Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium? A TV with voice recognition capability? Or connected to a video telephone link so that the TV is muted and calls are answered automatically by a voice command? How about a video camera that automatically displays a picture on the TV screen when a visitor arrives; or starts a recording if the same thing happens unexpectedly during the night?
This is not just science fiction, or some fantastic pipe dream. It's really HAVi: A standard that will allow all manner of digital consumer electronics and home appliances to communicate with each other. Eight of the world's leading manufacturers in this field have actually developed a standard that will bring you plug and enjoy convenience and easy interoperability to all your new digital home devices. Those companies are: Grundig AG, Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Sharp Technology, Sony Technology, Thomson Multimedia and Toshiba Technology.

Technology

What you should know about HAVi
Everyone knows that the most frequently used electronic devices in the home are home entertainment products. Wouldn't it be exciting if they could all be operated from anywhere in the home, using whichever appliance is nearest to you?

With the arrival of broadband communications infrastructure and the digitization of audio and video appliances, the time has come for a system that will give you simple control over complex technology. HAVi is a digital AV networking initiative that provides a home networking software specification for seamless interoperability among home entertainment products. Equally important, the HAVi specification is AV-device-centric, so it has been designed to meet the particular demands of digital audio and video. It defines an operating-system-neutral middleware that manages multi-directional AV streams, event schedules, and registries, while providing APIs for the creation of a new generation of software applications. Whatever their brand, the focus is on the control and content of digital AV streams. HAVi software takes advantage of the powerful resources of chips built into modern audio and video appliances to give you the management function of a dedicated audio-video networking system.

IEEE 1394 (i.LINK?or FireWire? has been chosen as the interconnection medium. And it's a good choice. 1394 has more than enough capacity to simultaneously carry multiple digital audio and video streams around the house, and provides support for digital copy protection . Leading suppliers of consumer electronics are already committed to producing HAVi compliant products. And needless to say, the rest of the world won't be willing to wait. HAVi is quite simply the answer to the future of home networking.

What can HAVi do for you?
Give you instantly coordinated function without becoming a system administrator! Each appliance added to the network automatically installs its own application and interface software. The complexity and sophistication has been built into the products and its power is harnessed to work behind the scenes, so that control is simple for the user. Moreover, as each appliance is added to the HAVi networking system, it's automatically registered by the system so that other devices know what it is capable of. Applications may possess several functions, no problem: this is possible across brands because HAVi has standardized the Application Programming Interfaces of the most common AV functions. This means that a VCR can search for an appliance that offers a clock with the time-of-day and automatically set its own timers. And more good news: HAVi's upgradeable nature means that you'll be able to increase the functionality of devices as updates become available. Not even a home PC is required for a HAVi network to operate. HAVi is the only standard today capable of fully exploiting AV capability today and into the future.

Four good reasons why you need HAVi now:

• Interoperability:
  Functions on a device within the HAVi networking system may be controlled from another device within the system. Search for an available VCR to record a TV program, with commands being given via the menu selection of another TV display.

• Brand independence:
  Entertainment products from different manufacturers will communicate with each other when connected into a HAVi network. Imagine a variety of VCR's, hi-fis, DVD players, MiniDisc machines, active loudspeakers, set-top boxes all daisy-chained together and showing up on the TV for you to control from your one remote commander!

• Hot "Plug and Enjoy:"
  HAVi compliant devices automatically announce their presence and capabilities to every other device on the HAVi network, greatly simplifying installation and setup. Just plug-and-enjoy. No more complicated and difficult installation instructions. No configuration of network addresses or device drivers.

• Linked to the Past, Upgradeable in the future:
  Today's i.LINK enabled camcorders and other devices will be able to be controlled on a HAVi network for basic functions. And most HAVi compliant devices will come with their own dynamic Device Control Modules. Updating functionality can be done by downloading/uploading new capabilities via the Internet. Also, additional or replacement products can simply be incorporated into the network.

HAVi builds your bridge to the future
As consumers incrementally build entertainment networks from a basic cluster to a home-wide network, exciting new applications will emerge to offer additional flexibility, control and personalization to home entertainment. HAVi will make it easier for companies to build and market new application programs by using HAVi's API's or programming in Java. Bridges will also be available to home control systems, security systems, communication systems and PC based applications.

HAVi is clearly the only standard today that fulfills the whole promise of home entertainment networking; beyond even our wildest dreams. It's hard to predict how HAVi may affect our lives. The only limit, it seems, is the sky and our own imagination.




HAVi - Home Audio Video Interoperability