Intel and NBC have teamed up to unveil Viiv, which will deliver the Winter Olympics via the Internet. After that? Well, the possibilities are limitless
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If you plan to catch every moment of the Olympics on TV, give up. You would need three dual-channel Tivos (TIVO) to record all of the coverage, which will sprawl across six NBC Universal (GE) networks -- NBC HD, Universal HD, USA, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo -- with more than 24 hours of competition per day. But a fledgling video service NBC and Intel (INTC) will try out at Torino will demonstrate how couch potatoes will soon be getting a lot more control over what they can watch, when, and where.
Intel's new home TV platform is called Viiv (the name rhymes with "five") and is something like a cross between television and an iPod. Viiv bundles the hardware and software necessary to turn a PC into a living room entertainment console. Viiv PC's from Dell (DELL), Sony (SNE), HP (HPQ) and others suck down broadband video from the Net instead of a cable channel.
They hold hundreds of hours of programming on their hard drives. They can play shows on flat-panel HDTV screens, serve them to other players around the house, and transfer them to portable players for on-the-go viewing.
FILE FORMAT. To demo the technology, Intel has partnered with NBC to deliver edited daily highlights of Olympic coverage to early adopters. Their Viiv PC's will download video clips from Torino overnight from NBCOlympics.com while schedule-driven Americans are asleep. These short video segments-key moments rather than multi-hour contests-will be browsable through a Web-like interface designed to be surfed from the couch with a remote control wand. (Computer makers call this a "ten-foot interface," to distinguish it from the two-foot interface of the desktop PC.)
Viiv downloads the shows as files instead of trying to stream them live, which ensures rock-solid video playback. It can play high definition files. But don't toss your Tivo yet. NBC's Viiv Olympics highlights won't be comprehensive coverage. They'll only be available at standard video resolution, not the HDTV format used by NBC's digital cable channel.
Viiv's biggest shortcoming is that even with advanced video compression technology, the shows take longer to download than to play. A 30-minute show could take a few hours to retrieve over a home broadband link. (To be specific, NBC's Olympic videos will run around 225 megabytes for ten minutes of TV.) This limits the on-demand capability of Viiv, although future video compression techniques in the works could reduce the wait to a few minutes.
SHARE A CLIP. Viiv's strength is that it can do things Tivo, cable TV, and Netflix (NFLX) can't. It's more like iTunes for video. It augments broadcasts, time-shifted recordings, and DVDs with a searchable, clickable, cross-linked inventory of titles. You can get old shows and past episodes as well as upcoming new ones.
Most important, Viiv's Web-inspired interface lets you jump straight to the video segment you want instead of fast-forwarding through a long show. You won't have to sit through figure skating highlights to see the bobsled runs-or vice versa. The medium is ideal for short video clips and bite-sized sections of longer shows. Its designers seem to have taken a clue from BitTorrent users, who pass around individual skits from Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show rather than downloading complete shows.
NBC's Olympics demo will be limited in scope, and Intel's technology is still new, so it's unlikely Viiv will rock the world from Torino. But if you get a chance to see the service in action, take a peek at what your TV will be like in a few years.
MORE CONTROL. Instead of surfing channels, you'll surf everything in stock. Instead of fast-forwarding through a show, you'll click a link that jumps straight to the good part. You'll share TV links with friends via email or your blog, just as you now do with Web pages. You'll drag clips onto your portable player to take them with you. And while NBC's Olympics clips will expire after 30 days, you'll be able to keep other titles permanently. Altogether you'll have much more control over what's on, when, and where. The old TiVo in your attic will seem quaint.
Futurists used to tell us 21st century TV would let us interact with the shows. We'd thumb the remote to lower the level of violence on the news whenever the kids came into the room. We'd buy a trench coat like Keanu's by pointing and clicking it onscreen, and the set-top box would know our size. Instead, Viiv uses the PC to deliver a treasure trove of video we can just kick back and watch. Isn't that what TV is for?
Paul Boutin is a former software engineer and manager who writes about technology for Slate, Wired, and Engadget
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