Anonymosity - Combination of Anonymity and Animosity. (A seriously angry man with no face or a very angry Anonymous Coward).

not for Google TV).

Intel chips are expensive and these days you would be very much be expecting a highly integrated chip with demuxes and decoders for digital broadcasts, video and audio processing elements to improve the quality. There would typically be a whole bunch of functional units for most functions all baked onto the silicon. The General Purpose Processor would typically be fairly weak but with a lot of support. Main processors may get somewhat more powerful to support browser type technology but I wouldn't expect them to reach Intel Atom speeds in most cases for some time. Which would you rather have, a TV with a fast web browser or good picture processing?

The current Sony Google TVs (the integrated screens) still carry the same main chip as the rest of the Sony range in addition to the Intel processor and graphics. I'm not certain of the extent to which this is absolutely technically required or whether it was needed to use the existing TV reception and processing software. This means that the cost of the to build Google TV was like building a normal TV and adding a bare bones Atom PC. Expectation of pure additional sales, marketing funds from Intel and an expectation of smaller margins for retailers were what made the business case I understand although I think there were also some unreasonable assumptions particularly if you had ever tried the product.
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20101117/187451/
http://www2.renesas.com/digital_av/en/mpegdec_tv/emma3tl2.html

If Intel do back away from the highly cost sensitive TV chip business I would expect Google to offer support for ARM. I think most of the TV manufacturers on or moving to ARM although MIPS was is certainly used in current models. The newer high performance ARM chips are a probably significantly more expensive than the typical TV processors but probably make more sense than the Intel Atoms with the ability to custom specify the chip features and still be cheaper.

Features on such chips will be specified by major manufacturers but the feature set will probably be locked down at least 18-24 months before the TV ships ruling out some things after that date.

The TV business is hugely competitive market and there is no profit in it (possibly with the exception of companies that have their own panel manufacturing). The combination of falling prices, long parts lead times and the importance of volume to get component prices make it a very tricky business to make money in. But it is key to many companies positions in the Consumer Electronics area and can bring leverage into other businesses (by enabling retail space, offering full product suites and increasingly giving scale to over the top online video offerings.).

1) Lehman Brothers had a vested interest in making sensible investments and not betting everything on the housing market. Diginotar had averted interest in securing their systems. Self interest doesn't guarantee success, especially when there is a cost.

2) I didn't realise there was a client only mode. That is good and I would use it for everything but I think it should be default for https connections.

I don't like any one company knowing too much about me, I already have Amazon knowing a fair bit about what I buy, Google know too much about my browsing, Linked In and Facebook have limited presences and only parts of my social graph but even that makes me nervous.

Additional to VAT there are also import duties on many products being brought into Europe. The rate depends on type of product.

  I never see anyone factoring in import duty differences between US and Europe.

[Based on a post I made in another forum yesterday].

In terms of the Google TV proposition it will be very interesting to see how that goes. I don't have any inside information but I would expect that there will continue to be a considerablely more expensive hardware platform than a typical TV or STB although I wonder if some of that premium will move to the controller. Google TV does need fundamental product improvement as the initial products were both awful user experiences, Google does know this and has been working on this.

From a cable operators perspective I would be expecting one of two things:
1) A very substantial discount on hardware.
Or
2) Advertising revenue share.

This doesn't fit with the way Google has so far worked with Android and GTV manufacturers where nothing I have heard has indicated that Google makes any payments to anyone in their ecosystem.

From my experience working with cable operators I dont think that the larger ones would be prepared to give up as much control as they would need to and allow another company a revenue stream (advertising/UI/link space) without a very good reason (probably cash). Most cable operators are sufficiently close to being monopolies or have a stable satellite competitor and maybe an upstart IPTV provider burning cash to get customers but they don't feel the need for a rapid change or improvement in the user experience that they want to control.

I don't know if Google will be more flexible either on product than with Google TV for manufacturers or revenue shares than in other Andoid uses but to crack the cable TV Market. If you look at the limited differences between the Logitech and the Sony Google TVs you can draw some conclusions about permitted customisations in the last generation (I'm not expecting much more this time).

Google probably has a somewhat better chance with new more aggressive providers (mostly IPTV) but they will still need to convince them that they will drive viewers to their value added services rather than competing over the top services, which is slightly contrary to the concept of the Google TV.

You are right that Virgin would be unlikely to be permitted to output unencrypted HD content (where content is flagged to be protected) and with some companies no output may be permitted.

There were a couple of minor errors in your post regarding the fine details of the Freeview situation so I thought I would put an explanation on record:
1) the EPG is not encrypted only compressed (Huffman encoding).
2) there is no key but there are the Huffman tables which are a trade secret belonging to the BBC and they will only give them to you if sign the agreement to protect the content signalled as to be protected. You must not challenge the trade secret nature of the keys and the BBC also claims other rights over this data (IANAL but I there didn't seem to be any recognised intellectual property category (copyright [maybe at a stretch], patents, registered design, trade secret [I don't think this can be sustained when it has been published although perhaps the publisher can be in trouble) that they were claiming that made sense) and there are also other conditions. Products using the key must be Freeview HD certified so there is a massive range of additional requirements (recorders must be Freeview+HD certified which brings even more requirements).
3) Make a MythTV box, it can use the EPG and output the recordings in useful formats (DLNA direct to multiple TVs and PS3s). I think it would be difficult for the BBC to win actions against someone offering such a product commercially (although there would clearly be the need to license a number of patents particularly for the video codec etc.).
4) It's the same table as for Freesat which at least initially had different terms and conditions (it is actually somewhat stricter and more problematic for manufacturers than the Freeview certification which is part of the reason that you don't see more Freesat products).

Huffman table available here (and have been in the mythTV repository for a number of years) despite being trade secrets:
https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/blob/master/mythtv/libs/libmythtv/mpeg/freesat_tables.h

Actually there is no legal impediment to accessing the fta video and audio.

The only restriction is on accessing the metadata and that is only that the BBC claim it is a breach of their copyright in the compression tables.

The DTLA say that manufacturers of DTCP products MUST NOT apply DRM to FTA content. BBC are trying to argue to DTLA that content is protected and to Ofcom that it is fta.

Request to Ofcom is very misleading in several ways. E.g. The D book version with content protection requirements has not been agreed. Major bust up with Samsung and Sony opposed to BBC. Broadcast meant to start 2nd December but spec and broadcasting license not sorted shows the mess the BBC is making.

Can't be bothered to Mod down all the people who didn't realise that you were saying that the all the lossless systems would have same audio quality but that "Audiophile" idiots would claim that there are differenced.

I understood anyway.

Fill in form on MPEGLA website. Receive license sign license, send cheques.

Fair point.

No you are not in violation of the license because you haven't signed it.

The question is whether you are infringing on the patents that the license is a means to acquire rights to use.

At least in the UK personal/experimental use of patented technology is I believe not infringing although sale, commercial use and distribution are.

So to answer the question you need to understand the patent laws of your country and also what patents apply.

My guess is unless you are distributing MPlayer no one will bother you even if you are infringing on peoples patents.