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September 16 - 17, 2004
Milpitas, CA

This is the fourth year of this event. It is small, about 150 attendees, at a location not far from the headquarters of VESA here in Milpitas, CA. The VESA plays a critical role in developing standards for displays in the PC industry. Yet, as the display becomes the centerpiece for the HD television emergence there is increasing overlap between CE and PC displays. In the CE world it is called the television and in the PC world it is the monitor. The display manufactures are winners in both worlds. Increasingly a high quality PC monitor is able to serve CE roles. As the issues of grey to grey transitions and viewing angle are addressed, the LCD panel increases its dominance as the display technology of choice. But every one here recognizes the mass confusion in the CE market around HD. The issues are an echo of many we have heard in the past: price, what display technology to buy and where is the content? Under-the-table fair use and copy protection are major market impediments. The content producers want increasingly robust protection for their golden nuggets while the consumers have yet to vote with their wallets/purses on the most onerous “secure” technologies which squash what the consumer thought were their “rights” with media. Here at Display Interface Symposium this new secure future was hinted at with Blu-Ray, potentially the most secure HD content source. It remains to be seen if consumers share the enthusiasm of Hollywood.

If there is one difference between the PC and CE industry it is in return policies. The CE companies live in fear of the return product flow. Viewsonic cited statistics which showed the 30 day product return rates, with earlier technology, were 60 percent and have now settled down to 30 percent. Of the returns, 80 percent tested as without fault. As the PC industry seeks to penetrate the CE industry it has to face the “big box stores” and the reality of fickle consumer.

Are We Making the Consumer Look Dumb?

Alfred Poor, free lance writer, gave an overview of the state of convergence which he called “Convergence: The Points of Confusion.” Some of his key points included:

There remains a significant price disparity between 20 inch televisions and monitors. Yet, at the high end with LCD technology, these prices are narrowing.

The display industry does not have its consumer act together. We burden the consumer with meaningless acronyms, countless connector variations, uninformed sales staff seen to foist products on confused consumers and crazy pixel defect policies.

Alfred ended with the plea to think about ease of use, interoperability, reliability, versatility and value.

Bottom Line

Only the most determined will buy the new display technologies. Sad, but there is a lot of reality to this.

CEA Standards for HDTV Networking

Jack Chaney, Samsung, gave an interesting presentation on the development of the CEA-2027 standard for high bandwidth networking in the home based on 1394.

Note that this is quite the opposite of the direction that the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), formerly known as the Digital Home Working Group, has taken. The DLNA has avoided 1394, in part, based on Intel’s desires to avoid the technology whose IP is held by TI.

The emphasis in Jack’s presentation is support for the device control functionality. This uses cascading style sheets to present GUI components on display screens. The intent is that the network will support many products irrespective of vendor. Some of the examples of the UI looked appealing.

Making Display Convergence Real

Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft HIG, outlined Microsoft’s approach to accomplishing display convergence. That is, how to make many displays work on the PC. The emphasis is on accomplishing this with Longhorn. The intent is that display connectivity will work in an optimal fashion when connected to a PC. A major issue is overscan, which is the norm in television production and output to television sets. This causes significant limitations in displaying PC screens, especially the menu bar, which spans the full screen.

Back to the Future with an Analog Display Interface

To the surprise of many, VESA has developed the New Analog Video Interface Standard (NAVI). This is backward compatible with the existing VGA standard and connector. However, there is also a new connector which can be used. Of course, the first question to be answered in this presentation is – why a new analog interface? The short answer is that digital interfaces have failed to displace analog. The reality is that digital offers “few if any” advantages over a properly implemented analogy interface. As a result there is a NAVI feature set which includes:

VGA compatibility

Smaller optional connector

Hot Plugging

Audio support

Bidirectional power – either to or from the display

Data communications, minimum 2.7Mb/s

Seems like we have been here before? Was not DVI to be the end game for digital display interfaces?

Cell Phones on a Roll

George Wiley of Qualcomm spoke of the MDDI display standard. At the same time he gave a compelling look into the future of cell phones. MDDI is the Mobil Display Digital Interface. It is a high speed wired digital interface. One might raise questions why this applies to a cell phone but this standard has a major advantage of simplifying the connections between two sides of a flip phone. It takes literally 100 lines and reduces them to 6 which run at rates up to 400Mbs. A further gain is that it is possible to use MDDI to drive displays external to the phone. Examples cited include large screen displays, head mounted displays, projectors and external monitors.

By far the most interesting part of the presentation was Qualcomm’s road map for baseband chips. Sampling in 2005 with products expected in 2006 is the 7500 family. This will make the phone a multimedia platform. One of the more striking functions is the ability to include a VGA video camera at 30f/s in addition to a 3 – 4m pixel still camera. The display will go to 640 X 480. The GUI was equally as compelling:

Perspective windows;

Transparent menus;

Photos as texture maps;

Video as texture maps;

Anti-aliased text;

Non-intrusive phone status and

Alpha blended transitions.

Impressive.

We just wonder what batteries will power this and how long it will work. George confirmed that battery power is an issue.

1394 over CAT 5 and More

Bill Thompson, President of UStec, made a product pitch. His company supplies products for the home structured wiring market – mostly new homes. The appeal is to use CAT 5 wiring which is present in many homes to transport 1394 with the tecStream components of his company. The CAT 5 wiring would transport both Ethernet and 1394 which is enabled by a stand alone switch at the hub of the network. There would then be point-to-point links to end-point devices which include video camcorders, video deck and televisions. The ability to transport 1394 has an appeal in simplicity but there are drawbacks to this approach:

Proprietary

Video is sent in the clear as an MPEG stream– UStec claims it will support encryption

Links are point to point

Costly - $300 per end node

There is no support for PC HID or USD, thus, Media PC support is only via either Ethernet or IR.

http://www.ustecnet.com

UStec is seeking to make CAT 5 the backbone of a network for which they provide the products. Yet, there are many efforts to accomplish the same but within standards and hopefully lower costs.

There is one positive factor – support for 1394 which is gaining backing across the CE industry. Offline, a number of announcements made at CEDIA EXPO 2004 by CE companies were cited that show continuing support for 1394.

http://www.cedia.net/

This group includes:

LG Electronics

Mitsubishi

As we heard earlier from Jack Chaney, Samsung, the CEA is moving ahead on the standardization of 1394. This falls under the efforts of R7. The center piece of these efforts is:

CEA-2027 A User Interface Specification for Home Networks Using Web-based Protocols.

There are a number of important activities at R7 and these include:

Extension of CEA-2027 to allow its use over Ethernet

A standardized way to deliver Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data using Internet Protocols. (See R7 WG 8 - Open EPG)

CEA-2005: An Adapter to Connect Home Network Clusters, which will enable Ethernet/DLNA devices to communicate with Firewire/Cable-CE MOU devices. (See R7 WG 5 - A/V Network Adapter)

R7 WG 7 - Wireless Technology Assessment – an assessment of wireless technologies for home networking.

The 1394 Trade Association and R7 WG 3 have begun work to revise CEA-851 Versatile Home Network (VHN(R)), a standard for a Firewire-based home network backbone. (See R7 WG 3 – VHN Maintenance)

http://www.caba.org/standard/cea.html

Another 1394 Approach – Oxford Semiconductor

Oxford Semiconductors, via is spokesperson, Tim Elliott at Display Interfaces, reinforced the pitch that 1394 should be the home networking technology of choice. Some of the points made include:

Room to Room connectivity would be via wireless and UWB was suggested as a means of wireless 1394

The advantages of 1394 include:

Isochronous Mode QoS for HD video

Carry multiple A/V streams

Peer-to-Peer Communications defined for and supported by CE devices

Hot plugging support

DVI and HDMI have disadvantages:

Point to Point and a sink connector necessary for each source device

Uni-directional from source to sink only

Supports only audio or video transfer.

Video transfer should be with YUV not MPEG:

If MPEG an decoder would be required on each device

MPEG is not supported by many devices including DVD and Game Consoles

However, Oxford Semiconductor injects is proprietary solution by advocating a “light codec” to reduce the bandwidth. It is claimed that its technology supports DTCP-5C encryption technology. A pitch was made for its chip called the FW601.

WAVE Comments

At one session we asked the question – Do consumers really want this convergence or is this just marketing? Off line, marketing was conceded to be a major factor. We return to a point made by Alfred Poor in the first presentation – where is the value for consumers? How can the industry get the consumer off of the cycle of buying a television every 4 – 6 years at rock bottom prices? Are we likely to see consumers cheer when they have to buy a converter box to make their NTSC television work in a HD environment? Where is the NAVI of HD? For consumers hardly anything beats free content they can do what they want with on cheap CE – from televisions to VCR’s. Analog is looking better every day.

Unfortunately displays are no longer an isolated component in the home electronics mix. With the excitement of HD comes onerous encryption everywhere. When teams of lawyers cannot reach a conclusion on content protection how can one expect the consumer to enjoy the media experience when any handling of the content outside of viewing is denied? As the industry struggles with these issues no one wants to understand the consumer perspective.

Home networking is not a done deal. As Display Interfaces made clear the network is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, DLNA is seeking the bridge the gap but by every indication 1394, which is the interface of choice for CE, is hardly on the DLNA radar. This is all independent of the efforts to use wireless.

Outside of the home networking arena is the larger cloud of uncertainty of HD, digital television and the transition to “flat.” There remains much confusion on home display technology and its adoption.