SAN FRANCISCO — Philips, Sony and Sun formally announced today (Jan. 19) that they will work to create a software bridge linking the HAVi software environment and Sun's Jini.

HAVi, developed by eight consumer electronics companies, is targeted at helping users share multimedia and control data between devices inside a home. Jini, based on Sun's Java language, aims to link diverse devices and services — initially in an office setting — typically over a wide area network.

The partnership could be a win for both sides because it will extend Sun's nascent Jini software for distributed computing to a coming generation of digital consumer electronics devices, which will gain ties via Jini to remote network services and devices. In this way, Philips , Sony and Sun will compete with the Universal Plug and Play initiative launched earlier this month by Microsoft Corp. at the Consumer Electronics Show. UPnP aims to link various computers, consumer and control devices in a home and on the Internet via software running on a Windows PC.

"We are focusing on a bridge device — essentially a piece of software — that will sit in the home and on one side connect to HAVi over a 1394 interface and on the other side link to Java and a Jini network," said Rodger Lea, vice president of Sony's distributed systems lab (San Jose, Calif.).

That bridge software might reside on a set-top box, an interactive TV or a PC, Lea said. The bridge software will essentially be a Jini gateway that includes a full HAVi software stack and a Java run-time module on a single device.

The companies will demonstrate a prototype of that bridge capability next week when Sun formally rolls out Jini at an event in San Francisco. In the demo planned for that event, a Sony Minidisk audio player on a HAVi in-home network will use Jini to find and download an upgraded software controller for the Minidisk player. Separately, a HAVi device such as an Internet TV might use Jini to find and link to a remote office printer.

Despite plans to leverage each other's software, neither side of the partnership is prepared to actually ship commercial versions of the other's software. Sony and Philip are in discussions with Sun to take out a so-called community service license to Jini — a free license which would allow them to do development work with Jini and use the software internally, but not to ship it in products. Sun said it is not currently interested in taking a license to HAVi. "Sun is focusing right now on the office and the wide area," said Mike Clary, general manager of Jini at Sun.

Sony and Philips said they will ship their first HAVi-enabled devices later this year, though large volumes of such devices are not expected to be sold until 2000. However, the comanies would not state whether they would sell any Jini-based devices this year.

The trio would not comment on any potential future collaboration that would extend beyond their work on the bridge software.

With the work on enabling software like HAVi and Jini beginning to come to a close, Lea said he has started to turn his attention to developing the applications that will leverage this underlying software to make next-generation consumer devices more compelling for end users. Wireless 1394 networking is another area of continuing research for the Sony lab is, he said.