Intel???s Viiv brand, which heralded its offensive into
consumer electronics two years ago, seems to be heading for early retirement.
At a Friday preview of its announcements due at the Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Intel said the Viiv brand would be
undergoing changes in the first quarter.
Intel will no longer be doing its ???works with Viiv???
verification testing, which had made the brand???s sticker appear prominently on
different kinds of consumer electronics devices.
It was also dropping its media server software stack
associated with Viiv. ???We will allow Windows Vista to deliver similar
functionality,??? said Jeff McCrea, vice president of the Digital Home group.
Viiv had always seemed a less than essential supplement to
Window???s Media Center and Vista???s version of Media Center appears to have made
it superfluous.
Part of the function of the Viiv brand was to prime the pump
for a market where consumers would demand more PCs and consumer electronics
devices that delivered media onto TV screens using Intel chips.
It also was associated with content partnerships with media
companies, an initiative that is also being halted.
Mr McCrea said: ???We didn???t see the need to continue to drive
that,??? referring to how the YouTube generation has grown over the past two
years.
Viiv was launched at CES in January 2006. It will be know as
Core 2 with Viiv in 2008 and emphasise performance.
Future plans would surround ???Connect, Manage and Protect???
features ??? allowing consumers to wake up their computers remotely and access
files, enabling IT professionals to fix and administer PCs remotely and
providing consumers with extra security.
Intel has never been keen to quantify the success of
Viiv, leaving the impression that it has lived in the shadow of Window???s Media
Center software and failed to achieve anything like the traction of Intel???s
Centrino brand.
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