TOKYO — Home Audio Video interoperability (HAVi), a digital AV home-networking architecture proposed by eight consumer-electronics companies, will reach the practical implementation phase early next year when the HAVi licensing program begins. Publication of the version 1.0 HAVi specifications and the establishment of the HAVi Organization, which will oversee licensing, are to proceed early next month.
The eight companies — Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Thomson Multimedia and Toshiba — have formed a one-stop licensing program of HAVi-related patents, with Philips representing those licensers. The practical licensing details will be announced in January.
The eight companies have been hammering out the final version 1.0 specification, which is scheduled to be completed early in December. Victor Co. of Japan Ltd., a part of the Matsushita group, has also contributed to the HAVi spec.
HAVi consists of a set of application programming interfaces and middleware that enable HAVi-compliant audio-visual devices to connect to IEEE 1394 networks and share each other's functionality without a PC go-between.
"HAVi is for consumer products," said a Matsushita spokesman, so the specs can't easily be changed once they have been set. "The group members put the first priority on verification tests to eliminate bugs."
With the publication of version 1.0, the organization will begin inviting membership to promote the interface.
The eight companies will also develop interconnecting "bridges" with other home-networking standards, such as Jini and Universal Plug and Play, to enable seamless connection to the Internet and to non-consumer devices.
