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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Rieman who wrote (38730)	1/31/1999 4:04:00 AM
From: BillyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Rubbing the Jini for Luck (Philips/Sony/Sun) Havi manufacturers look to Sun for help By Peter Brown From Electronic News--January 25, 1998 San Jose—Philips Electronics N.V., Sony Electronics Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. last week announced a collaboration to bring Sun's Jini personal network technology to the home audio/video interoperability (Havi) architecture for home consumer electronics (CE) networks. The move is an effort to bring more clout and a higher level of functionality to home networking for consumer devices. Havi is supported by eight consumer companies with the belief that by having the ability to connect CE appliances, consumers will be more inclined to purchase emerging technologies. “Because the devices will have common controls, protocols and specifications, each consumer device will be able to connect to the network easier and have the control center of the network immediately recognize the appliance,” said Frans van Houten, COO of Philips Digital Video division. Two camps have set up in the home networking market. One of the factions, pushing the Havi architecture, includes the major consumer electronics manufacturers. The other camp, which includes Intel and PC OEMs, would have the network centered around the PC. Intel and PC OEMs want their own “no new wires” standard to be the network of choice for the power line, the phone line and wireless devices in the home, all with a PC as a host. Some say, however, this may not be what consumer are necessarily looking for. “It really makes sense how the different vendor fall out because of the PC issue,” said Mike Paxton, industry analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group, a market research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. Paxton “This is not the killer (application) that everyone says it will be but the growth is there and the technology is there so it's something the big vendors from whatever side of the industry can't ignore,” said Paxton. He noted that the in-fighting between the two home networking camps may stymie the proliferation of the technology. Paxton forecasts the home networking market including all the different standards and technologies to grow to $250 million by the end of this year—an increase of 100 percent. By the year 2000, In-Stat forecasts this number to triple. Sony sees Havi as the gateway to the home from any outside information service, according to spokesman Mack Araki. Also, Havi will allow numerous companies to use a set-top box as the control device instead of PCs in the home while connecting to a variety of appliances and applications. The control device can be beyond the set-top or the PC. It could be the television or even a connected remote control or PDA handset, he added. “This will enable plug and play in the home with consumer devices and that will make life a lot easier for those people who have multiple appliances in the home,” said Araki. The consumer companies involved with creating Havi will license the technology for an initial fee of $5,000 and a royalty fee of 10 cents per unit sold. This will allow many consumer OEMs to sell the devices at an attractive consumer price point, said Araki. The Havi application programming interfaces (APIs) and specification were created by Grundig AG, Hitachi Electronics Corp., Matsushita Electric Corp., Philips, Sony, Sharp Electronics Corp., Thomson Consumer Electronics, Inc. and Toshiba Corp. The Havi technology uses the IEEE 1394 interface so that if a legacy device that is not Havi compliant has a 1394 interface it can still be connected to the Havi network. Also, using Sun's Jini technology will allow users to access the Havi network through handheld PCs, cellular phones and PalmPilots. Through the Jini technology, Havi will allow digital audio/video electronics appliances to access remote network services and allow users to remotely operate digital audio/video appliance and PCs across a Jini technology-based network. “So I can basically set my VCR while driving home from work through my cellular phone. That is what Jini brings to the home network,” said Philips' van Houten. I hope I'm not on the highway when this guy is setting his VCR from his cell phone!