Business Highlights

SAN JOSE — In its ongoing bid to be a central conduit of media, TiVo Inc. plans to broaden its digital video recording service later this year so users of its set-top boxes can download videos from the Internet and watch them from their television sets.

The new feature, one of several announcements TiVo was to make Tuesday, comes as homemade clips and Hollywood movies are all becoming more popular on the Web and an increasing number of tech giants are tackling the barriers to deliver video from a computer to the comforts of a living room.

"Broadband video is growing rapidly on the Web, but the television will continue to be the key way viewers want to watch video,” said TiVo’s chief executive Tom Rogers. "Our overall goal is to provide as many types of content in as many formats to be displayable on the television through TiVo.”

TiVo’s new broadband offering, however, will work only with downloaded videos that are not copy-protected, such as most user-generated clips and many video podcasts. Feature films and videos purchased from online stores like Movielink or Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes will not be supported, though company officials said they are seeking to offer such protected content in the future.

The service feature will be implemented by the end of this year through an upgrade to the TiVo Desktop software, which some subscribers already use to view photos from the Web and listen to Internet radio. TiVo said it will take downloaded videos that have been placed into a computer’s TiVo folder and automatically convert them into an MPEG-2 video format so the videos can be viewed on TVs and searchable via TiVo boxes.

Gates Foundation gives $15.5 M to help schools

SACRAMENTO — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving California $15.5 million to help low-performing schools in 15 districts, state and county education officials said Monday.

The money will pay for intervention teams that will help the districts improve instruction, teacher training programs, business management, parental involvement and other areas.

"We want to help all students realize their full potential, and we need an aggressive plan to improve our lowest-performing schools,” said Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction.

The teams will target schools that have been identified as needing improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, said Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for O’Connell.

Districts selected to participate in the program will be from around the state and will vary in size, ethnic makeup of students and income levels, officials said.

Intel rolls out world’s first quad-core processors

SAN JOSE — Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip maker, on Tuesday launched the world’s first "quad-core” processors, a new line of chips that feature four computing brains and improved performance over previous models with just one or two processing cores.

Intel rolled out four processors for servers under the Xeon 5300 branding, and another processor under the Core 2 Extreme series aimed at hardcore computer gamers, programmers and other people with heavy-duty computing needs.

The Core 2 Extreme chip is up to 80 percent faster than previous models, the Santa Clara-based company said. The Xeon 5300 chips use roughly the same power as previous generations while boosting performance as much as four times over single-core models.

Intel plans to release three more quad-core processors in the first quarter of 2007, including a more mainstream model for entertainment and multimedia uses under the name Core 2 Quad, and a Xeon processor designed for low-voltage uses and another for single-socket servers and workstations.

Intel, which is locked in a fierce battle for market share with smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., had originally promised the quad-core chips for mid-2007 but earlier this year announced it was ramping up production, beating Sunnyvale-based AMD to market by several months.