A/V Home Networks In CES Spotlight CES Daily

By CES Staff
13:03 01/08/99
By Tobi Elkin, TWICE

With the torrent of new digital products taking center stage here, Panasonic, Philips and Sony are showcasing a variety of new A/V in-home networking solutions and concepts that connect PCs to TVs and link other digital home entertainment devices such as DTV, D-VHS, digital video cameras and DVD players to one another via one simple connection.

Home networking, or connectivity, the oft-mentioned buzzword, is quickly rising to the top of some CE marketers' agendas, with most future digital networks based on the IEEE-1394 protocol-FireWire or i.LINK.

CE companies including Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Thomson and Toshiba are also working to develop digital appliances based on the Home Audio Video interoperability standard (HAVi) that will enable devices to interact compatibly when linked on IEEE.

Panasonic is demonstrating Media Passport, a concept graphic user interface that creates a digital A/V network capable of linking a digital set-top box, DTV, D-VHS, DVD recordable deck, digital video camera and DVD player. It expects to develop Media Passport to link digital product suites and to enable device control as well as content navigation. Media Passport has already been demonstrated in Japan, but remains in the concept-discussion stage here.

Meanwhile, Panasonic's MicroCast, which debuted last November at Comdex, is due out by mid-second quarter. Panasonic's near-term network solution, MicroCast, links the PC to a TV via a wireless connection and two modules, one for the PC and one for the TV. Execs declined to reveal likely pricing on MicroCast or marketing plans.

Philips has targeted "interconnectivity" as one of its chief goals, first via Ambi, a wireless peripheral that turns a TV into a second big-screen PC and enables high-speed Internet access sharing and 120 Mbps delivery of multimedia-rich A/V web content. The product might be a winner with families who own just one PC but have multiple users trying to enjoy games or other content.

Philips licensed the wireless terminal from ShareWave and expects to launch Ambi this summer with retail pricing from $500 to $700. ShareWave also is looking to sign on more licensees to its "Falcon" wireless TV terminal reference design here.

Philips is also showing Pronto, an intelligent remote control and USB product. The company says it is committed to HAVi and will administrate a HAVi licensing program set to begin this spring. Execs say they expect the first HAVi-compliant devices by 2000 and that networked products Philips develops under the program will focus on personalized functions, in line with the company's new Personal TV concept.

Sony, advancing its vision of the digital networked home, is highlighting the whole spectrum of networking, first by showing a host of personal devices that use Memory Stick, its 4- and 8-MG compact, recordable format for storing, sharing and moving text, data, graphics and digital images, and also by demonstrating a network with the i.LINK interface that enables devices to send and receive A/V and data streams at up to 400 Mbps.

Like Philips, Sony is pursuing simple HAVi-enabled solutions to eliminate what Sony's business development VP Jim Bonan refers to as a "spaghetti" of wires. "We're trying to address how to route digital video around and how to let digital audio and video talk to one another," Bonan said.

Copy protection, however, remains a wild card.

Sony, along with Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba support the Digital Transmission Content Protection method -- known as "5C" -- for copyrighted content streaming over i.LINK digital interfaces. Sony and Matsushita say they will have the chipset supporting the 5C system available by this spring.

Sony also expects to incorporate copy-protection features into Memory Stick. The company has already licensed its home networking module to TCI and General Instrument, which is expected to pave the way for cable and DTV compatibility.

Thomson, which remains vigorously opposed to the 5C proposal, says it is working to develop seamless home networks with Alcatel, one of its new equity partners, with most of the development under way in France. By the end of the first quarter Thomson expects to have completed the first phase of defining specifications for the networks, according to Marc Meyer, communications director for Thomson Multimedia in France.

On digital copy protection, executive VP of Thomson Consumer Electronics James Meyer said Thomson and Zenith were partnering to advance a different digital copy-protection method dubbed "XCA," or Extended Conditional Access, a smart card system that allows for protection of home recordings on one-way and two-way interfaces and works with IEEE 1394.