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To: John Rieman who wrote (35401)	8/23/1998 9:40:00 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Fire Wire, Don't buy a HDTV without it......................... Broadband Week for August 24, 1998: Industries Move Closer To Digital Copy Protection By MONICA HOGAN Apparently taking to heart a Federal Communications Commission challenge to meet a Nov. 1 deadline for completing IEEE 1394 "fire-wire" standards, the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association said last week that it expects to wrap up discussions on the new digital interface as early as the end of this month. FCC chairman William Kennard sent a letter to CEMA president Gary Shapiro and National Cable Television Association president Decker Anstrom earlier this month, asking that the standards be set in time for digital-television manufacturers to produce sets with the 1394 technology by November 1999. The 1394 fire-wire technology will allow digital products -- including high-definition television sets and digital set-top boxes -- to communicate with and send digital signals to each other. According to a CEMA spokeswoman, CEMA engineers met in Chicago earlier this month to address outstanding issues relating to 1394, including digital copy protection, and the players involved are "still on track" to meet their late-August goal. But any fire-wire technology developed in the next few weeks or months will still be too late to be incorporated into first-generation HDTV sets and receivers, which have already started making their way to retail. Without a 1394 digital interface in the digital-television receiver, next-generation digital set-top boxes and direct-broadcast satellite receivers won't be able to deliver digital HDTV signals. As an interim solution, some cable and DBS companies may deliver HDTV signals via analog component-video interfaces. But since a copy-protection scheme has not been developed for the component-video interface, some industry observers have questioned whether Hollywood studios will make first-run movies available over pay-per-view or video-on-demand to early adopters of those HDTV sets. On the face of it, digital copy protection doesn't appear to be a pressing consumer issue, since it may take some time before the first compatible digital consumer recorders hit the market. However, it's not just a question of passing the digital signal to the recording device; it's also a matter of making sure that the digital-display device can receive a copy-protected feed. "The issue of greatest concern to us is that sets coming out this fall will not have digital inputs, and analog inputs will not incorporate a copy-protection capability," said Fritz Attaway, senior vice president and Washington general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America. More.......................... multichannel.com