What are the key challenges in bringing these sort of services to consumers?

You need to pull together all of the right pieces. I think that is where the challenge is. You have to get the content owners to agree, you have to get distribution channels the actual service provider sometimes they are the same, sometimes very different, to agree.

Then you have to work out the platform, how is it going to come to the consumer, and then the final challenge is the connectivity in the home. How does that content get from that central hub point to our set top box, and how does it get connected for IPTV, how does it get connected to other devices. Getting all those things to line up in a point where you can make a compelling solution for a consumer has been a challenging and it’s taken a lot of work.

Industry standards have been put into place, and the industry is coming together with DNLA and DTCP. All these initiatives are going on to try to make these things work well with each other and to provide them all at a point in time. It’s not possible to sell people half a solution. I can’t say to you "well here is this, it has this limited functionality but if you wait, maybe next year it will be really great." You really have to take the holistic approach.

You have talked about your involvement with both the PC and set top box, do you perceive either being more accepted than the other by consumers?

I think it will come down to home-by-home. That’s because every consumer is different. What may work in your home may not work with how my set up is. That may involve set top boxes in both or a PC being a hub in both, or it may not.

That still doesn’t get past the vision of how do we make all of this content flow together. We want Intel to be inside all of this technology whether it’s in your laptop, desktop, set top boxes and hand held devices.

From an Intel perspective we are working in all of these areas so we don’t think any one is more important than another. They all have benefits in their own right. There may be regions in the world where you can say "this is the predominant one", sure that’s fine. That may be regional or particular areas in the world.

How high do you think consumer awareness is of the potential of IPTV and the connected home?

We as an industry have the burden on ourselves on how to educate the consumer. You can explain something, but that is not the same until you show them. This has implications for retail, online advertising. How do we get this message across to people? This is a challenge, and I think that we need to figure out how to showcase this in the future.

I know that Intel is committed to make sure that we have the education and the awareness, and we try to drive this type of thing with experience and other types of ‘out of the box’ marketing approaches. We all as an industry need to come together to create the amount of volume you need to have a breakthrough to give consumers an understanding.

The PVR is a great example of this, because until consumers have used it they are saying "I don’t really get it, why do I want to do this." Until they use it and realise how good it is, that’s when they change their view and understand the real benefits of the new technology that’s in the marketplace.

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