Intel: Atom and Flash will make internet TV a reality

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By Darien Graham-Smith in San Francisco

Posted on 24 Sep 2009 at 17:08

The idea of internet access on your television is almost as old as the internet itself, but initiatives like Web TV have conspicuously failed to catch on. This morning at IDF, however, Intel senior VP Eric Kim presented Intel’s vision for a fusion of internet and television technology.

This isn't the first time Kim has pushed such a vision - his address at last year's IDF was entitled simply "We Love TV."

But today he announced what could be the magic ingredient: a new Atom CPU, formerly codenamed Sodaville and launched today as the Atom CE4100 media processor.

The processor is designed specifically for media devices such as set-top boxes, Blu-Ray players and digital TVs. It will support dual 1080p streams, high-end audio and even real-time 1080p AV capture.

"We’re applying Moore’s Law to the consumer electronics space," declared Kim, revealing that the new chip achieved twice the graphical performance of the company's previous media processors.

The front-room internet

Kim admitted that simply presenting standard internet content on the television wouldn't do, and looked forward to a different type of online interaction.

"Putting the PC internet on TV does not work," he declared. "We know, we tried it."

Instead, Intel envisages an ecosystem of "TV-centric" applications written in Adobe Flash, including media library browsers, social networking applications and games.

"Adobe Flash has a large developer community, explicitly focused on rich applications with video, graphics and interactivity," he explained.

"We believe Flash will play a key role in shaping the interactive TV user experience."