HANA and the MPAA
p2p news / p2pnet: Charter Communications, JVC, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, NBC Universal, Samsung and Sun Microsystems say they’re banding together in HANA, the High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance.
Figuring out ways to implement DRM under various guises will undoubtedly be at the top of the agenda.
The MPAA is among “standards” organizations HANA is talking to.
“HANA members are working together to create a design guideline for secure high definition audio visual networks that will speed the creation of new, higher quality, easier to use HD products,” they say in a statement.
ARM, Freescale Semiconductor and Pulse~LINK are “contributing members”.
The coalition says its plan is create industry design guidelines, utilizing existing technology and specifications, that will help enable consumers to:
- View, pause and record 5+ HD channels simultaneously without compromising quality of service;
- View, pause and record HD anywhere in the home with just one set top box;
- Share personal content from PCs to AV devices;
- Control all AV devices and access content with just a single remote per room; and
- Add any device to the home network with just one with cable.
It’ll also use undefined Digital Restriction Management technology to keep “protected content secure”.
The first commercial products are expected to be available at International CES 2007, says HANA, saying it’s “in discussions” with “standards bodies” such as the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), CableLabs, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and the 1394 Trade Association.
The MPAA is, of course, best known for its complete lack of standards
Read:-
HANA – Industry Leaders Announce High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance, December 14, 2005
December 17th, 2005 at 10:44 am
“The MPAA is, of course, best known for its complete lack of standards”
Too right!
If new standards are going to be developed, they should be developed by the Open Source community, NOT big business. Big business standards nearly always have some lame flaw in them (especially DRM).
If you asked me to define the minimum values for a new digital TV standard, I’d pick a resolution of 2048*1152 (16:9 ratio) @ 64 fps (or 128 fields per second) for the picture (maybe double or quadruple the pixel dimensions of that image). For the audio: 262144 Hz, 64 bit float, 8 discrete audio channels + up to 6 subwoofer channels, with the discrete channels intended to be positioned at the verticies of a cube and the subwoofers on the faces of it. See, lots of powers of two to make things easy for the programmers.
And lastly, any form of DRM is strictly forbidden.
December 17th, 2005 at 11:34 am
That’s right, this belongs to the OpenSource / FreeSoftware community who works for the benefit of an Open Society. Any attempt to do otherwise will be futile. Sun, Samsung are good companies (Sun kinda), so I hate to see this happen. I can understand why Samsung, as an electronics company would want to have an input, but…. I love their products, and how they support OGG, and USB 2.0 and other OPEN TECHNOLOGY.
IN SHORT, DRM is a bad bad thing. Any attempt to do that will backfire!!!