Intel Fronts $200M To Boost Digital Home Efforts

To be managed by Intel Capital, the Intel Digital Home Fund was set up to drive the convergence of PC and consumer-electronics devices, the company said in a statement.

"As more entertainment and educational content becomes digital, people want to edit, manage and access that content and share it among multiple devices including TVs, stereos, PCs and handhelds," said John Minor, Intel Capital president, in a prepared statement.

Intel Capital has already invested in home technology concerns including Musicmatch, a maker of recording and playback software, and Entropic, a maker of chips used in home networking gear.

The news comes as thousands of customers and seemingly as many vendors converge on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicking off Wednesday. CES is the venue for tech giants on both sides of the PC and consumer-electronics divide to tout their wares. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is expected to unveil a new handheld movie viewer, the film analog to Apple Computer's wildly popular iPod. Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina will also be on hand to tout that company's consumer push.

Meanwhile, for all the investment in hardware and software gear and pledges of interoperability, different camps continue to fight it out. Even as some camps reach agreement on interoperability, new fissures emerge. RealNetworks' just-announced RealPlayer 10 supports the Advanced Audio Coding format used by Apple's iTunes as well as Microsoft's Windows Media Audio, or WMA format, used by most major music sites.

It is also by no means clear if Intel, Microsoft, HP or any of the other giants have a clear idea of how to move this often-complex technology into the home beyond the classic retail channel. Asked if their companies have reseller or system builder programs geared to penetrate this hot market, spokesmen from Intel and Microsoft said they did not know.