One of the more interesting announcements coming out of CES this year was the list of content companies partnering in one way or another with Intel on its Viiv platform. Satellite television provider DirecTV is one of the biggest names, and although the extent of the partnership is not yet clear, a big part of it will be a TV tuner card being jointly developed by Intel and DirecTV.
Intel calls it a "joint effort to enable remote viewing of DirecTV's entertainment services and programming to PC screens, laptops, portable media players, and set-top boxes." Whether this means select downloadable clips of shows or a streaming version of the DirecTV channel lineup remains to be seen (although the latter seems unlikely).
Another new partner in the Viiv experiment is GameTap, the on-demand classic gaming service. This will make it easier for GameTap subscribers to stream their downloaded games to the living-room TV. There will be a new 10-foot GameTap interface and wireless USB controllers will be supported, although we have yet to figure out where GameTap fits into the competitive landscape with so many other retro gaming outlets out there, from Jakks Pacific all-in-one joysticks to Xbox Live Arcade.