Now Intel Wants To Become Your Cable TV Provider

Intel is busy behind the scenes working deals with the likes of CBS, News Corp, NBC and Viacom for programming rights, preparing for the future Intel Cable Company. Firm details are sketchy at this point as to fees and a possible start date, but Intel is hedging the bet against the sagging PC market and the components market associated with it. It’s almost a sure bet that sometime in the near future you will have the option to join up with Intel Cable.

While Intel has not said how much it plans to charge for its TV service, Huggers has billed it as a premium product, rather than a cut-rate option for consumers hoping to save money by canceling their cable subscriptions.

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It has also suggested preventing viewers from skipping commercials on the first run of a show, said another source.

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Dead on arrival for me.

Spidey329 said:

Dead on arrival for me.

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Hit enter, doh.

These media companies are absurd with how many commercials they slip in to standard TV shows now. They need to make a decision on:

- Do we want to charge the providers high per-subscriber rates
or
- Do we want to charge the viewer with advertising

You can't have both here. If I'm paying $75/mo for TV, I'm going to want the option to skip all the commercials. If I'm paying only $10-$20/mo for TV, I'll live with the commercials (ala Hulu, etc).

Well unless they are talking about some kind of streaming service this is just stupid...

They missed out on the tablet and smartphone market, and PCs are dying... so they decide to get into another dying market... cable TV.

Stats show many people under 30 have never had, and never intend to subscribe to, cable television. Both broadcast and television over coax or satellite are dying mediums and if i had to wager, I'd bet both will be pretty much extinct by the 2030s if not sooner.

The sooner all the old dinosaur provider/media companies (landline phone, cellphone, cable TV, satellite TV, etc) all die out and we just get a universal widespread high-speed network with all content served as IP packets the better...

Oh, and before the PC fan-boys cry foul, yes they are more or less dying out... The PC as we know it became "powerful enough" roughly 5 years ago for use by the average consumer for well into the foreseeable future.

Now that phones and tablets are reaching that same performance point, a large portion of the population won't be using sit down PC workstations ever again as they replace their aging/dying workstations with handheld devices, and the PC market will once again become an expensive niche for gamer/geeks and businesses... just like it once was before it all went mainstream circa 1995.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot said:

Oh, and before the PC fan-boys cry foul, yes they are more or less dying out... The PC as we know it became "powerful enough" roughly 5 years ago for use by the average consumer for well into the foreseeable future.

Now that phones and tablets are reaching that same performance point, a large portion of the population won't be using sit down PC workstations ever again as they replace their aging/dying workstations with handheld devices, and the PC market will once again become an expensive niche for gamer/geeks and businesses... just like it once was before it all went mainstream circa 1995.

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I don't necessarily disagree. I don't think they'll completely die, but the dynamics will shift. A lot of corporations are moving to "brick" (thinclients) that load off of a central server. I can see home PC's for the general user being replaced with similar small units (not centralized, but small A-I-O like the Intel NUC's). Large corporations are likely to also invest in server VM's that can do heavy loading (like 3dstudioMax/Revit/etc), but the majority will probably remain on powerful workstations for smaller businesses as it's currently more cost effective.

PC industry isn't dead, it's just the customer base is shrinking. You won't have average-joe internet browser running a desktop like they are now.

Also, for those that watch TV. The Big Brain Theory had a representative from Intel on last week. His title was "Futurist". They're tasked with thinking ahead 20-30 years. They're obviously a forward-thinking/evolving company, so I can only assume this "Cable" product isn't really cable, but rather a 100% streaming service.

It's competition, from a real heavy weight. So I don't care if I don't like them or not, it's competition that can go toe to toe with an already monopolized market, and that's the important thing to remember.

While Intel has not said how much it plans to charge for its TV service, Huggers has billed it as a premium product, rather than a cut-rate option for consumers hoping to save money by canceling their cable subscriptions. Higher prices for consumers would give Intel breathing room to pay more to media companies without sacrificing its own margins.

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Yeah I hear people all the time complaining they aren't paying enough for cable TV. This has major success written all over it.

I for one also don't get the point of high prices + commercials. Thats why I so desperately want a la carte that make senses here in Canada but I don't think Intel will be an answer for that.

If they offer a la carte TV where I can get like 4 or 5 channels for no more than $10 a channel then I will be all over it as long as I can get the channels I want and only the channels I want. Whoever is the first to do a la cart TV wins my business as I only watch like 5 channels and pay about $70 a month for the TV part of my TV/Internet bill (with no DVR).

Term-X said:

I for one also don't get the point of high prices + commercials. Thats why I so desperately want a la carte that make senses here in Canada but I don't think Intel will be an answer for that.

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Never understood it either, with games it's "Pay to remove the ads". With TV it's "Pay to watch ads".