HANA Employs New 1394 Over Coax International Standard for HD Home Networking.

New Standard Serves as Basis for HANA Network Enabling HD Content Distribution Throughout the Home

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) today announced its plans to release a HANA Entertainment Box reference design based on the new 1394 Over Coax international standard from the 1394 Trade Association. Products based on the reference design will let consumers download HD content from any broadband connection or HD cable set-top box (STB) and watch it in any room in their home with a coax jack and a remote control. The new HANA Entertainment Box reference design will leverage the 1394 Over Coax standard to distribute content over existing in-home coaxial cables.

The 1394 Trade Association earlier this month approved the new standard for networking that allows high-definition and multimedia content to be protected and transported at over 400 Mbps, making it the fastest home entertainment coax network available. The 1394 Over Coax standard opens the retail market for home entertainment networks by eliminating the need for new wiring. HANA anticipates that the reference design and initial prototypes will be available Q4'08.

"HANA is developing a breakthrough design that lets consumers connect the online libraries of HD content to their TVs," said Bill Rose, HANA President. "Instead of watching online content on their PC or having to run new wires to their TVs, the 1394 Over Coax standard will let consumers easily connect all of their HANA-enabled services throughout the home using only the coax wire and communicating with the devices through a single remote. This solution creates a simple whole-home networking solution that anyone can use. By enabling 1394 to operate over coax, consumers will be able to use the FCC mandated 1394 port on their HD STBs to distribute cable content to other rooms as well, assuming their cable provider supports it."

The 1394 Over Coax standard is the final piece of the puzzle allowing HANA to complete the reference design and make this easy to use solution a reality for manufacturers, content providers, and ultimately for consumers. HANA chose to use the 1394 standard for the whole-home distribution of content due to its high bandwidth, guaranteed quality of service and "Hollywood approved" DTCP security. By using the 1394 standard, HANA will be able to utilize DTCP link protection and localization solutions already approved by CableLabs for cable content and by AACS for Blu-ray DVD. Using the ASCCT content protection system, the reference design will provide a simple to use yet fully protected and trustworthy environment for HD movies and TV programming.

"Together, HANA and 1394 will allow consumers to share content anywhere within the household with no configuration necessary. Setup is as simple as connecting a single cable," said Daniel Mar, 1394 marketing manager at Texas Instruments, a HANA board member. "The HANA and 1394 Over Coax standard solves challenges of moving multiple HD video streams while maintaining content security and consumer friendliness."

The "no new wires" home networking standard utilizes Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology to enable a high-speed multimedia home network that works with all 1394 and IP-enabled devices over coax wiring. To ensure the minimum 400Mbps required for 1394 are delivered, the standard uses Pulse~LINK's CWave[R] UWB technology, achieving the fastest data rate networking performance available over in-home coax in a manner that co-exists with all coax usage.

"The HANA Entertainment Box reference design expedites the product and market objectives of equipment manufacturers seeking to rapidly bring consumers the promise of streaming HD content from any device to any TV in the home with no new wires," said Bruce Watkins, Pulse~LINK President and a Board Member of HANA. "It wraps the previously-daunting technical challenges of superior picture quality, network speed, content protection, guaranteed quality of service, whole home coverage, widely accepted industry standard and low cost into a tidy package, both easy to manufacture and easy for consumers to install and use."

HANA has also appointed two new board officers. Bill Rose, Pulse~LINK representative, has been elected President and will continue as co-chair of the technical work group. Donald Leake has been appointed Treasurer.

To learn more about HANA and the HANA roadmap, visit www.hanaalliance.org. For more information about the 1394 Over Coax standard, visit www.1394ta.org.

About HANA

HANA is a cross-industry collaboration of members addressing the end-to-end needs of connected, HD, home entertainment products and services. The membership includes leading companies from the four industries most impacted by the HD revolution: Content Providers, Consumer Electronics, Service Providers and Information Technology. HANA is working to create design guidelines for secure high-definition audio-video networks that will speed the creation of new, high quality, easy to use HD products. HANA membership is open to all companies involved in the digital entertainment industry. Additional information is available at www.HANAalliance.org.