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Intel continues to push deeper into the world of connected TV devices and services, and has a major presence at this year's IBC trade show, currently taking place in Amsterdam. Earlier today we spoke to Paul Tapp, Marketing Manager (EMEA) for Smart TV at the silicon giant.

First some background: one of Intel's first System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions for connected TV devices was introduced in 2008 under the codename 'Canmore', although as Mr. Tapp concedes, it was still not fully optimised, and was more like a development vehicle for the industry, despite being one of the most powerful TV SoCs yet seen.

One year later the new CE4100 chip emerged under the codename 'Sodaville', and that was launched and gained substantial traction in the industry, with nine products launched in 2010 alone featuring the processor.

Then at the end of 2010 another new chip was launched, codenamed 'Groveland' (or CE4200 for short) and offering a further eight video streams, as well as advanced power management, including the ability to hibernate and resume quickly.

Mr. Tapp describes the difference between the approach of Intel and that of its competitors thus: "Intel's approach to the product segment is to add a software applications platform: we are taking the Internet and optimising it into these low power consumption devices, whereas the other SoC vendors are taking these low power consumption devices and trying to add software support, and bring the Internet to them."

"The advantage of Intel's approach is that we've got a great Internet experience very early on - app stores, technologies like Flash and Silverlight, and even operating systems like Windows Embedded 7 or full versions of Linux just run because it is a software application processor, so the software is ninety-nine percent done already, you just have to optimise some of the accelerator hardware to make sure you have got great HD performance, great audio etcetera.

"However, it is not just about the speed and the responsiveness of the user interface, it is also about the richness of the interface - again, if you look at the Smart TV devices, they have a standard DEF graphical overlay for their interface, whereas all the Intel stuff is in true high-definition 1080p, and actually our devices will handle a minimum of two 1080p streams simultaneously, so you can deliver things such as picture-in-picture, nice scaling etc. Also, you are getting better ecosystem support - you won't have an error message that says "sorry this version of Flash is not supported", because it works out of the box, you've got the horsepower there, you've got the software instruction compatibility, it's a good advantage for Intel."

Regarding the future of set-top boxes, the Intel man was confident that these devices will not disappear, although they may evolve into a thin-client model served by a centralised home gateway: "There will always be a market for set-top box devices, and even in a thin-client scenario, you still need a powerful home gateway. I think that there will always be a need to have a second device in order to get the latest technology into the TV - the refresh cycle of a set-top box or Blu-ray Player is a lot shorter than the refresh cycle of a TV. So in terms of whether we will see a move to thin clients and the Cloud, I don't think all of it - I think there will be a mixed experience, there will be some benefits of Cloud features, and there will be some benefits to having local client-side performance."

At this point the conversation alighted on the travails of Google TV, which has been delivered on devices such as Sony Internet TVs which run Intel chipsets: "It has had a hard initial reception," admitted Mr. Tapp, "but what we have to remember with Google TV is that the way Google works is to get an idea together, and rush it out into the market and then evolve it, just like they did with phones, and look where they are now with phones. We can expect to see improvements over Google TV with version two, and more improvements with version three, and sooner or later they will have the solution.

"One thing to note about Google TV is that a lot of people that do own it love it, despite its initial critical reception - Google is always going to attract press attention whatever it does, so there is always some scope for a difference in opinion between a tech press reviewer and people that are early adopters and actually use it, finding the ability to sniff out niche content and have their Web apps on the TV etcetera.

"Having the broadcasters onboard is critical, but there are two pieces to that - one part is getting the apps, getting the content available through catchup, and I totally agree with you on that. I think that our market in Europe is different from the US market, where it is all premium content, whereas here in Europe it is not all premium content, there is an immense amount of great free-to-air content, not just in the UK but in Germany and elsewhere too.

"The main point I want to touch on here is that even in the US, where networks have blocked Google TV, it doesn't mean that you can't watch those channels on the Google TV, it just means that if the site detects that the device accessing it is a Google TV then it will say "I'm not going to serve up free video content to you". But it is an integrated device, the platform is designed to bring together broadcast and the Internet, so you can still access that content, just on the EPG instead. I think that is an overstated issue where the media really went mad on that."

Regarding the future of Smart TV, the Intel exec said: "I think that we are seeing immense momentum already for Smart TV - OEM and service providers are moving towards a software platform in the TV, and consumers like it because the content that they have been able to get on every other device for the past ten years is suddenly available on the best device for watching content.

"I think that it is inevitable that it is going to happen and right now it is an exciting space to watch, because if you compare it to the phone market, that is actually fairly established now, you've got two or three players. The TV market is not - it is still working itself out, because there are so many more moving parts within the ecosystem that you need to get it right. Yes you need to get content, and it is frankly all about content, but if you can't liberate that content, if that content can't come to me because it knows I'm going to like it, you've got this problem of "wow, there are projected to be five billion hours of video content available online by 2015, how do I find what I want?"

"So there is a lot of intelligence that needs to go further up the stack in how that actually comes to me in a meaningful way, so that when I turn on my TV, whatever I'm watching is something that I know I'm going to like. I definitely believe in the tablet as a great second screen which augments the TV, it is in some ways an evolution of the remote control and the EPG - already, a huge percentage of the population is using another device whilst watching the TV, and most of that is related to what is going on on the TV - it might be social networking, it might be using Twitter to post your comments or to track what other people's opinion is on the X Factor or a political debate, but it also might be Facebook recommendations of content.

"Having the second screen enables not only the integration of the social stuff - all sorts of niche content can get sniffed out and brought to you based on what your personal interests and hobbies are. So I think that social is a really big thing here, and we are going to see some really cool stuff happening."

Mr. Tapp underlined that Intel is taking Smart TV software and services very seriously, as exemplified by its recent hiring of (ex-BBC man) Erik Hugggers: "We have understood well that in order to win in this space, you have to have the best end-user experience, and since Erik has come on board, he has already built up a user experience design centre in London which is focused on building a world-class Smart TV experience.

"As a company we are frenzied with excitement about the fact that software is completely defining experiences now, and in order to have a great experience, you need to have a great processor. We are not shifting from hardware to software, but rather we are becoming a far more complete solutions company."

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