Re: Assuming, Intel can match the easy to use user interface, what will cause people to switch. Inertia is on the side of the status quo. Not to mention the cable companies have a direct advertising conduit to their consumers through the monthly bill.
Almost every home in America has a PC. It's the standard interface for computing. The cable companies will try to shift this to small box consumer electronics, but they are going to miss the key elements that make general purpose computing so attractive. Only on a PC can you do everything from word processing, to Internet browsing, to photo and video editing, to content downloading, to game playing, to game hosting, etc etc. They key is general purpose, and no box is going to match that, even as they continue to add PC like features. Bringing the PC from the office into the living room is going to be the natural evolution for some, but a real pain for others. Over time, however, the barrier to make this shift gets lower, and the amount of people willing to shift to new usage patterns gets bigger. It's a process that is by no means ensured, but I think Intel will find success and a growing business that can only help this industry.
Re: Other than single people, who is going to want to try and monopolize the family TV so they can go surfing. As to pictures and music, they are already available via TiVo.
TiVo may have the abilities to view or play content, but you can't exactly run the same applications for downloading and/or creating the content that you can on the PC. TiVo is not a computer. It has a processor that only knows specific functions, and for general purpose it can't compete.
Re: Microsoft is the King of iterating to success. I don't think they intend to let xBox360 lose over time. For Viiv to succeed, Intel (relying on OEMs) will have ti battle Microsoft and win.
Microsoft has a bigger win if Viiv is successful. If the PC gets a breath of life in the living room, they sell more copies of Windows, and perhaps even new software that will work with Viiv later on (virtualization hypervisors, new multimedia software, etc). X-box is a money losing piece of hardware, and the only reason to push more sales of it is through the licensing of games. Therefore, I think MS will attempt to make X-Box a home PC only as far as it competes with Sony, but they won't try to outsell Viiv, because the more successful they are with doing this, the more money they'll lose from lost sales of Windows and more hardware losses on X-Box.
I can possibly sense a threat if MS finds a way to make money from the viewing of individual content on X-Box (i.e. a share of the DRM side of content viewing), because then they'll have a reason to push their own hardware over Intel's platform, where they'll only gain from the OS licenses. Of course, this would be a serious shift from their current business model, and I don't see it happening in the short term.
AI
