Intel’s set-top box experiment is seemingly dead with purchase announcement.
Intel’s plan to offer consumers a la carte television programming is officially dead, with the company announcing Tuesday that it had sold assets of the Intel Media Group to Verizon.
Terms of the transaction have not been released, but it’s said to be in the $500 million range. According to a press release will purchase all assets of the program and provide employment for the 350-person team that is currently working on it with Intel. The deal is expected to be finalized before April.
Throughout 2013 Intel was putting a concerted effort into making its set-top box a reality. At one time the company was said to have 2,000 employees working on the project. If the project turned into reality it was sure to shake up the industry in multiple ways. Consumers would only have to pay for the channels they want, a welcome change for many from being forced to bulk purchase channels. Rumors that leaked out during the product’s development cycle had it that Intel would be including a camera in the device to identify who was watching what, offering advertisers in-depth consumption pattern and demographic information that would hypothetically be much more valuable than what Nielsen offers.
However it was never meant to be. In the fall of 2013 rumors emerged that Intel was having difficulty securing content. By early January word was that the project was as good as dead, with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich shopping it around to prospective buyers (including Verizon).
“When you go and play with the content guys, it’s all about volume. And we come at it with no background, no experience, no volume,” Krzanich said during an interview with Re/Code. “We were ramping from virtually zero and so what we’ve said is we are out looking for a partner that can help us scale that volume at a much quicker rate.”
The press release quotes Lowell McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon, as stating that the intellectual property purchased from Intel will make its way into the next-generation of Verizon’s set-top boxes.
More details will be available after the deal is finalized.
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