CEA Develops Remote Control Standard For Interoperability Of Devices In An IEEE 1394 Home Network

28-Apr-03

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) announced that its Home Networking Committee (R7) has adopted a remote control pass-through standard to facilitate the interoperability of devices in a home network. This standard, named CEA-931-A: Remote Control Command Pass-Through Standard For Home Networking, defines a universal method for allowing one remote control to operate all of the devices in a IEEE 1394-based home network. (IEEE 1394 is also known as FireWireÆ and i.LINKÆ.)""CEA-931-A is yet another step forward in the evolution of technology for the digital home networking environment,"" said Mark Eyer of the Technology Standards Office at Sony Electronics Inc. ""With 931-A, we have achieved consensus among the leading consumer electronics manufacturers on a standard way to communicate simple 'user intents' such as remote control key-presses across the home network.""The standard provides consumers with greater flexibility and control of their home networks by defining a set of commands that all compatible devices recognize. It allows users to operate any compatible device on the network from anywhere else on the network. The standard also addresses applications where, prior to CEA-931-A, infrared (IR) ""blaster"" technology was typically used. An ""IR blaster"" is a common control technique where a device uses an IR emitter to create the infrared commands recognized by the device it wishes to control. Using CEA-931-A, the same level of control is provided through the home network connection, without the extra wires, IR emitters, unreliability, and complex user setup of the IR blaster approach.The new standard allows a viewer to operate the digital television's remote control unit to select, for example, their personal video recorder (PVR) as the audio/video source, navigate through different menus, and then press ""play"" to start the playback of stored content. The PVR itself can use CEA-931-A for unattended recording; it can turn on and tune a satellite or digital cable set-top box to a desired channel at a predetermined time, and capture the output from that box.CEA 931-A is poised to become part of the national ""plug-and-play"" standards for compatibility between digital televisions and digital cable systems. It is included in the memorandum of understanding (MOU) filed in December 2002 with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on behalf of 14 consumer electronics companies and seven cable companies. In response, the FCC has issued a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking statement that references the MOU and solicits comments on it.In the MOU, support of CEA-931-A is listed as a requirement for high-definition (HD) digital cable set-top boxes, which currently are not controllable by a standardized protocol. By specifying these requirements, CEA's R7 committee has established a standard for control commands transmitted over an IEEE 1394 link. Further work is currently underway in the R7 committee to extend these same techniques to IP-based network protocols such as the HTTP protocol used by the Internet. CEA-931 is available from Global Engineering Documents and can be accessed online at global.ihs.com. Additional information about CEA's Technology and Standards department can be found at www.ce.org/standards.For more information about the CEA, visit www.ce.org.

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