1394 Trade Association to Exhibit with New HDTV A-V Network Alliance at ICES 2006; HANA Leadership Cites IEEE 1394 as a Key Standard in Alliance's Design Guidelines.

DALLAS -- The 1394 Trade Association will co-locate with the new The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) at the upcoming International CES 2006, Jan. 5-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The 1394 TA and HANA, a cross-industry organization with members from all sectors involved with HDTV, will be located in room N223-N225 of the convention center. The co-location provides the 1394 Trade Association with a cost-effective, high-visibility exhibit space that reflects the importance of IEEE 1394 to the successful commercialization of high definition entertainment networks, said James Snider, executive director.

"The formation of HANA is a major event with very positive implications for the progress of HDTV," said Snider. "They have determined that the 1394 standard will be a cornerstone of their design guidelines for secure high definition, audio-visual networks, and we intend to work closely with them as their development work begins."

HANA officially debuted in New York City in mid-December with a news conference at Rockefeller Center that described its efforts to address content protection, quality-of-service, ease-of-use and cost issues associated with HD networking. HANA will use existing standards and certification procedures to ensure that hardware, software and content for high-definition movies, TV and audio will be compatible with each other. HANA leaders said they will add new levels of component interoperability on existing 1394 networking systems while delivering a user-friendly graphical user interface to help consumers easily find and control connected products.

Among the initial HANA members are cable operator Charter Communications, chip designers ARM and Freescale, Mitsubishi Electric, Pulse Link, JVC, Sun Microsystems, Samsung and NBC-Universal.

At ICES, HANA will demonstrate HD audio-video room-to-room networking with a network interface unit. It also will host a demonstration featuring audio and video distributed using 1394 through a variety of legacy products including Cable STBs, D-VCRs, AV hard drives, camcorders and a new HDTV. The Trade Association will participate in the booth, and plans to establish a formal liaison with HANA early in 2006.

For more information about the 1394 Trade Association, visit www.1394ta.org.

For more information about HANA visit http://www.hanalliance.com/