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:
N High Speed. Speeds of 100, 200 and 400 megabits per second (Mbps) are currently
supported.
N Isochronous 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.
N Flexible Topology. Devices can be daisy-chained and no central bus supervision is
required.
N Hot-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.
N Cable Power. Low-cost peripherals can be powered directly from the 1394 cable, so
no dedicated power supply is needed.
N Open IEEE Standard. IEEE adoption has increased industry acceptance of the
standard
.
N Optimum Performance. Each cable connection can be up to 4.5 meters long,
yielding a total cable distance of 72 meters.
N 1394 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.
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