Sun Microsystems has signed a deal Sony Corp and Royal Philips Electronics to bring Sun’s Jini networking technology into the home. The 3 companies plan to link Philips’ Home Audio-Video interorperability (HAVi) standard with Sun’s Jini – due to be officially launched next week (CI No 3,579). The concept is to allow HAVi-compliant appliances to access Jini-based distributed networks. This would mean that users could remotely operate consumer devices – taping a TV program while away from home for example – as well as storing large video and audio files on the network. The HAVi standard was developed by Grundig AG, Hitachi Ltd, Matsushita Electric Co Ltd, Philips Electronics NV, Sharp Corp, Sony Corp, Thomson Multimedia SA and Toshiba Corp and is based on the IEEE 1394 Firewire digital interface (CI No 3,412). The integration of the two technologies would allow Sun to make strides into the home networking arena before Microsoft Corp’s Universal Plug and Play project is off the drawing board (CI No 3,579).
