TVSquad

Christopher Guest had one hell of a challenge on his hands when he agreed to do commercials for some new products from Intel. The products are very "inside baseball", as they are for IT managers. Intel needed to promote its new vPro and Centrino Pro directly to IT folks. That means using a lot of words the general public doesn't understand, but words that Intel required in its advertisements.

How did Guest do it? In a song, of course. He rounded up Dan Finnerty (of The Dan Band) and rocker Rob Giles to sing the tune Guest and his collaborator, C.J. Vanston wrote about Intel's new products.

The results are two- 2 minute music video commercials that are pretty entertaining. They're both after the jump:

Having a computer/TV setup seems like a dream come true, especially for couch potatoes and geeks. You can watch TV, download music and movies, surf the web, and check e-mail from the comfort of your couch, using a remote to control the megasystem that's in one area of your house. So how come we haven't really seen that happen yet?

Slate has an interesting piece today that talks about computer/TV products that never came to be, or came to be and then quickly died (like the Viiv):

"My theory is that PC-TV hybrid products like Viiv aim for a sweet spot that doesn't exist. Very savvy consumers will hack together these setups themselves. The less savvy will just keep their TVs and computers separate. And the folks in the middle? If they're around, nobody has found them yet."

Hmmm...I consider myself in the middle. I'm a bit savvy, but I still want to keep my computers and TV separate. Not because I wouldn't necessarily want to have a computer/TV mix if a perfect setup could be created. It's more because I don't really see a need to have my computer on my TV, or vice versa. And I don't want to play games on my cellphone or watch a TV on my refrigerator or take notes on a Blackberry.

What do you think?