over the next 12 months, including free downloads of HD video from the upcoming Winter Olympics. There’s also a business play here too. Intel will turn out a Viiv platform that employs additional chip sets to handle improved security, such as built-in antivirus protection and data encryption.