It looks like Intel is getting out of the Digital Home… well in a manner of speaking. Intel’s Digital Home Group; the ones responsible for their Atom CE4100 SoC that made its way into the Boxee and Google TV is going to shift focus. They will be ending production of their Digital TV processor. Instead they will work on an IP set-top media processor and a few other related items.

This will also probably mean the death of the Boxee and Google TV as we know it. These products might not go away but they will not have the same Intel inside that they do now. Instead this group will now be rolled up inside Intel’s tablet team.  This is actually a very smart move on Intel’s part as they could use some new minds in their existing phone/tablet group especially since the tablet has moved from a productivity device to an entertainment product bringing in the DHG gang will only help.

It also gives Intel an opening into a future market that we have been looking at. There are several companies that are making hardware and software that can be run from inside Windows Home Server. These products will allow you to stream media wirelessly to a properly equipped device. Now I know some of you will say that this is not much more than a media extender but this is something more.

With these new products (we saw the first glimpses of this with SageTV) you can run multiple concurrent viewing streams to multiple devices. If you have a dual tuner TV card or multiple cards you can actually stream this media to multiple tablets. Imagine being able to watch cable TV on your tablet instead of having to buy a new TV. This is the type of thing we have been talking about. Although only speculation on our part at this time; the combining of the Digital TV group and the Tablet group seems to make quite a bit of sense when you consider these other products.  We plan on keeping an eye on this and see when and how things develop in the near future.

Source AnandTech

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