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FIREWIRE: So the Blender Says to the Toaster, He Says... September 23, 1998 Digital TV is going to put fire in the walls. It is going to string fire from television set to PC, and from PC to stereo. The digital revolution will run fire through the walls from the living room, to the home office, to the bedroom; all courtesy of IEEE 1394, or firewire, or firelink, or Ilink--depending on who is asked. IEEE 1394 is the new standard for high-speed digital data transmission between electronic components, according Greg Gudorf, vice president of marketing for digital media products at Sony. It is a connection cable with the capacity to connect up to 63 devices in the home and make the television the center of the universe, if it is not already. Firewire is the component of HDTV that Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard called “a milestone for the deployment of digital television.” The goal of firewire is to create a home network with digital appliances using the IEEE 1394 standard to share information in digital bits. Someday, the blender may be talking to the television. Firewire sounds like an Orwellian concept, born of a post-apocalyptic B-movie where machines somehow become humanized. But it is already in use today, and many have barely noticed. Every time a digital camcorder or digital camera is hooked up to a PC to download movies or still frame photos to the family website, firewire is in use. As the pictures are downloaded, these seemingly incompatible machines share information about the family’s most treasured memories in the digital language of ones and zeroes. But the current work on applying the IEEE 1394 standard to multiple types of electronics equipment is creating a controversy between the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) and the National Cable Television Association (NCTA). The FCC would like to see firewire used by the cable industry and consumer electronics manufacturers to solve compatibility problems between cable set-top boxes and the new digital TVs slated to hit the market this fall. Chairman Kennard told the NCTA and CEMA he would like to see this done by Nov. 1. Both associations agree this is a great idea, but between these thoughts and action, something has gone awry, according to letters each group sent to the FCC recently. “With the cooperation of CEMA,” NCTA President Decker Anstrom said, “there should be no problem completing a baseline 1394 specification by Nov. 1, 1998.” CEMA President Gary Shapiro agrees, saying “We are working aggressively to complete a 1394 interface standard by Nov. 1, 1998.” However, the two groups do not appear to be working together. Anstrom complains that manufacturers chose not to include inputs for either IEEE 1394 or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), a specific digital transmission language, in the first generation of digital TV sets—some of which are already on the market. The QAM standard was set by CableLabs, a cable industry funded research group, in 1994 and is used by most cable set-top boxes. But Shapiro argues CableLabs opted for the QAM standard without CEMA’s cooperation. Shapiro told the FCC he fears a CableLabs standard may be “overly complex and unnecessarily costly.” CEMA proposed its own solution to the firewire standard, which Shapiro says the NCTA never responded to. The NCTA had no comment on Shapiro’s charge. So while these two organizations stand at opposite ends of the schoolyard thumbing noses, consumers could be left in November with $7,000 HDTV sets that may not be able to display digital programming received from cable systems. The blender and the television will stand silent, yearning to articulate. —David Connell OTHER DIGITAL TV BEATS HBO HDTV GETS READY: Titles Coming Up On HBO HDTV March 10, 1999 THE DATA HORIZON: PBS Tackles the Bandwidth Usage Question February 24, 1999 RESEARCH: The Reports Are in, But the Conclusions Are Confusing February 10, 1999   NEW FEES: There Is No Such Thing as Free Spectrum January 27, 1999   CES TV TALK: More Buzz than the Sequins on an Elvis Jacket January 13, 1999   CES: Bright Lights, Big Pictures to Hit Vegas December 16, 1998   LOCAL EFFORTS: Broadcasters Give Viewers A Push Toward TV Purchase November 18, 1998   FIRSTS: Digital TV Broadcasts Hit the Airwaves November 4, 1998   THOMSON'S DBS BRAIN: Channels ARE Plentiful in New Digital TV World October 21, 1998   DECISIONS, DECISIONS: Taking the Plunge into Digital TV October 7, 1998   THEY'RE HERE... September 9, 1998 GOT AN IDEA? E-mail it to: general.mail @satbiznews.com WANT TO SPONSOR A PAGE? Call 202-785-0505 or e-mail general.mail@satbiznews.com Please direct questions about this site to general.mail@satbiznews.com q 2000 Satellite Business News Inc. All rights reserved.