Event Coverage

IDF Fall 09: Optics, TVs and Other Things

By Dr. Jimmy Tang - 25 Sep 2009

The Future Is Your TV

The Future Is Your TV

The television is going through major changes, in terms of how one consumes content on the TV and how it can be transformed into an intelligent communication centre. With billions of hours of TV content available in the world today, content networks are finding ways to organize content and deliver them to whoever, whenever and wherever they are needed. Apart from just being an entertainment centre, more televisions are finding their way to the internet � making them highly connected devices with the potential to provide users richer source of entertainment beyond just traditional TV content.

In order to allow TVs to deliver richer content, Intel updated their CE media processor with the launch of the latest Intel Atom processor CE4100. The newest System-on-Chip (SoC) is manufactured with 45nm technology and is based on Intel x86 architecture. The CE4100 is clocked at 1.2GHz and is equipped with hardware that supports hardware decode of up to two 1080p video streams and advanced 3D and audio standards. The chip itself comes with a DDR2/DDR3 memory controller, 512K L2 cache, an integrated NAND flash controller, display processor, graphics processor, video display controller, transport processor, a dedicated security processor and general I/O including SATA 3Gbps and USB 2.0.

Intel Atom processor CE4100 die shot.Eric Kim with the new Intel Atom processor CE4100 silicon paired together with the older and larger CE3100 chip.

Hardware is not enough to transform the television and Intel knows that in order to achieve that, an ecosystem of both software and hardware developers would be needed. As such, Intel is working with companies like Adobe to bring its Flash Player 10 to the family of Intel CE media processors. The optimization of Flash on the CE media processor would enable smooth playback of graphics and H.264 video. Adobe Flash Player 10 is expected to be available in the first half of 2010 for Intel media processor-based CE devices.

Gaming also plays an important role in the world of connected digital TVs and CE devices. With services like GameTree.tv by TransGaming supporting Intel�s range of CE processors, popular game titles can be easily ported over to alternate operating systems commonly used in such CE devices. Besides offering a broad library of games, TransGaming will also provide developers with a software development kit to support the migration of existing games and the development of new games on the Intel CE platform. This service will revolutionize the delivery and consumption of video games and provide developers an alternate platform to monetize their software and hardware.

Future televisions will come with intelligent UI that allows users to easily search and navigate content offered by service providers. The TV is getting social too, with the ability to enjoy content together with friends.

 

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