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The 1394 trade association says

The 1394 digital link standard was conceived in 1986 by technologists at Apple Computer, who chose the trademark 'FireWire', in reference to its speeds of operation. The first specification for this link was completed in 1987. It was adopted in 1995 as the IEEE 1394 standard. A number of IEEE 1394 products are now available including digital camcorders with the IEEE 1394 link, IEEE 1394 digital video editing equipment, digital VCRs, digital cameras, digital audio players, 1394 IC's and a wealth of other infrastructure products such as connectors, cables, test equipment, software toolkits, and emulation models.

One of those pat answers that only leads to more questions. But it's possible that Firewire was conceived as the successor to AppleTalk.

The FCC also requires every cable provider to give you a set-top box (STB) that gives unencrypted access via a firewire (IEEE 1394) port. Look it up. Write down the requirement number. Call up your provider and tell them to give you a box with IEEE-1394 access to an unencrypted feed.

:>)

Reference: 1394 interface as defined in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate for a functional 1394 interface in the STB

1394 Trade Association sez : http://www.1394ta.org/press/TAPress/2010_0622.html

Yes, but cable shows can be flagged to not be sent unencrypted across the firewire port. The only requirement they have is to pass through the OTA shows via that port. Which means you haven't solved anything.

The FCC also requires every cable provider to give you a set-top box (STB) that gives unencrypted access via a firewire (IEEE 1394) port. Look it up. Write down the requirement number. Call up your provider and tell them to give you a box with IEEE-1394 access to an unencrypted feed.

:>)

Reference: 1394 interface as defined in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate for a functional 1394 interface in the STB

1394 Trade Association sez : http://www.1394ta.org/press/TAPress/2010_0622.html

Yes, but cable shows can be flagged to not be sent unencrypted across the firewire port. The only requirement they have is to pass through the OTA shows via that port. Which means you haven't solved anything.

:>)

Reference: 1394 interface as defined in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate for a functional 1394 interface in the STB

1394 Trade Association sez : http://www.1394ta.org/press/TAPress/2010_0622.html

:>)

Reference: 1394 interface as defined in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate for a functional 1394 interface in the STB

1394 Trade Association sez : http://www.1394ta.org/press/TAPress/2010_0622.html

How does this effect the FCC requirement for 1394 ports to be made available?

http://www.1394ta.org/consumers/FCC_complaint.html

While I don't know how useful the 1394 port is for building home based DVRs, it's still a legal requirement (from what I understand, I'm not a lawyer) for the cable companies to provide. And you CAN complain to the FCC if they won't provide a box with a working port. And by all means, if they won't provide it, complain! The cable companies (and phone companies) really don't like people complaining to the FCC, and the FCC in my experience from days gone by where I worked for a cable company, takes complaints seriously. Assert your rights!

You are correct regarding finalisation of the specification but completely incorrect regarding the implementation. The Firewire specification was *created* in 1986 and used in 1987 according to: http://www.1394ta.org/Technology/index.htm The IEEE standard wasn't released until 1995 but devices had been on the market for years before that.

Your original reason should have been the great, huge, vendor neutral (look at competitors in same org.) IEEE 1394 board.

http://www.1394ta.org/Contact/Board/index.htm

It is only the "Board". You will notice even Microsoft is in board. There are some die hard rivals in that organisation which maintains sort of corporate democracy.

AMD/Nvidia and others (who are afraid to come up) doesn't need a "new" standard, they just need to put that Firewire 800/1600/3200 chip and connector to their mid range offerings (not only expensive ones!) and they should end this stupid i-link, firewire, ieee 1394 chaos. It is Firewire, that is a good name, talk with Apple already.

Apple engineered and opened up the trademark by foregoing the $1 per interface charge people whined about. Apple holds the Chairman Seat:

http://www.1394ta.org/Contact/Board/

Chair:
Eric Anderson, Apple
1 Infinite Loop, MS 306-3FW
Cupertino, CA 95014
Phone (official business only): 1/408-974-1394
Customer information: http://www.apple.com/firewire

Firewire is good technology, it just has no future beyond a small number of products. There are 3 big reasons for this. First, the consortium that controls the specs for audio-visual delivery over firewire (specs 61883 and AV/C) will not release information about their protocols unless you pay many hundreds of dollars for the specs. USB, an inferior technology IMO, has everything any programmer could ever want available for writing drivers and software. Good luck on that score with firewire.

The second big reason is most cable TV companies refuse to provide working firewire outputs from their set top boxes. The FCC mandated these, but most cable companies did not bother to comply. There is virtually no enforcement of this requirement. Lately more cable co's have been supplying set top boxes with firewire, but copy-prevention encryption forbids premium content from going out over firewire. There's a reason there is no Windows software to receive such a stream. There is software for Apple machines that will do this, but even that is limited to what the cable company lets you do. Moreover, many cable companies turn on the copy-prevention controls EVEN FOR CHANNELS THAT SHOULD NOT BE protected.

The third reason, only now becoming relevant, is the move to HDTV as opposed to SD. Video over firewire is typically encoded as a DV stream, and that is Standard Definition only.

So a new standard is probably needed at this point, but reasons 1 and 2 will ensure no decent software ever gets written to do anything useful with it. Not using Microsoft products. There are firewire drivers in XP that were crippled on purpose by MS to prevent your PC from broadcasting video out to firewire devices. Vista must be much, much worse in this regard, as will every future product and OS from Microsoft.

USB, on the other hand, is eating firewire's lunch even though it is an inferior technology. For that there is nobody to blame but the firewire consortium that controls the protocol specs. Don't believe me? Check it out. If you're developing shareware, freeware or even plain old open source software you have a high barrier to entry right there. They say everything is available on the internet. Not those specs! Not even on the p2p networks and that alone speaks volumes about the lack of interest in firewire.

Actually, the cable length can be much longer than 4 meters. You are correct that it does depend upon the medium of the cable there are certain lengths; however, consider the actual specifications[pdf - Standards Orientation v5], or 1394a & b white paper[pdf]:

• Plastic optical fiber (POF) - 100m at 200Mb/s or 400 Mb/s
• Glass optical fiber (GOF) - 100m at 800Mb/s, spec. to 3200Mb/s
• CAT5e - 100m at 800Mb/s

Of course these are point to point distances (i.e. between devices) not the total length of the device chain which I do not believe there is a limit (couldn't find one anyways). And there are always repeaters such as here, or here if you need even more distance.

Actually, the cable length can be much longer than 4 meters. You are correct that it does depend upon the medium of the cable there are certain lengths; however, consider the actual specifications[pdf - Standards Orientation v5], or 1394a & b white paper[pdf]:

• Plastic optical fiber (POF) - 100m at 200Mb/s or 400 Mb/s
• Glass optical fiber (GOF) - 100m at 800Mb/s, spec. to 3200Mb/s
• CAT5e - 100m at 800Mb/s

Of course these are point to point distances (i.e. between devices) not the total length of the device chain which I do not believe there is a limit (couldn't find one anyways). And there are always repeaters such as here, or here if you need even more distance.

However, along with Apple's initial "$1 per port" royalty, this was too little, too late.

However, along with Apple's initial "$1 per port" royalty, this was too little, too late.

I'm surprised that there has been no mention of another advantage that Firewire has over USB: daisy-chaining. That means that, when using several devices, far fewer ports are required by any one device, including (usually) a PC. What a pity too, that Powered USB can't aspire to Firewire's superior variable voltage capability.

The only reason I said "anytime soon" was because I knew someone would say "well, FireWire isn't going to around *forever*". Of course it's not. All standards change, and some are supplanted by others.

But when the iPods dropped FireWire, everyone took that as some kind of "hint" that Apple was "backing away" from FireWire, shunning the standard, and quietly putting it to sleep/death. No. That is not the case. It wasn't then, and it isn't now.

The iPods dropped FireWire likely because of a technical/marketing/cost decision. Most iPod purchasers were (and are) Windows PC owners, almost all of whom don't have FireWire, but DO have USB, and most USB 2.0. All of Apple's machines for the last few years also had USB 2.0 (and at least have USB, since 1998). If one interface had to go for standardize chipset and sizing/cost concerns, it seems pretty clear which one it was to be.

Of course, many people took that as a sign that Apple was getting rid of FireWire completely. There was no basis, however, to make that assumption.

As I've said before:

While specific features of future Macintosh computers cannot be predicted, FireWire is an critical protocol that has come to be relied upon. Some important factors to note:

- FireWire usage across the industry is increasing, not decreasing
- FireWire is featured on all currently shipping Intel-based Macs
- FireWire is required for Target Disk Mode, a critical feature that many administrators and the Migration Assistant depend on; USB is not supported for these tasks
- FireWire is increasingly used as the interface of choice on modern digital video and audio equipment
- Since July 2005, all HD cable set top boxes are mandated by the FCC to come with a "functional IEEE-1394 [FireWire] port"
- FireWire is the primary (and often only) transport mechanism used by all digital video (DV) and high definition digitial video (HDV) cameras and decks
- Application software and features on every Mac, like iMovie, iDVD, and the SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW), depend on FireWire to import video into the computer via DV

For these reasons, it makes no sense that FireWire would have been abandoned now, nor will it be in the near future. *Someday* will machines ship without FireWire? Yeah, and someday they'll ship without USB, too. These standards will die just like everything else does, eventually. Did USB "win" in the mainstream desktop peripheral connectivity war? Yes, of course it did. Long ago. Unfortunately, just because USB and FireWire appeared to compete in some common areas (like desktop storage), the perception was that they were completely competitive standards, and that's not true. Technically, FireWire and USB are a lot different. Could USB be expanded to subsume at least some of the functionality of FireWire? Could a future iteration of USB provide some of the hostless or multi-host peer capabilities of FireWire? Could a universal DV-over-USB standard be adopted? Sure, to all of them. But FireWire is here now, and is used for all of these tasks.

Apple didn't go out of its way to keep FireWire just so the Intel transition was "less disruptive". It keep FireWire because customers need and want it, and its products and product features depend upon it. Apple isn't the only one keeping FireWire alive. It's used all over the industry. All of Apple's computing products will have it for quite some time, and there's no logical or technical reason to believe otherwise.

link to the FireWire logo license on the Apple Developer website:
http://developer.apple.com/softwarelicensing/agree ments/firewire.html/

Links to the 1394TA & 1394LA websites:
http://www.1394ta.org/ (Trade Association)
http://www.1394la.com/ (Licensing Authority)

...is FireWire used as the only standard on all digital and HDV camcorders, professional cameras, and decks and VTRs?

...is FireWire required on all digital HD set top boxes beginning 1 July 2005?

...do all these high end consumer, "prosumer", and professional AV and computing devices ship with FireWire?

FireWire is *far superior* to USB 2.0 - for the things that its used for. We're not talking about keyboards and mice and printers here. We're talking about a high-speed, peer-to-peer (unlike USB, which requires a host) serial connection standard that USB 2.0 simply can't touch for many tasks. Just because you see overlap between them and USB is used for normal desktop peripherals doesn't mean USB "won".

If FireWire lost anywhere, it wasn't in computing. It was in the AV world: there was a chance to have FireWire be the universal connection standard for all AV equipment.

Imagine a cable that not only carries video and audio, but isn't intended for "final output", and also can carry control information between devices, and every device is a peer: picture one, single FireWire cable running between each of your devices, essentially chained off of one another, and each device automatically recognizing any other devices available, and self-configuring to expose the correct settings and options for dealing with those device(s), being completely hot-pluggable and dynamic, and also working seamlessly with your computer.

Yes, that really was the promise of FireWire.

Much of the failure in that realm is due to two things:

- Apple's early insistence to charge $1/port on each device that used FireWire/IEEE-1394 ports, and the requirement to use Apple's old FireWire logo (which included an Apple logo) to use the name "FireWire", which is inarguably the name that would have taken the standard the farthest; now Apple allows free licensing of the FireWire name; and

- Content providers' deathly fear of ALL of your devices - including your computer and recording devices - being able to communicate with each other easily, seamlessly, and digitally

(And, no, NO OTHER CURRENT STANDARD, including HDMI or any USB standard, could do everything FireWire could have done. Oh well.)

Your mistake is thinking of USB and FireWire as competing standards. They really aren't (except in the area of desktop storage device connectivity - see this post for a concise summary). Yes, USB is everywhere. And uh, in case you didn't notice, you have Apple in large part to thank for that with the original iMac, in which Apple included it in 1997, eliminating legacy ports - and the floppy drive - thus creating a burgeoning USB peripheral market that helped the PC world make the transition much easier (that it STILL hasn't really made...)

Nice troll, though!

I was just waiting for this to get posted.

Apple is not "backing away" from FireWire.

What's happening is that the iPod is shipping primarily to Windows PC owners. Many of whom, you know, don't have FireWire. And for the small minority who do, it's anyone's guess whether it's a 4-pin or 6-pin connector.

But they all have USB, and most, USB 2.0.

Apple also isn't shipping some iPods with a dock. Does that mean Apple is also "backing away" from the iPod dock?

What Apple is doing is a cost saving measure, plain and simple. ANYONE on any machine running Mac OS or Windows can use USB for syncing, and most of these customers have USB 2.0. including all recent Macs. And if you really want a FireWire cable, you can get one. I really don't see the problem. The iPod retail boxes are also now not platform-specific, as they were previously.

And far from "backing away" from FireWire, Apple is one of the primary members of the 1394 Trade Association, an Apple employee is the Chairman of the Board of the 1394 TA, an Apple employee has perennially been chair of the IEEE-1394 working group, Apple now allows free licensing of the "FireWire" name and logo for all 1394 products, and Apple is shipping 1394b (FireWire 800) on almost all of its products, save some of the "consumer" oriented products, and ALL Apple computers include FireWire. Many include both FireWire 400 (6-pin) and 800 (9-pin).

FireWire is FAR more robust than USB 2.0, and even FireWire 400 is faster in all benchmarks than USB 2.0. FireWire doesn't require a host as USB 2.0; all devices can be peers of one another. Additionally, the latest iterations of FireWire supports speeds up to 3.2 Gbps. There are wireless FireWire over 802.11x implementations planned. See the FireWire 800 Tech Brief for more information.

Additionally, all digital video cameras and decks, including new HDV cameras and decks, include FireWire as the primary - or only - connectivity. Further, starting 1 July 2005, all cable operators must provide a functional FireWire port on all HD digital set top boxes.

So no, Apple isn't "backing away" from FireWire. It's saving money on the new round of iPods by including a cable that 100% of its purchasers are guaranteed to be able to use, instead of a FireWire cable that the Mac users might be able to use, but the vast majority of PC users won't, and even if they HAVE FireWire, would have a 50/50 chance of being the wrong one. Not to mention that Apple got away from the iPod "for Mac" and iPod "for Windows" delineation and now ships them generically for both platforms.

I was just waiting for this to get posted.

Apple is not "backing away" from FireWire.

What's happening is that the iPod is shipping primarily to Windows PC owners. Many of whom, you know, don't have FireWire. And for the small minority who do, it's anyone's guess whether it's a 4-pin or 6-pin connector.

But they all have USB, and most, USB 2.0.

Apple also isn't shipping some iPods with a dock. Does that mean Apple is also "backing away" from the iPod dock?

What Apple is doing is a cost saving measure, plain and simple. ANYONE on any machine running Mac OS or Windows can use USB for syncing, and most of these customers have USB 2.0. including all recent Macs. And if you really want a FireWire cable, you can get one. I really don't see the problem. The iPod retail boxes are also now not platform-specific, as they were previously.

And far from "backing away" from FireWire, Apple is one of the primary members of the 1394 Trade Association, an Apple employee is the Chairman of the Board of the 1394 TA, an Apple employee has perennially been chair of the IEEE-1394 working group, Apple now allows free licensing of the "FireWire" name and logo for all 1394 products, and Apple is shipping 1394b (FireWire 800) on almost all of its products, save some of the "consumer" oriented products, and ALL Apple computers include FireWire. Many include both FireWire 400 (6-pin) and 800 (9-pin).

FireWire is FAR more robust than USB 2.0, and even FireWire 400 is faster in all benchmarks than USB 2.0. FireWire doesn't require a host as USB 2.0; all devices can be peers of one another. Additionally, the latest iterations of FireWire supports speeds up to 3.2 Gbps. There are wireless FireWire over 802.11x implementations planned. See the FireWire 800 Tech Brief for more information.

Additionally, all digital video cameras and decks, including new HDV cameras and decks, include FireWire as the primary - or only - connectivity. Further, starting 1 July 2005, all cable operators must provide a functional FireWire port on all HD digital set top boxes.

So no, Apple isn't "backing away" from FireWire. It's saving money on the new round of iPods by including a cable that 100% of its purchasers are guaranteed to be able to use, instead of a FireWire cable that the Mac users might be able to use, but the vast majority of PC users won't, and even if they HAVE FireWire, would have a 50/50 chance of being the wrong one. Not to mention that Apple got away from the iPod "for Mac" and iPod "for Windows" delineation and now ships them generically for both platforms.

Actually it's 1394 and they changed the official name to firewire as well.

Cool, what Firewire has been designed to do for, like, years?

From the IEEE1394 horse's mouth: " What does peer-to-peer mean? 1394 is a peer-to-peer interface. This allows dubbing from one camcorder to another without the need for a computer. It also allows multiple computers to share a given peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the computers. It's another important reason why 1394 is the digital interface of choice and why its acceptance is growing.

Yeah, there is the issue of HW playback at the portable player level (which is not new at all, either), but PC-less "direct transfer" as the submitter remarks is something Firewire has been designed to do from its inception years ago. In comparison, USB is limited to PC-controlled operation and I don't think 2.0 has changed that.

I'm not trying to flame, but you must not get out much. There are literally thousands of consumer electronics, computers and peripherals, and industrial equipment that use firewire. It's also known as IEEE 1394 and i.Link. Perhaps those names are more familiar to you?

Virtually every digital camcorder uses firewire, and many (most?) x86 motherboards come with it built in now. There are also mp3 players (besides Apple's) that use it, DVD players, HD TV's have it, set top boxes for satellite/cable have it (and cable co's are required to provide a box with firewire if the consumer requests it.) There are also firewire printers, scanners, and all manner of external storage devices that use it.

But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself.

Mac came out with USB connectors years and years before USB was big. And, yo ucan't get a MAC with parallel or serial ports any more

So, when Apple adopts another industry standard connector (developed by Intel, no less) you criticize them for adopting it before everyone else? And, just to clarify, all Macs still come with a serial port, and it's called USB. Care to guess what that 'S' stands for? That's right, Universal Serial Bus. Except you're no longer limited to one or two serial devices on your computer. What's that? You need to connect twelve serial devices at once? Hmm... not sure how you'd accomplish that in the old days, but now you can buy a single USB adapter that has 1, 2, 4, 8 or even 12 DB9 serial ports, and some even come with parallel ports as well.

But none of this has anything to do with audio. And it's the same story. Apple has had standard headphone jacks for audio out from day one until the present. The four year old iMac I'm using to type this has 2 headphone jacks on the front panel, and audio in and out on the side which also use industry standard 1/8" stereo mini jacks.

(which is part of the reason that I or my company could never buy a Mac).

Honestly, it sounds like you and your IT staff are suffering from incompatibility problems more than any particular hardware platform is.

And EACH cable can be up to 4.5m (15 ft) long. Most of your cables needn't be longer than 15 inches, much less 15 feet.

Also, IEEE-1394b supports up to 3.2Gbps up to 100m (328 ft) over fiber.

To say nothing of Wireless FireWire...

http://www.1394ta.org/About/products/consumer_prod ucts.html

Additionally, the FCC is mandating that as of July 1, 2005, all digital cable set top boxes MUST include a functional FireWire port, and as of April 1, 2004, must provide a set top box with a working FireWire port on customer request. Of course, this doesn't help if content providers choose to encrypt the content.

Here's hoping we can fight the Broadcast Flag. Unfortunately, I can see a future where our kids think that the only way they can watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, and on the device they wish to watch it on, is by illegally downloading it from a P2P network, instead of being able to legally record it and move it around THEMSELVES with equipment THEY BOUGHT from a service THEY PAY FOR in their OWN HOMES.

How about Wireless Firewire?

It's been said before don't be a sharecropper.

If you must work on proprietary OSes then don't do something that extends the Operating System itself. Widgets are a classic example. If you read Konfabulator's post about it - they do not seem totally surprised.

Software development is a Red Queen Race - you've got to stay ahead of the competition by being better faster cooler. The race that Apple is running is not against its developers but Windows. All power to them. Sure it would be nice for them to buy up innovative products like they (supposedly) did with the original multi-finder.

Not sure why they don't. It seems obvious that Windows developers half hope that MS would buy them out. But it could be argued that this would open Apple up to problems of intellectual property challenges that they couldn't afford to pay for. If you've another idea way they don't play more fair then post here.

But they do buy out good software products. Some of the Pro software has been bought from other developers.

But if you develop software too close to Apple's core business then I guess you have to look at that Sharecropper paradigm again and avoid it.

So lookout if you work on the following plots of ground...

Search (Watson)
Music (Audion)
Networking (Dave)
Desk Accessories / OS extensions (Konfabulator)
Browsers / Internet Content & Search (Camino, NewsNetWire)
Video editing

I think you'd be foolish to develop a PVR for Mac OS X for instance - that covers several of the above fields... basically a Video iTunes with search and networking - perhaps that RSS stuff as well. Expect Apple to run with this for sure - that new codec H.264 should run pretty well over AirPort Express... and wait until wireless UWB Firewire hits silicon.

Still - shame on Apple - seems like they could do better. They even had the gall to present this stuff at the WWDC - where the developers would surely know where they were getting the inspiration from.... amongst the ranks of those in the audience. Hell the Konfabulator guys, Arlo Rose & Perry Clarke, were probably in the audience!

Want bandwidth for video, how about 'Wireless Firewire' :) More info from the 1394 Trade Association.

Already been announced. Phillips and others have been working on it for at least 4 years.

even Firewire, Apple-innovated, has been accepted as the de facto new A/V transmission standard, cross-platform

just thought you'd want to know...

FireWire is a du jour standard. it's USB that is de facto :P

Wireless Firewire has just been announced by the 1394 Trade association, and Apple is likely to be the first company to adopt the technology. Imagine wireless video streaming from an iBook to a 30" Cinema Display!

As opposed to the state of Microsoft, where they have standards you *can't* license.

OpenGL is open for anyone to license and implement.
DirectX is not. It is proprietary and you *have* to agree with Microsoft's vision.

In fact I am incredibly surprised you would call DirectX a standard; it is a platform tied, closed, proprietary, and controlled API.

They are the 'standard' in the sense that Microsoft, having the largest market, in supporting it and pushing it also makes it the most common API. Of course I'm sure you mean to imply that by saying the 'standards' I list aren't standards at all, but despite the fact that they have patents and licensors, I think they are still standards! (I also listed open source groups too, if that's confusing you).

MP3, MPEG4, AAC, are all defined by the ISO-MPEG group.
Firewire was created by Apple, but has it's own trade association
OpenGL has it's Architecture Review Board.
PDF is an open format, and as such a subset has been adopted by the ISO as a document interchange format and standard.
Zeroconf, as well as WebDAV, is an IETF working group. Included in that list is LDAP, Kereberos, IPv6, and DHCP.
Java is questionable, I probably should not have included it there ^^
PCI, PCI-X, USB, and AGP are all standards as well, with working groups and standards bodies.

My point is that Microsoft will take 'standards' and then change them to suit their needs, and Apple does not. If Microsoft is to become like Apple, then that means endorsing and supporting open source groups (Apache, SMB, KHTML, SSH, etc), opening the source of their own programs (IE core, OS core, etc), and using industry standards instead of rolling their own to control the market (DirectX, ActiveX, XDocs, etc).

So what is a standard? I propose that a standard is any format, API, or interface that you can license, get access to, and not worry that it is being controlled by a single organization who's wishes may differ markedly from yours. By that definition, Java definitely doesn't qualify; but also none of Microsoft's "standards" as well, while MP3, MP4, Firewire, etc, all do.

Despite them not being free, libre, or open.

Owner? No.

Next thing you know, GPUs will come with on-board Ethernet controllers and USB plugs for keyboard and mouse, and be built in to the back of an LCD monitor.

It's already been done. Way back in the distant past, when PC's ran at 20Mhz, there used to be VGA cards which had built in 10-Mbit Ethernet ports. The goal was to accelerate network based image processing.

There are also upgrade cards that allow users to convert aging PC/AT systems to support USB hardware.

These days, many video cards have an IEEE 1394 (i.Link or Firewire) interface, so if you could build a TCP/IP interface using this (maybe using a fancy dongle as well), you could feed data directly onto the graphics card.

See these articles as an example.

And even with 5C content protection, the entertainment industry is STILL deathly afraid of the idea of delivering digital content to customers with full digital interconnectivity between their devices.

If not for them, we would have a single, clean FireWire cable, or no cable at all, connecting all of our devices, and enabling them to seamlessly communicate with and control one another. I would have thought we'd be there by now...

Not really. People have coax cable running through their houses already. Using firewire instead of coax wouldn't be difficult.

Except that there is a 4.5 metre limit to the length of Firewire cable.

Subject says it all.

Ethernet? No. FireWire is designed for hubless, daisy-chainable, high speed, peer-to-peer device communications and control from the ground up. And you are incorrect about the distance limitations. Feel like you need TCP/IP specifically? No problem.

Additionally, FireWire is already widely used on almost all digital video cameras, decks, and equipment, is emerging on DVD-A devices, and is the standard interconnect for OpenCable set-top boxes specified by CableLabs.

This was what FireWire was made for. Unfortunately, its adoption and use has been crippled by an entertainment industry deathly afraid of the prospect of 100% digital transport, copies, recording, and manipulation by the end customer. What a shame.

IEEE-1394b, the current iteration of the standard, supports speeds from 100 to 3200 Mbps at distances up to 100 m, and supports its "native" 9-conductor shielded twisted-pair copper, ordinary CAT-5, and various flavors of optical cabling.

See the informative IEEE-1394b Technical Brief and What is 1394? for more information.

For even more information, including information about Wireless FireWire, see Intel's 1394 Technology site.

It remains to be seen whether FireWire will hit 3.2GBps before 10GBps Ethernet becomes affordable. (Even if it does, I'd really expect people to use it more for SANs and NAS than for ordinary networks.)

1394 already does 400MB. 1394b however will do up to 3.2GB. 1394ta 1394b

Actually I was referring to the roots (AT&T) of the dump/restore commands as a means of archiving. In addition, there is the fact that 1394 is a standard that allows peer to peer isochronous and asynch video/audio/data transfer. this means the: iLink port on the PS2 can be networked with another PS2; a 1394 drive could be networked with a computer that has a 1394 port (replacing the SCSI tape drive; or a DV camera could transfer information to a fro. Once the divice drivers mature. I know the applications of the technology will open various combinations of data transfer over a wide (50MB/s 1394a, 100MB/s 1394b, and 400MB/s 1394{?}) data pipeline.

Actually I was referring to the roots (AT&T) of the dump/restore commands as a means of archiving. In addition, there is the fact that 1394 is a standard that allows peer to peer isochronous and asynch video/audio/data transfer. this means the: iLink port on the PS2 can be networked with another PS2; a 1394 drive could be networked with a computer that has a 1394 port (replacing the SCSI tape drive; or a DV camera could transfer information to a fro. Once the divice drivers mature. I know the applications of the technology will open various combinations of data transfer over a wide (50MB/s 1394a, 100MB/s 1394b, and 400MB/s 1394{?}) data pipeline.

Actually I was referring to the roots (AT&T) of the dump/restore commands as a means of archiving. In addition, there is the fact that 1394 is a standard that allows peer to peer isochronous and asynch video/audio/data transfer. this means the: iLink port on the PS2 can be networked with another PS2; a 1394 drive could be networked with a computer that has a 1394 port (replacing the SCSI tape drive; or a DV camera could transfer information to a fro. Once the divice drivers mature. I know the applications of the technology will open various combinations of data transfer over a wide (50MB/s 1394a, 100MB/s 1394b, and 400MB/s 1394{?}) data pipeline.

New FireWire connector. I know that this might not be Apples fault, but yet another connector type for 800Gb FireWire, ugh. Yeah yeah, an adapters available, but couldn't IEEE figure out a way to make the two compatable?

But then a bunch of folks got together to define a common standard for firewire chips that came to be called OHCI. There are several OHCI firewire chips, and they can all use the same driver on any given OS because they are register-compatible.

Microsoft Windows only supports OHCI. It doesn't support PCILynx.

Funny thing is, the "content industry" - movie, tv, RIAA, etc., participated in setting the standard for OHCI. Firewire is a big deal in professional video production; Apple got an Emmy for developing FireWire.

It seems the content industry was concerned that allowing for promiscuous mode in OHCI would help defeat copy protection of content that's delivered on the firewire bus.

So there's no promiscuous mode provided for in the OHCI standard.

PCILynx cards are I think no longer manufactured because Microsoft won't support them and OHCI cards are so ubiquitous. The Mac OS still supports them but Apple builds all their new Macs with OHCI.

It's getting hard to find PCILynx cards. I've been fortunate to get ahold of a couple CardBus PCILynx cards inexpensively. The one source of PCI PCILynx cards I've found charges $290 for them. So instead of getting a PCI card for my Mac 8500 I got a PCMCIA to PCI adapter that claims to support the Mac and I've been all day trying to get it to work.

That's what setting standards for this sort of thing will get you. The DMCA hardwired into the protocol. That's not what you want.

Search for "copy protection" at the 1394 Trade Association's website.

Personally, my plan is to start writing a GPL protocol sniffer soon. I'm going to make it cross-platform, using a library to abstract the system-call interface. Mac OS 9 and Linux support should be easy; OS X support will hopefully be straightforward. To support Windows I'll have to write a PCILynx driver for it.

I love apple as much as anyone else, but don't forget Firewire has copy protection built in. Maybe not thanks to apple, but who knows...

5C and Firewire

Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP)

I think Apple will be trying hard over the next couple of years to push into Hollywood, with servers and renderfarms. Who know what negotiations will result in? Remember, margins on those big servers are much higher than iMac of the week to cheap-ass consumers.

ANYTHING to keep from scraping my damn knuckles or cracking fingernails when removing a drive is fine with me.

I would've been happy with a connector technology based on FireWire, but if this is cheaper, as easy to connect as FireWire, and no slower than current ATA, then break out the pinatas filled with old hard drives and the Louisville Sluggers.

I believe that prior to this announcement, using the name FireWire cost the OEMs $1-2 per product.

The FireWire reference platform IS OS-independent. The SDK you reference is Mac-specific. SDKs for other platforms are available from other sources.

There is some work being done on "wireless Firewire" . 802.11e ( a bridge between Firewire networks). Not sure if the QoS mechanisms can insurer isochronous delivery, but that would seem necessary in order to label it "Firewire".