News

1394 Over Coax Via UWB Delivers Optimal Whole Home Networking (14/8/2006)

1394 Trade Association and HANA Hosting CableLabs Conference Demonstration CableLabs Summer Conference

Demonstrations at the upcoming CableLabs Summer Conference Aug. 6-9 will showcase the benefits of 1394 over coaxial cable via ultrawideband technology, the 1394 Trade Association and the High Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) announced today.

The demonstrations will leverage existing home coax for consumer networks of high definition devices including HDTVs, personal video recorders, DVD players, multimedia PCs, set-top boxes, network attached storage devices and others. The demonstrations are enabled using equipment and technology developed by Pulse-Link, Freescale Semiconductor, and Samsung Electronics.

"1394 over coax via UWB provides a whole-home distribution capability that runs over existing coax and can co-exist with legacy cable and satellite programming. It is a very exciting and compelling technology that meets the requirements of the consumer electronics suppliers and cable providers for high-definition video and audio applications," said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association.

Among the features to be highlighted at the CableLabs Conference include 1394's guaranteed quality of service (QoS) and all content protection mechanisms, which are available with no need to modify existing coax infrastructure. Throughput exceeds the capabilities of other technologies and provides the growth path necessary as the HDTV market grows.

1394 over coax via UWB also includes support for IP; meets the current Federal Communications Commission mandate for 1394 in high-end set-top boxes for cable; and leverages the FCC mandate for MPEG processing in DTVs. Multiple suppliers are committed to the technology, and production silicon will be available in early 2007.

IEEE 1394 features real-time QoS and content protection, along with the 400 Megabits/second application layer throughput, with raw data rates exceeding 1 Gigabit/second. 1394 also is very scalable, with a road map to 800 Megabits/second over the next 24 months. Support for IEEE 1394 from the PC industry also is expanding, with Microsoft Corporation announcing its support for the 1394b version of the standard in its Vista operating system in 2007.

www.1394TA.org