A great new development in standardizing interconnection between AV devices

Hooking up

If there’s one safe bet in AV, it’s that the number of connection technologies will continue to increase.

One newcomer is Digital Interactive Interface for AV (DiiVA), which uses standard Cat6 cabling to link displays with sources such as DVD players, set-top boxes and the Internet.DiiVA (www.diiva.org) features four differential pairs. The first three can handle up to 4.5 Gbit/s each, enough to support uncompressed 1080p at 60 frames per second or Quad HD. The fourth pair can send more than 2 Gbit/s in one direction at the same time it’s receiving at the same rate.

That data channel can be used for tasks such as carrying Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 and command/control information.DiiVA also enables systems where iPhone-like icons appear on a display. Instead of fumbling for remotes to control different sources, such as DVD players, satellite set-top boxes and PCs, users would select the icon – such as the BBC or YouTube – representing the source they want to switch to.

That set-up also would allow users to watch all video on their TV, instead of going to a PC or the room where the DVD player is.“We want to develop a new, multimedia networking standard make TVs the centre of home network environment,” says Steve Yum, senior director of product planning at Synerchip, one of the companies backing DiiVA.

DiiVA initially will be aimed at the consumer market, including home AV networks. But if it builds a following there, it’s likely to expand into the pro market, just as predecessors such as HDMI did.In the pro space, DiiVA could be used for applications such as bars. For example, a bartender could use DiiVA’s GUI to switch a display from a football game, delivered via the satellite set-top box, to YouTube videos, delivered via a PC.

Let's now hope they add native snmp support and standards to this and they are not just easy to connect and control but also easy to manage, specially when it comes to the pro market. Then big savings can be made using a standard CAT6 nework with a standard management environment while reducing installation complexity (I hope)

I guess the home AV network here will look totally different in 5 to 10 years from now