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To: Black-Scholes who wrote (46470)	10/22/1999 5:03:00 PM
From: BillyG	Respond to of 50808

Specs for consumer home nets promised by year-end By Yoshiko Hara EE Times (10/22/99, 4:42 p.m. EDT) TOKYO — A group of eight consumer electronics giants said they will release software by year's end that could form the technical underpinnings of consumer home networks based on the IEEE 1394 interface. The group also released fresh details of how the Home Audio-Video interoperability (HAVi) software will work and the terms by which OEMs will be able to license it. Separately, the Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC) and systems-software company Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (San Jose, Calif.) said this past week that they are developing technology, named Audio Video Intellectual Property (AVIP), that aims to bring communications capabilities to low-end devices that could plug into a HAVi network. The pair also hopes to define a universal connector that could span multiple interfaces, including 1394. HAVi aims to act as the crucial middleware layer, independent of any operating system or processor, to transport data among various consumer devices on a home network, where a TV or set-top box might serve as a central hub. The software should be available as a final Version 1.0 release in December, its developers said. They include Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Thomson and Toshiba. "Digital consumer electronics products will connect to each other in the home, and those connections will provide new ways of using these devices," said Minoru Kai, technology executive and general manager of Toshiba Corp.'s personal and multimedia systems development center here. "HAVi's target is to provide convenient functions when these products are networked." Currently, a specific digital VCR might link up to a certain digital camcorder, but the two might not be able to connect to other systems in a home. "HAVi will eliminate the limitation," said Kai. HAVi could also make such interconnected devices easier to use, by letting one or more TV set act as a network hub that displays the status or operating modes of any connected device. "With HAVi, all equipment can be controlled by one remote control from the TV set," said Kai. While HAVi acts as a data transport mechanism, it will not provide a common data format for consumer devices that now use a number of formats. HAVi provides a way to describe the format of a data stream and also formats converter functions. However, "The data format itself is not the subject of HAVi," said Kai. "HAVi prepares a road but if you go along the road and find that different languages are spoken, it's not HAVi's matter but a higher-level issue." Get things movin' Settling on common data formats for consumer systems "is a very important issue," said Kai, "but we [cannot] wait for everything being settled. We started with what we can." The HAVi software is modular and assigns an ID in the form of a device control module to any consumer system. Each system in turn is assigned multiple functional component modules, which describe the system's features. When a host device recognizes a new system on the HAVi network it loads the appropriate device and functional modules, allowing users to control the target device — say, a camcorder — from the host TV. HAVi currently defines four classes of devices and 10 function types. New functions can be added to the code, which can also be upgraded to track the evolution of the 1394 interface. HAVi's developers are subjecting the final code to conformance testing. The group has yet to select a security and copyright protection scheme for the software. Philips will act as the licensing agent for HAVi, leveling a one-time fee of $5,000 and a royalty payment of 10 cents per end product or end-product interface. Component-level products such as board-level subsystems or software are exempt from the royalties. Licensees will be required to run compliance tests to guarantee their products conform to the HAVi spec. The eight-company group plans to establish the HAVi Organization to promote the initiative, inviting other companies and organizations to participate. As HAVi prepares to roll out, JVC and Phoenix believe it will not fully cover the communications needs of low-end consumer devices trying to link to home nets or the Internet without the aid of a PC. The AVIP technology the pair will develop aims to meet these needs with hardware, software and protocols. AVIP technology will be implemented in software or in a one-chip microcontroller with functional cells such as communication protocol, graphics, charge collection and security. The companies intend to propose AVIP as a communication scheme for inexpensive products on a HAVi network. They also will propose a compact "universal" connector that can hook up to various interfaces such as 1394, Universal Serial Bus, LANs and ISDN. JVC and Phoenix plan to complete technical specs within six months. JVC will implement the technology in products in a year. After the specs are completed, the pair will invite other companies to adopt AVIP and will propose the technology to standardizing bodies as a communications standard. eetimes.com