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| EMagazine Volume 4 Issue 5 October 1999 |
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Having a MediaWire home network will allow users to enjoy their devices at data rates of more than 100 million bits per second (100 Mbps) in the first-generation product using Category 3 (residential telephone) wiring - more than 10-100X faster than the current-generation home networking standard. |
As the millennium draws to a close, consumers face an exciting new opportunity to network their homes to add convenience and efficiency to daily life. Current options range from automatically controlling the temperature of their homes to setting up timers to turn on their dishwashers or doing periodic status checks of their burglar alarms. There is no doubt that today's consumers have access to a number of sophisticated devices to ensure their lives run as smoothly and effortlessly as possible. But what about the fun stuff? What about the potential for consumers to network their houses in a manner that lets them use home electronics for maximum entertainment benefit?
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It also means that consumers can individually tailor and personalize their entertainment experience according to past patterns and preferences regarding items such as media content, volume and the style of entertainment desired. A significant advance over the antiquated home control networks of the past, new systems running over standard phone or high-quality wire will provide a single telephone-style jack to allow devices to plug in and self-configure themselves. This will also eliminate the plethora of wiring options facing the average consumer (up to 6 different kinds of wires are typically used in a moderately priced home entertainment system).
One company hoping to make this type of home network a reality is Avio Digital ( www.aviodigital.com ), the developers of the MediaWire™. MediaWire technology will allow consumers to connect everything from digital entertainment devices, communications, home control and office functions into one "plug and play" network. The MediaWire home network will be the first low-cost, high-performance digital home network to simultaneously deliver audio, video, telephony, data and home control over a single wire. A MediaWire home network can include over 100 devices of different types located anywhere in the home. These devices can be new devices with built-in support for MediaWire or existing devices connected to the network through a converter.
Consumers who use home networking technologies
such as MediaWire to link up their entertainment devices will realize major
advantages, such as the ability to watch DVDs or pay-per-view television on any
TV in the home, even if there is only one set-top box or DVD player. The ability
to talk long distance over the Internet or standard phone carriers by routing a
call through their personal computer, safe in the knowledge that their PC will
automatically find them the lowest-priced service provider at that instant for
that particular telephone call. MediaWire will also allow users to pipe music
into different rooms of the home depending on one's personal preferences. If one
person in the home listens to classical music, while another prefers punk rock,
having an entertainment network means users will be able to hear the type of
music they prefer, wherever they are.
Finally, using the Internet will become much more pleasurable in a MediaWire-enabled home. With MediaWire, two or three people can surf the Web simultaneously at cable modem speeds, allowing them to enjoy things like streaming audio and video in real-time without the delay associated with standard 56k modem connections.
The MediaWire home network exemplifies a best-of-breed entertainment network, enabling a new class of in-home entertainment and computing integration. MediaWire is the first network designed to meet the needs of both high-bandwidth media and data distribution in the home. Unlike packet-based "home networks" that were designed to connect only personal computers, the MediaWire network will be truly synchronous in delivering its data (eliminating audio and video glitches that plague packet-based solutions). It will allow all types of media--including new consumer formats such as HDTV and high-resolution audio--to be distributed without any loss of quality and MediaWire's unique, synchronous architecture will allow phase-coherent, audiophile-quality audio to be distributed anywhere in the home.
MediaWire will also utilize bandwidth with high efficiency. Up to 96% of network bandwidth will be available for actual media streams and data. Media won't need to be sent with accompanying time stamps (which can more than halve the available bandwidth of other networks), and because MediaWire is not packet-based, devices on the network can be very simple--expensive processors and memory are not needed in every device.
The MediaWire home network was designed to be very diverse and to support the following different types of devices:
- Audio: Many types of digital audio including Dolby AC-3 (digital surround sound) and new high sample rate formats such as 24-bit, 96 kHz DVD audio
- Video: MPEG1 and MPEG2 video streams including DVD video and HDTV (high-definition television) signals, which can consume up to 19.2 MBPS of bandwidth
- Voice telephony, fax signals, or ISDN lines which are encoded as low data-rate digital audio
- Serial data such as RS-232
- TCP/IP (i.e., "Internet") data
- MediaWire commands
- Many other standard data formats including MIDI, CE IR, IrDA, I2C, X10, and others
Another factor for consumers to consider when networking their home is the amount of bandwidth they will need to maximize the performance of their various entertainment devices. Having a MediaWire home network will allow users to enjoy their devices at data rates of over 100 million bits per second (100 Mbps) in the first-generation product using Category 3 (residential telephone) wiring - more than 10-100X faster than the current-generation home networking standard. That's enough bandwidth to simultaneously carry:
- Eight high-quality MPEG2 video channels (6 Mbps each) with accompanying audio from sources such as digital set-top boxes
- Thirty-two 24-bit audio channels (standard CD audio is 16-bit)
- Sixteen phone or ISDN lines
- More than 12 Mbps of TCP/IP and control data
Consumers hoping to live the Jetsons' lifestyle may be closer than they think. "Smart" homes have now officially arrived, and the once-impossible dream of setting up an intricate home network is fast becoming a reality. Today and tomorrow's high-speed home networks are becoming increasingly affordable, not to mention increasingly simple to install and configure. With companies like Avio Digital helping to pave the way, consumers will soon be able to surf the Web while talking on their telephones and listening to music in front of their home theaters at the highest-possible quality and all running over one wire.
Keith R. Crosley is Director of Market Development at Avio Digital, Inc. He evaluates market direction and viability, and leads Avio's multimedia home networking vision into consumer electronics, telephony, computing, and home control industries.
