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Intel Branding Media Center PCs as "Viiv"
ChessKnught writes "Dan Ackerman posted a blog on Blog.CNET.com regarding Intel Developer Forum chatter about Intel's branding of it's Media Center PC. Don McDonald, one of Intel's Digital Home Group Sr. VP's, is talking about 'Viiv', apparently targetting entertainment PC users. It looks like it'll be combining CPU, Intel hardware (TV tuner, remote, and easy setup wireless home networking, etc.) and Windows Media Center Edition."
So some Intel executive's "niece" got to play in marketing for a week, it seems.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
who thinks "viiv" means "64"?
..technology branding is hard, but .. sheesh, isn't it time Intel fired their marketing division?
VIIV? Viiv? It's like a new STD.
This is YET another product they'll can in 6 months. I use to work for an Intel dealer. It has always been funny watching Intel try to get into markets only to dump product six months later. Let's see: high end switches, SSL accelerators, ISDN routers, NAS appliances, multi-media centers, crap video conferencing, and a whole slew of others.
Intel -NEEDS- to figure out that they really should only do Network Cards, CPUs, and motherboard chipsets. It could be argued that they are even slipping on the latter two.
Either way, I recommend people stay away from them. You'll just be buying something from someone else.
And they are: Cable Card. If anyone who wants a serious HTPC is willing to spend the bucks on the gear, then they'll likely be the type of person who wants premium channels and possibly on-demand programming. For a device like those Intel propose with the ViiV chipset, a video-in connection and IR blasters to control the cable box would be unacceptable...the Viiv unit must *be* the cable box and the Cable Card specification allows that. Tivo, for instance, is coming out with a CableCard unit next year that will allow me to get rid of my cable box. With the cable card from my cable company, my HTPC will be able to decode all the premium and HD programming *itself*.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Aimed at entertainment PC users--particularly those who use rack-style home theater systems
Is this a particularaly large market? I'm not a big audiophile, and don't have a huge plasma HD TV. I know some people who do. In all the stores I've been in, I've never seen rack-style home theatre equipment. Now, I'm not in the high end stores, but lets face it, if the big box stores aren't carrying it, there's not a big market for it.
So, if most satellite and other TV providers already have PVRs and some have similar functionality (networkable, can play music, etc), where is the market for this? Is this going to be a high priced toy for those that can afford it?
Of course, there is the possibility that they meant component style, which probably covers a pretty big majority of people who would be interested in something like this.
Just waiting for someone to complain about it not being called Emacsscame.
"Hi! I'd like to buy a new computer! What can you recommend?"
"Well, right over here we've got a state-of-the-art Sony Vaio."
"Vae . . . via . . . veiaou?"
"Vaio."
"Viiu?"
"Vaio."
"Um. Well, one of my friends has a media center, and I was thinking of getting one of those too. What can you recommend?"
"Here's a Viiv!"
"Veev? Viv?"
"Viiv."
"You know what? I don't appreciate being made fun of."
"Wait! Don't go! I'm serious!"
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This is alright so long as Intel doesn't continue naming chips with random comic book sound effects.
Pretty soon they'd be resorting to names like "Skwoosh" and "Zlurphpt."
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
...part of their marketing agreement with Microsoft. The one in which both companies are suppose to use names that have no meaning whatsoever to the general consumer. (Run Vista on your Viiv?)
(Well, it's either that, or they've got a side bet about who can come up with the worst name...)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
take all overlapping pairs of consecutive digits:
VI II IV
that's 6 2 4 or in leet speak: "six to four"
Now if you assume the two II in the middle were crossed for multiplication then that's 5x5 = 25
Hence we arrive at the Chicago song:
Twenty Five or Six to four
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And VI IV is 64.
And V IIV is 57.
Who cares what it stands for. It's a retarded name, and hopefully it's just a codename. If they actually do use this ridiculus name, they're gonna have to highlight the letters so people know what Intel's smoking.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
So, when presented with the options of choosing a name for their new product that is either A) meaningless but pronouncable and fairly easy to remember phonetically (i.e. Centrinu, Celeron) or B) actually has some vague correlation to what the technology is about (HyperThreading, EM64T), they choose to do neither, settling on one that is neither catchy nor related to what the product actually does.
Nice job, boys.
The brilliant name devised by Intel's Committee To Come Up With A Name Dumber Than "Itanium".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
These were published yesterday:
0 9 1 0
http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=25
http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=25
HJ
At least doing a Google search for Viiv will probably get you what you want instead of doing a google search for Vista. Let's see ...
Currently a Google search for Viiv returns the Intel product as the top result while a Google search for vista returns, um, AmeriCorps ... #@*^#!*9 wtf?
From a customer point of view, Viiv is a good choice.
This is another ploy by their marketing department to lock out their chipset competitors. Notably Via. This will be the same for the A/V market.
By marketing the "Centrino" brand instead of "Pentium M" thay created demand among the clueless public and ensured vendor lock-in for their chipsets than would not otherwise be the case. The consumer doesn't know that a Pentium M is but they do know that their next notebook has got to be a "Centrino" because of blitz advertising. The notebook manufacturers have no choice but to design in more Intel parts if they want to meet "demand".
This also helped in the demise of Transmeta even though the Efficeon had real promise. The Sharp Muramasa is the only Efficeon notebook to date and is only available through importers in the US.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It looks like it'll be combining CPU, Intel hardware (TV tuner, remote, and easy setup wireless home networking, etc.) and Windows Media Center Edition."
Not to mention DRM'd to hell?
This sig rocks the casbah.
Maybe it will run "Bob".
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Which sounds a little painful to my ears. For instance, to use it in a sentence: "Can we re-viiv our ailing business model?"
Slices, dices, eats your lunch.
These days it's all about controlling content once it leaves your servers.
I don't know MythTV well, but I'll hazard a guess that it's not big on DRM. If that's the case, then Windows Media Centre will always have better corporate backing.
I actually think Sun's push for an 'open' DRM scheme will help, but then I'm evil like that.
"vive", as in "five".
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How could the FP to mention the bad editorial work on Slashdot be redundant?
You must be new here...
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Actually, you were right the first time Roman numerals, traditionally, were not directionally dependent. That is why on clocks, you see IIII instead of IV: IV is 6 in Roman.
Some jackass decided to ruin that simplicity recently (last couple hundred years, maybe?), and thus IV is 4.
I think that the marketing gurus are just running out of names that are not trademarked. It's the same with drugs and software. Soon, things will have to be named random strings so as not to conflick with some existing trademark.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Don't get me wrong... I love my MythTV box, but in terms of features Windows Media Center has it beat in a lot of areas. MythTV on the other hand is far better in the actual TV dept.
And the real closer on this is Windows Media Center is bound to have a higher overall WAF (Wife Approval Factor), luckily the other half is a geek so this wasn't an issue for me.
Add in that the top content companies are all about DRM... MythTV wasn't happening on ViiV.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Heh, I think it's the default pin used by the development engineers for the built-in DRM chip ...
...
5 1 1 5
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Dammit, wish I still had some moderator points to give out.
"virii" bugs the shit out of me. Linguistic inexactitude at its worst.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Well actually, it will suck. But only for the first three years. Here's what I predict:
1) Intel sleeps with MS to develop a HTPC standard. They take over the market.
2) Everyone else tries to get in on the action. Lawsuits abound.
3) Other, genuinely better alternatives will become available, some of them open-source. Not all of them will be compatable.
4) MS, who has taken over the project from Intel in the interim, will drag their heels and still produce a sub-par product--but the functionality from the better products will eventually make their way down to the commercial items.
Eventually, we'll have good HTPCs. Not as fast as we'd like and not as good as we want, but they'll be better than if Intel hadn't done this.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Bestbuy employee: Good day sir!
Customer: Hi, Do you know where I can find the VIIV.
Bestbuy employee: Yes sir, just go down the hall, take a left. The bathroom is right around the corner.