The race is heating up to set standards for transmitting high definition video round the home, and the latest contender is finally giving UltraWideBand (UWB) pioneer Pulse~Link a break in the broader industry. While its C-Wave technology has beaten the more widely supported WiMedia Alliance system in performance tests, and runs over coax and power lines as well as wireless, the start-up still needs to gain the backing of big players.
It is hoping that its collaboration with the 1394 Trade Association, the body that governs the 1394 family of communications standards, will change all that. It has resulted in a video over coax standard that supports 800Mbps data rates over existing cables, matching the top speed of other 1394 technology in the market with no need for new infrastructure. The rate is significantly faster than real world performance of wireless alternatives based on UWB, Wi-Fi or other systems, and also beats the older MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) platform hands-down.
The 1394 Over Coax standard is likely to be used mainly for backbones, connecting groups of 1394 devices, which will themselves be linked more locally by traditional 1394 connectors and cables. Pulse~Link says the 1394 protocol layers, as well as its C-Wave chips, are optimized for video streaming and quality of service, while 1394 does not carry the overhead of Ethernet, leaving more bandwidth free for data. Content is protected on 1394 using the DTCP (Digital Transmission Content Protection) standard. Most HD-capable digital set-top boxes now include 1394 ports and so could link to the backbones. Cablevision is the first provider publicly to endorse the new standard, which will also be adopted by the HANA (High-definition Audio-video Network Alliance).