The onslaught of new onboard electronics—rear-seat movies, navigation, email, and remote diagnostics—is breeding demand for a new wave of standards and protocols. Standards ensure not only that new technologies deliver on their promises without crippling other vehicle systems, but also that devices from various manufacturers can coexist in a vehicle.

Moreover, auto-industry sources say, standardizing items such as plug-in design will let automakers wait until late in a car's development process before integrating electronics, thus ensuring that the car boasts the latest technology. Finally, standardization helps to enable a dynamic aftermarket.

As in the home domain, IEEE 1394, aka FireWire, has squared off against another protocol for in-vehicle dominance. In this case, the competitor is MOST (media oriented system transport), a protocol developed by German auto supplier Becker Group, Daimler Chrysler, and BMW. MOST, which uses fiber-optic cable in a ringed network, is not an open standard.

Those touting 1394 as the highway for multimedia signals throughout the automobile include the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMI-C) and the IDB (ITS Data Bus) Forum. At Convergence 2000, AMI-C and the IDB Forum each demonstrated the benefits of 1394 for in-car entertainment systems. Both demos employed a Digital Harmony DHIVA 1394 interface, which enables standards-based control and streaming of media formats such as MP3, CD, and DVD over high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable.

In the AMI-C's demo, which included cars from Nissan, Toyota, Ford, Honda, and GM, a DHIVA-powered Panasonic CD changer communicated with a prototype 1394b-to-IDB-C "gateway" device built by Digital Harmony and Strategis Consulting. (IDB-C is an in-vehicle network that automakers expect to deploy in some 2002 vehicles.) A graphical user interface from Rand McNally controlled the CD player via a Palm device.

Meanwhile, the IDB Forum's 1394 demonstration included all the elements of the AMI-C demonstration, plus a DHIVA-powered 1394 home-theater system—all installed in the sleeping quarters of a Mack truck. Digital Harmony's Composer graphical user interface, implemented on a Planar color touchscreen, tracked device status, managed media, and controlled the system, which encompassed a CD/MP3 audio library, a 200-DVD movie library, and a Harman Kardon/Boston Acoustics surround-sound audio system.

According to Digital Harmony, DHIVA supports plug-and-play setup for all devices in the automotive entertainment network—a feature that would be especially useful for car owners wishing to add aftermarket devices. Digital Harmony is working with Cirrus Logic to shrink the DHIVA card down to a single chip. Digital Harmony expects to ship samples of the first iteration of this chip, the CS8510, to its partners in the coming months. The final chip should be available in Q2 2001.

—Margot Suydam