Why did HAVi adopt IEEE-1394 for the HAVi network?
HAVi adopted the IEEE-1394 bus (also referred to as i.LINKTM or FireWireTM) as the underlying network technology for the HAVi protocols as well as for the transport of the real-time AV streams. Today this means that HAVi devices are IEEE Std 1394-1995 and also IEC 61883 compliant for the transport of real-time AV streams like DV and MPEG2. More precise compliance requirements can be found in section 1.5 of the HAVi specification. IEEE-1394 was adopted because of the following features: • Support for isochronous streams to transfer real-time AV streams. • Sufficient speed (400 Mb/s) at acceptable cost. • Hot plugging, self configuration. • Transfer of asynchronous commands for the HAVi protocols and isochronous streams over the same interface. • Wide acceptance in the CE and IT industry. In IEEE, additional standardizations are ongoing such as P1394.a, P1394.b and P1394.1. These standards enhance the functionality of IEEE Std 1394-1995 to allows for higher speeds, longer distances and l
