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Interoperable Remote Controls
Lord Prox writes "From the HAVi website:
"Ever dreamed of how your ideal home could function in the new millennium? A TV with voice recognition capability? Or connected to a video telephone link so that the TV is muted and calls are answered automatically by a voice command? How about a video camera that automatically displays a picture on the TV screen when a visitor arrives; or starts a recording if the same thing happens unexpectedly during the night?"
Apparently 8 of the leading consumer electronics companies are trying to get rid of all those remotes and do some cooperation over IEEE 1394. Whitepapers and FAQ available."
Why use a physically wired connection for this "system of the future"? Why not WiFi or some other wireless protocol?
Running FireWire between components in the same room is feasable (though messy), but connecting to cameras at the front door and devices in other rooms is gonna be a pain.
It is interesting that they chose FireWire over other technologies. But what about the use of Ethernet? I believe FireWire is limited to a range of around 30 feet, unless you have a repeater.
Would it be possible to build a Firewire-to-Ethernet adaptor product that allows 2 firewire enabled devices to talk to each other over Ethernet, with two adaptors on each ?
I have serious doubts that these companies can actually cooperate on anything long enough to produce a viable standard. I'd be happy just to see a universal remote that actually did replace all the other remotes, instead of just giving partial functionality.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWSince it seems to be slashdotted (about pages say "Temporarily Unavailable"), there's an in-depth article over at ExtremeTech.
Anyone notice that the companies participating in HAVi are all either European or Asian?
I hate to break your spirit, but I think most consumer electronics giants nowadays are Asian or European. Most of the American consumer electronic giants exited the market years ago.
The interchangeable remotes is nice, but what looks like a real killer app is that we'll have far fewer wires. Just plug everything into a hub, and it's connected to all other devices.
Maybe we'll even be able to get rid of a few of those power cables if we can have some low power devices that can be powered through the connector.
How many remotes do you have?
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Don't get me wrong, I think this would be cool, and I welcome the day when I can dispose of the 4 remotes I have (3 of which are Sony, and they still don't interoperate well). But in this day and age of DRM, I fear that the more we automate things, the easier it will be for those in power to legislate what we can and can't do with them.
Look at DVDs, for example. Sure, the picture quality and sound are miles ahead of VHS. But on VHS, I can fastforward through that FBI warning, and trailers. I can't do that with most DVDs. Nor can I skip chapters, or access the menu unless the disc decides I'm worthy. And I'm forced to watch the MGM splash screen, and some annoying intro that the DVD designers think looks cool. (Yes, yes, I know of the existence of mod chips and hacks for DVD players. That's not the point.) With DVD, the media (as in disc, not newspapers) controls the player, as opposed to the other way around with VHS.
The more we relinquish control over our equipment, in the name of automation and progress, the more we hand control over to another group. Is that the way it has to be? No. Is that the way it should be? No. But that's the way it is.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
This smells like the beginings of the semantic web approach to me..
:)
All devices should publish information about their capabilities using, for example, RDF.
When you answer the phone, anything that has exposed a "volume control" property could be muted until the call ends.. I hope they plan on using better security than WEP for the wireless links though..
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
Now I can lose 1 remoted and disable up to 8 devices!!!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
There's always this baby
Wasn't jini supposed to do this?
What job does your wife do?
Fortunatelly for me, my wife is an IT professional and can appreciate both the advantages of this setup (our CDs are instantly available throughout the house, we can remotely retrieve caller-id information on last calls, setup customized alarm response scenarios, and so on) and the inevitable bugs (the first friends to ring our doorbell were were greeted by an answering machine message).
However, getting the behavior of the system just right took us more than a year, I am still being very conservative when I tweak something (I am never introducing changes to it before leaving for a vacation), and there were times where we discussed the system's interface over a graphical depiction of state machine diagram. I am sure the /. crowd thinks this is the way to go, but I also think there will be people who might find such a setup a bit bewildering.
Diomidis Spinellis - Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
#include "/dev/tty"
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.
I want the ABILITY to switch to a channel to see the front door cam when I hear the doorbell (Or better yet a text crawl across the bottom of the screen. like my caller ID box does.
The "automatic" stuff does nothing but piss off users.. Being a Home automation hobbiest and on the side installer/integrator (Yes I have designed and installed home automation systems for other people)
I know what people hate... and they absolutely hate things that assume what they want.
Besides, all of this is possible right now (except the text crawl I mentioned) as I have installed 3 such systems already into home automation/theatre systems....
doorbell rings or motion detector senses motion near the front door. activate alerter (light flash, nice doortone while fading down the background music/tv sound/stereo/whatever, select my front door cable tv channel, pick up phone and dial 44 for the front door and talk with them... press # to buzz the door open.
some of you say "get up and look" but this is not really feasable for the 6500sq foot 3 story home that 99.997% of these systems are in.
my 1150sq foot flat? it's silly. but I still saw the kids trying to spraypaint my car last night so I could hit the all lights on button and unlock the doggie door to watch my german shepard tear the arse out of one of the punks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah.. and I'm *really* looking forward to the voice activated TV:
..Its your chance to save huge on everything in store! Save up to 70 percent off
TVsound: Remove tough stains with "easy off
*shutdown*
Viewer: "tv turn on"
TVsound:
*shutdown*
Viewer: dammit. "TV ON"!
TVsound: I think these eggs have gone off
*shutdown"
Viewer: damn "TV ON"! and stay ON!
TVsound: Up next on CrapNet a special presentation movie - "Battlefield Earth" staring...
Viewer: Aaaagh "TV OFF"! "OFF"! Please! OFF NOW!
air and light and time and space
Like so many other things in this industry, havi is being stopped by political issues..
What's the first device that someone buys after getting that new 65" Mitsubishi HDTV (which supports havi / firewire)?? A DVD player, of course.
And, how many DVD players support havi?? ZERO. Our friends at the MPAA cannot allow a DVD player with a firewire output (even though it supports usage restrictions that stop any copying).
How many DirecTV receivers have firewire ports?? ZERO. Our friends at the MPAA cannot allow this, since all the high value HD movies on the pay channels could then be time shifted, and watched at any time.
You can buy a D-VHS VCR, which supports HD video, with a firewire port, and havi integration. But, there are only a handful of movies available in this format. And, since no cable or satellite services can be recorded via firewire, this VCR is of very limited value.
Havi is a great concept. It could greatly simplify integration and usage of home entertainment equipment. It can even reduce costs by eliminating redundant equipment (a DVD player would not need an MPEG decoder, since that exists in the display. It only needs to read the MPEG data and send it over the firewire. Same thing for satellite receivers.) But, without support from the common devices, havi is useless.
My grandfather recently passed away, and my grandmother is 92 years old. Both of them are/were in sound mind, and as active as the elderly can be.
Working with them the past few years has been enlightening as far as how remotes and items we take for granted day-to-day are giant hurdles for them.
ON TOPIC: The engineers who develop these horrible remotes which have a thousand buttons, all which are sub-atomic size, should take into account that there is a *large* population of 70+ people who simply don't purchase and can't use these devices because they're too small to operate, and too complicated. There are *some* large-button remotes out there, but they usually must be set up, which requires even more hurdles.
I'm not sure there's ever going to be a perfect solution for the elderly, but from the remotes I've seen, there's plenty of room for improvement. Sony, to my suprise, are the biggest offenders of tiny-button remotes.