Founders of the alliance, Digital Electronics America Inc, NBC Universal, Samsung and Sun Microsystem, have formed the group with a view to creating design guidelines for secure high definition audio visual networks that will speed the creation of new, higher quality, easier to use HD products.
Other group members include electronics manufacturer Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America Inc, Charter Communications Inc, JVC and Sun Microsystems Inc. ARM, Freescale Semiconductor and PulseLINK have also joined HANA as contributing members.
Dr Heemin Kwon, HANA president and Samsung executive vice president said, HANA brings together content providers, consumer electronics, service providers and IT with the sole purpose of addressing HD needs such as quality of service, ease of use and content protection.
HANA’s mission is to create industry design guidelines that will help enable consumers to: view, pause and record 5+ HD channels simultaneously; view, pause and record HD anywhere in the home with just one set top box; share personal content from PCs to AV devices while keeping protected content secure; control all AV devices and access content with just a single remote per room; and add any device to the home network with just one cable.
HANA-compliant products will include HDTVs, next generation DVD players, personal video recorders, set top cable boxes and home theaters. The first commercial products are expected to be available at International CES 2007.
In the first half of 2006, HANA plans to work with Advanced Access Content System (AACS), Open Media Commons and other digital rights management technologies to give consumers new flexibility in using content across the entire home network, including moving content across multiple devices such as portable video players. In so doing HANA hopes it will help consumers to access all of their personal video content while protecting content providers from piracy.
