Microsoft, Intel Want To Bring 'Digital Joy' To The Home

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November 04, 2004 (2:53 PM EST)

Microsoft, Intel Want To Bring 'Digital Joy' To The Home

By TechWeb Technology News

Joy during the holiday season usually comes from family and friends, but this year Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. want it to also come from the PC.
The companies on Nov. 7 plan to launch the "Digital Joy" marketing campaign that will tout the benefits of making a PC the entertainment hub. The best computer for the job, according to the companies, will be one running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on an Intel Pentium 4 processor.
In taking their pitch to consumers, the companies plan to buy advertising on television, print, cinema and the web. In addition, demonstrations on the use of the PC to show movie clips, play music, and record, rewind and pause TV programming will be held in malls in 38 locations in the U.S., including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
The TV ad demonstrating "digital joy," which the companies define as "the feeling people get when they access their digital content at the touch of a button," will bring lots of images not usually associated with the holiday season.
The spot will unfold with a horse-drawn chariot racing down a city street followed by a high-speed car chase. The ad also will include a dancing "Annie" from the Broadway musical of the same name, a UFO, martial arts fighters battling in midair and boxers engaging in a championship fight. The spot will end with all the characters converging on an "all-American home," where they'll gather around a family enjoying their new home PC.
Deutsch Inc., based in New York, created the advertising campaign.
While "digital joy" may bring happiness to the couch potato, it's not expected to be easy on the pocketbook. Home entertainment systems running Media Center could cost from $1,000 to as high as $10,000, some experts say. In addition, many consumers are unaware of the latest Media Center's many features, and not enough systems builders currently play in the consumer space.
Microsoft, however, is conducting road shows to educate system builders, and is distributing technical information to prepare the channel, Kurt Kolb, general manager of Microsoft's system-builder channel, has told CRN, a CMP Media publication.
The market for so-called "home media servers," which are computers that act as entertainment hubs, is expected to show modest growth through 2008, increasing from 6 million units this year to 31 million, market researcher In-Stat/MDR said. In 2008, two thirds of the units are expected to be consumer electronic-based, such as set-top boxes for televisions, with the remainder based on the PC.