Intel attempts to venture into TV broadcast market

The weekly Barron’s magazine recently reported that chip behemoth Intel is working on TV set top box and hoping to market it soon. It will be a set top box that will allow you to play live TV content, video programming, movies and many other services. Demonstrations inside Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California where it conducted introduction of the service revealed that the channel flipping is much smoother and faster than on your regular cable TV and allowed the viewer to pick and rent recent movie releases. So, the question is whether cable operators such as Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Cablevision, and Charter Communication will allow the set top box to succeed or object to the service? It appears that the new service will be a new way to reach more customers and at much faster speed, and get paid for it too.

Television programming market is a $500 billion a year business. TV chip market where Intel is currently part of it is only a $4.5 billion a year segment. This new service will allow Intel to get into a much bigger business at a time its PC chip business is slowing down. Don’t forget we are still waiting for Apple TV.