The future of Internet-enabled TV is set to be influenced by Silicon Valley and they will help shape the future of TV in pretty much the same way as it came to influence the latest crop of smartphones.

As phones became much more sophisticated and added computer like capabilities, the industry strayed into the area of expertise of Valley companies. Apple developed the iPhone, Palm introduced the Pre and Google has pushed out its very successful Android operating system.

Televisions and set-top boxes are now adding similar features with powerful processors, fast video chips and more sophisticated operating systems and interfaces.

The silicon content of TVs has grown quite dramatically since the switch from analogue TVs with cathode ray tubes to flat LCD panels serving digital content.

Many are now backlit by LEDs, lighting which is made of and driven by silicon chips.

The iSuppli research firm sees internet-enabled televisions giving a major boost to silicon chipmakers, with networking semiconductors, TV systems on a chip (SoCs) and more memory needed.

It predicts a compound annual growth rate for video decoding chips, DRAM memory chips and Wi-Fi integrated circuits in internet TVs of more than 55 per cent, creating a $2bn market by 2014.

The central and graphics processors (CPUs and GPUs) of Valley companies Intel and Nvidia are likely to be used extensively to deliver video and web services.

Intel said in a meeting in May: “It was struggling to cope with demand for its latest Atom chip. It was faced with an order backlog of more than 1m units, and customers including France Telecom and Telecom Italia waiting to put the chip in their set-top boxes.”

Paul Otellini, chief executive, said then that “the biggest revolution since television went from black and white to colour was about to take place.”

Eric Kim, who was then head of its Digital Home group added: