What is IEEE 1394
The 1394 standard was defined, and continues to be maintained, by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). The technology allows for high-speed connections between computers and related devices and helps bridge the divide between computers and consumer electronics. The technology is flexible, easy to use and offers high bandwidth at a low cost.
With 1394-compatible products and systems, users can transfer video or still images from a camera or camcorder to a printer, PC, or television quickly, with no image degradation.
1394 Features
The 1394 standard is a high-speed serial bus designed to deliver high data transfer speeds at a low cost, and with the low degree of latency required by a peripheral bus or by a backup to a traditional parallel bus. Among its key features are:
NHigh Speed. Speeds of 100, 200 and 400 megabits per second (Mbps) are currently supported.
NIsochronous Support. Deterministic bandwidth allocation guarantees bandwidth for time-sensitive applications, such as real-time video feeds, that could otherwise be disrupted by heavy bus traffic.
NFlexible Topology. Devices can be daisy-chained and no central bus supervision is required.
NHot-Plug Support. The bus is dynamically reconfigured whenever new nodes are added, which means users don’t have to configure node IDs or unique termination schemes.
NCable Power. Low-cost peripherals can be powered directly from the 1394 cable, so no dedicated power supply is needed.
NOpen IEEE Standard. IEEE adoption has increased industry acceptance of the standard.
NOptimum Performance. Each cable connection can be up to 4.5 meters long, yielding a total cable distance of 72 meters.
N1394 End devices. IEEE 1394 interfaces have already been incorporated into a variety of devices, including PC cameras, DV camcorders, DV recorders, digital still cameras, high-speed hard disk drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives, DVD- RAM drives, digital TVs, set-top boxes, scanners, and printers.
