August 1, 2000

Hot wires

Today, however, dozens of PC makers are shipping 1394 products, and 1394 is clearly the interface of choice for consumer digital video products. Finally, consumers can harness FireWire in both computer and consumer-electronics roles, and the interface is the link via which the two worlds converge.

The delay in widespread proliferation, especially in computers, has had little to do with technical merit. Because of its allegiance to USB, Intel has almost single-handedly stymied 1394 by refusing to offer chip-set and motherboard support. In this case, however, it appears that the compelling attributes of the technology are stronger than Intel's will.

Let's start with disk drives. SmartDisk just announced a family of external FireWire drives for the PC, complementing earlier Macintosh products. The drives weigh just 6.5 ounces, feature a 3-by-5-inch footprint, and come preformatted for Windows. Ranging from 6 to 25 Mbytes and offering full hot-plug/unplug support, the drives target music storage, photo archiving, and video applications. Transfer rates of up to 14 Mbytes/sec allow direct-to-disk authoring and capture of broadcast-quality video. Other vendors offering FireWire disk drives include EZQuest, Quadmation, and Western Digital.

In addition to disk drives, you can now find FireWire versions of most other types of storage peripherals. The DVD article in this issue ("Too many flavors") details the ongoing confusion in rewritable DVD formats, but you can already buy a DVD-RAM drive with a 1394 interface. ADS Technologies' Pyro 1394, announced at PC Expo, can store a total of 9.4 Gbytes on double-sided media and features a sustained transfer rate of 2.8 Mbytes/sec. ADS also offers a 1394-based removable-media hard drive called the Pyro 1394 ORB.

The array of choices also extends to CD products. Evergreen just added to the list with its fireLINE 1394 CD-RW drive, which can write to CD-R and CD-RW media in addition to reading audio and data CDs. Previously, QPS had announced its Que! Family of combo drives, which can read CDs and DVD-ROMs and write to CD-Rs and CD-RWs. And Yamaha offers what it calls the fastest drive for audio ripping (24X) and CD recording (8X) with a choice of interfaces, including 1394.

The list of computer products also encompasses add-in cards, PC Cards, and computers with integrated 1394 ports. The trend has even spread to notebooks. Quantex just announced the sub-4-pound Discovery notebook with a FireWire port. The list of manufacturers supporting 1394 includes stalwarts Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and Sony. Scanners, printers, and Zip drives also ship in 1394-ready form.

True convergence, however, comes with applications, and digital video editing heads the list. Hewlett-Packard, for example, offers Pinnacle Systems' Studio DV package, whichincludes editing software and a PCI 1394 card, with some Pavilion PCs. For notebooks, Dazzle offers its DV-Editor, which includes a 1394 Cardbus PC Card and video-editing software for $99. And these are just two of many examples.

Every major player in the camcorder market offers a FireWire-enabled model that can feed such editing packages. Moreover, Mitsubishi plans to include FireWire on digital TVs. Down the road you can expect anything other than the baseline digital TV to sport the 1394 plug.

1394 is also the likely candidate to connect future living-room audio subsystems, and Denon recently became the first company to offer a 1394-equipped audio receiver. The AVR-5800 is a high-end, audiophile-oriented model that carries a list price north of $3000. 1394 comes as part of an optional upgrade.

Unlike all of the other connections on AV products, which serve only single purposes, one 1394 channel can ultimately link digital speakers, CD and DVD players, and even MP3 players on one network, plus provide a link to the home computer network.

For more information, check www.askfor1394.com and www.firewireworld.com.

—Maury Wright