It's been some months now since your Feb. post on FC. This is a portion of that post........
I ran across Fibre Channel, somewhat by accident, in 1996. Its enormous potential was
immediately clear to me: I think its comparable to that of the microprocessor. I'm trying
to contribute to having FC reach that potential, without having to start another company.
FC still has big hurdles to jump... the technology is the easy part, the primary issues are
related to business decisions, strategic financial commitments, and a focus on solving
customers' needs.
I was hoping you would write to thread regarding what has happened for
FC since then.
Any comments on how big SANs will be?
Can FC move beyond SANs onto new ground?
I have been following the potential role in digital video TV studios.
One Q I have has to do with potential for embedded FC technology
in the home.
1. C-Cube-MPEG2 digtial video encoding is falling to Moore's law.
Their DVx chip is a Codec that they optimally see......."Another key technology enabler for the new services is real-time MPEG-2
encoding. Christie Cadwell, director of consumer-recordable products at
C-Cube Microsystems (Milpitas, Calif.), noted that digital video enables
previously unimaginable features. An instantaneous time-shifting function is
"the killer feature" that will capture people's interest in 1999 to 2000, "but in
2004 and 2005, being able to pause, rewind or see snippets of live TV broadcast
will become an expected feature for every new TV," Cadwell predicted.
2. SONY-Pushing development of the drive industry for video use....
Early digital VHS successors ReplayTV, and TiVo look like this today..
techweb.com
TiVo Introduces Fast-Forward TV
(12/19/98, 12:47 p.m. ET)
By John Gartner, TechWeb
Silicon Valley start-up TiVo has begun field trials of a
new personalized TV service that it says will
revolutionize TV viewing in the same way the Internet
changed information delivery.
On Monday, TiVo will debut its service in Los Altos,
Calif., as well as a partnership with disk-drive maker
Quantum to provide custom hardware for the receiver
boxes.
TiVo is also licensing its technology to cable TV
operators and consumer-electronics companies to
merge the service into next-generation appliances.
Quantum will make high-speed hard drives optimized
for delivering multiple streams of audio and video
between the TiVo receiver and the television. TiVo has
designed custom processor chips to process and
manage the streaming MPEG-2 data, so users can
pause, fast forward, rewind, and replay any television
broadcast.
TiVo's TView hardware platform includes real-time
MPEG encoder chips and proprietary database and
storage systems. It's now being offered to television,
DVD, VCR and set-top manufacturers for integration
with their products.
Merging TiVo and these devices makes for "perfect
convergence products," said Gary Arlen, president of
Arlen Communications.
DirecTV and local cable operators are participating in
the Los Altos field trials. TiVo expects to announce
agreements with an additional 12 partners in the coming
months.
The TiVo service tracks user viewing and stores up to
20 hours of programs that can be viewed any time. The
receiver box will sell for about $500; the monthly fee
for the service will start at less than $10.
"Five hundred dollars won't be an impediment to the
first wave of adopters who will pay almost anything to
get the service," said Arlen, who expects prices to drop
sharply before a national rollout. The ability to pause
live TV and replay it in slow motion justifies the $10
monthly fee, which otherwise would have been spent on
TV Guide, Arlen added.
The TiVo service is partially modeled after the Internet's
always-available content and search and browse
features, said Stacy Jolna, vice president of
programming at TiVo.
Jolna came to TiVo from Microsoft's WebTV. With 99
percent penetration of TVs in U.S. homes, he thinks
letting users search television programming is a greater
opportunity than TV-based Web browsing. "This has
the potential to be bigger than the Internet," Jolna said.
Josh Bernoff, principal analyst for TV research at
Forrester Research, said people will pay to have
greater control over programming. "The battle will be
fought over ease of use, not advances in technology,"
said Bernoff. TiVo is applying smart-agent technology
used to track usage patterns on the Web. Jolna said the
agent technology automatically matches a user's likes
and dislikes against the available broadcast content to
recommend programming. Users can also search based
on genre, or the name of an actor or a show.
Jolna said user-viewing data is kept private, as the
information is stored locally and sent back to TiVo
servers in aggregate. Users can opt to provide
demographic information, which TiVo hopes will let it
eventually replace standard advertising with ads
targeted to a particular viewer.
TiVo has an ASIC that........
The Tivo receiver also incorporates an ASIC designed to do "patent-pending media
switch," said James Barton, chief technology officer and vice president of R&D at the
company. The ASIC has nine DMA engines that run continuously to manage
simultaneous flows of video and data. The clock rate is a TV-friendly 27 MHz.
When I read media switch, HDD, video, etc it sounded like a miniature FC network. What are the chances for an FC role in any of this stuff?
Just day dreaming. Thanks in advance for any help. |
