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This is fairly big news from the home electronics industry. A bunch of companies got together, as they often do, to come up with a new technology standard that could have a huge impact on home entertainment. Some of these standards have been attempted before, but a recent technology breakthrough might make it practical for everyday home use.

The term ‘Firewire’ is an industry buzzword for something engineers refer to as IEEE 1394. This is one of those industry standards that’s used in many computer and video devices. As is always the case with these standards there is a little bit of variation between manufacturers that comes down to a simple matter of compatibility. In other words, even though it’s a ’standard’ it doesn’t mean that it will always work correctly.

Firewire has been in use for several years. What’s new is that the industry has agreed on a way to use coaxial cable that is probably in your house already. This new and innovative approach will allow you to hook up a device known as ‘bridge’ to the same cable you connect to your TV. Installing these bridges in different rooms of the house will allow video and computer traffic to go across the existing cable.

This means that a bridge connected to a DVR (such as TIVO) in one room could be controlled by a set-top box in another room allowing you to watch a stored TV program without buying another DVR. But that’s only the beginning.

This new standard would carry TCP/IP traffic as well. So you’ll be able to network your computers without installing WiFi or network cabling. In addition this technology could allow you view video content from your DVR or satellite dish on your computer without buying more hardware.

Another possible benefit would be the ability for parental controls to include not only content restrictions but also a ‘lights out’ time by simply switching the box in a child’s room off when it’s time for bed.

Content providers, such as movie and TV studios like the new standard because it has built in content management. It would work much like your set-top box that prevents you from viewing premium channels until you call the cable or satellite company and pay for it.

There are many other possibilities for this new technology that may be under development even now. It’s always hard to tell how this will play out in the market, but it’s a big breakthrough for home electronics. Here’s a diagram that shows how things are designed to be configured.

If you’re interested in reading some quasi-geekspeak on the subject, here’s an article in Digital Home DesignLine magazine.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.