Following rumors that suggested Intel was ready to throw in the towel on the revolutionary pay TV service it has been developing behind closed doors, a new report states the company has done just that. But for those wishing the service would launch and potentially change the game, there’s still hope. The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported that Verizon has acquired Intel’s online TV division for an undisclosed sum, though earlier reports suggested that Intel was seeking around $500 million. Verizon will take control of all intellectual property associated with the service, and will also reportedly offer jobs to each member of the 350-person team at Intel that was working on the project. The deal is expected to close sometime in the first quarter.
The exciting set-top box and pay TV service combo Intel has been working on would reportedly record every single program on every channel a pay TV customer subscribes to, and store all of those shows and movies on cloud servers for at least three days. Users would then be able to stream any and all content they want at any time, thus providing on-demand access to all TV programming. The service is reportedly tied to a proprietary set-top box which includes a camera that might track TV viewers’ habits in order to better target advertising.
It is unclear if Verizon plans to launch the cloud TV service as is, roll the service into its current FiOS TV offering, or adapt bits and pieces of the Intel service and launch something else entirely.
