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Hancock, the intended blockbuster movie for the July 4 weekend, opened today to mixed reviews from the critics.

Just as well then that its maker Sony is looking for an impact in US homes as well as at the box office.

Stan Glasgow, Sony Electronics US president, told us at a press dinner in San Francisco last night that Hancock would be Sony’s first experiment with streaming a movie into the homes of buyers of its Bravia TV sets.

They would need to have purchased a $299 Internet Video Link accessory to attach to the TV and they will also have to pay a fee, yet to be determined, to watch the stream. Their viewing experience will be in standard definition as broadband speeds were not up to high-definition standards, said Mr Glasgow.

So the deal has about the same lukewarm attraction as the movie, except for the benefit of getting this streamed version ahead of the DVD release and a copy of the subsequent DVD being included in the price.

Sony says this is an industry first - getting a movie directly to the consumer from the content provider - but it also raises questions about Sony’s relationship with the middle man it threatens to cut out.

Sir Howard Stringer, chief executive, has been encouraging joined-up thinking by the different divisions of Sony. This means coming up with synergies that promote products, from a Sony Pictures movie encouraging users to buy a Blu-ray player and high-definition TV or buying a games console to watch it on the PlayStation Network.

As well as this marketing network, Sony has a hardware target of having 90 per cent of its consumer electronics products featuring wired or wireless network connectivity by 2010, including Blu-ray players, cameras and its Reader digital book.

But will these work best with other Sony equipment using Sony standards or is the company fully embracing common industry standards?

Sony has put forward TransferJet for example, to compete with the Ultra Wide Band standard for short-range transmission of data. But Mr Glasgow insisted Sony’s goal in the future was to work on more open standards.

It also has to work with the industry on sharing access to content. When I asked about the eventual integration of the Internet Video Link into the TV, Mr Glasgow referred to the deal struck with US cable operators in May.
All parties agreed to adopt Java-based tru2way as the national interactive “plug and play” standard that would enable interactive features such as video on demand.

He said he expected both the Video Link accessory and cable boxes in future to be replaced by chips inside the TV.

This would mean content direct from Sony being offered alongside the video-on-demand services of the cable operators in a shared interface.

“The consumers deserve to make the choice of what content they want to watch, it shouldn’t be dictated by the cable companies,” said Mr Glasgow.

“Part of the agreement we have with them is we’re able to integrate on that [interface] front page to allow consumers to make those choices. That was a very critical part of the agreement.”

This sounds like another industry first - competing on-demand services on the same screen as cable technologies merge with internet-protocol streaming. In theory, the consumer could choose to watch Hancock delivered by Sony or by the cable operator, based on whoever offers the cheaper price.

Of course, Sony Pictures may not make its movies available to cable operators for video-on-demand in order to help its streaming service. That would be a real test of revenue models and the extent Sir Howard expects his divisions to help one another.

Intel celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, but in Moore’s Law fashion it is doubling down on its future more than looking back at its past.

Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and a 29-year veteran, said yesterday he had planted a few trees to mark the occasion but he preferred to look ahead to how the world’s biggest chipmaker could maintain its dominance and technological momentum.

In a briefing for the semiconductor press, he talked about how, like a foggy road with 100-yard visibility, there was always 10 years of visibility opening up ahead on how Moore’s Law and miniaturisation could be extended.

Chip circuit widths were currently moving from 65 to 45 billionths of a metre and there was a clear path to 32, 22, 14-15 and even below 10 nanometres, he said. “Beyond that, we’re not sure yet.”

The size of the circular wafers that chips are cut from will actually grow from 300mm in diameter to 450mm between 2010 to 2015, in order to provide greater economies in manufacturing, giving savings of up to 40 per cent.

But the cost of the retooling will force consolidation and reduce the number of chip manufacturers to less than 10, he predicted.

“We used to have 100s of companies that built fabs, today we have tens of companies and, as we make this move, you will see single-digits of [manufacturers].”

There had been only three successful business models - large-scale production of a commoditised memory product as typified by Samsung, the foundry model of companies such as Taiwan’s TSMC and the vertically integrated model of Intel, he said.

It is no coincidence that those three companies announced in May that they were collaborating on leading the industry transition to 450mm wafers.

Mr Gelsinger said Intel spent more than $7bn on plant and equipment when it switched from 200mm to larger 300mm wafers in 2001 and it would cost more to go to 450mm.

Everybody investing less than $1bn a year in new fabs was falling off the rate needed to maintain the pace of Moore’s Law in shrinking transistors and growing wafer sizes, he said, hinting that Intel’s biggest rival, Advanced Micro Devices, would not be able to make the step up to 450mm.

AMD said in April it planned $900m in capital expenditure this year.

Silicon, the material that the semiconductor industry has built its success on, will be used more as scaffolding in the future, Mr Gelsinger said.

Only six elements of the periodic table were used when Intel made its first chips in the 60s, but Mr Gelsinger said more than half the periodic table ( of 117 elements) was now being used and this number would grow.

Germanium was being used to bend silicon and high-k metal gates using hafnium had been developed, with carbon nanotubes a possible material for the future.

But silicon would still remain, he said.

“This will all evolve on top of that silicon scaffolding and that will continue for as far as we can see into the future.”