VESA IMPLEMENTATIONS

VESA has completed a proof-of-concept trial that is a physical realization of the VHN architecture. The trial was built around an operational long distance IEEE 1394 backbone, and demonstrated the capability of the architecture to support:

The trial used Category 5 UTP as the backbone transmission medium. Figure 16.3 shows the equipment and connections for the proof-of-concept.

Samsung publicly demonstrated the Web paradigm user-to-device control at Comdex and the Western Show in 1998 (see Figure 16.4). The demo consisted of an HDTV, high-definition digital VCR (HD-DVCR), cable set-top box, standard DVD player (SD-DVDP), and a PC connected using IEEE 1394.

The HDTV remote control is used to access all devices. A Web browser is shown on the HDTV to initially access the devices page, which shows icons from all connected home network devices. Clicking on a device icon replaces the devices page with the HTML control GUI from the particular device. User interaction with the device control GUI sends hyperlink commands back to the device. User controls to the HD-DVCR are used to begin playing the HD-MPEG2 video stream to the HDTV. Similarly, the DVDP GUI is rendered by the browser and used to start the DVDP play of SD-MPEG2. At this point, two video streams are playing simultaneously on the IEEE 1394 network. The user views the control GUI of the HDTV to do source selection and switch between the HD-DVCR stream and SD-DVDP stream.

Motorola has publicly demonstrated the user-to-device, device-to-device control and home network management models in a mixed technology home network (Ethernet and IEEE 1394). The demonstration consisted of multiple PCs, a digital video camera, a DVCR, and DV/analog converters operating in a home network with a cable modem-based access network.