2 firewire ports on echostar boxes?

[marko]

Found this article on that expo that is supposed to be taking place(www.cedia.net). There is an article talking about 1394/firewire, and it mentions this.... Unfortunately, the article requires registration.

cedia.net (http://www.virtualpressoffice.com/media/press/detail.jsp?pressId=1061055351837&showId=1035356783003)

Thomson's HDTVs, Motorola's Set Top Terminals Lead New Product List

Thomson's new series of 1394-equipped RCA Scenium HDTVs -- in 65-inch, 61-inch, and 52-inch versions -- led an impressive group of Fire-Wire equipped products introduced in the second quarter. The list also includes new digital set top boxes from EchoStar, with two 1394 ports, along with new STBs from Samsung (the DCA -TV), and Panasonic (the EP-T10).

[Unthinkable]

I don't believe this is necessarily "new" news as the firewire has been reported as "Dishwire" for quite some time now and supposedly won't support everything on the market that is firewire equipped. Dish Network wants no part of having to support every third party company under the sun with this.

[marko]

Yeah, I have read previously about dish wire, but what is the purpose of having 2 firewire ports? Just curious why two would be needed.

[xgrep]

[...] new digital set top boxes from EchoStar, with two 1394 ports, along with new STBs from Samsung (the DCA -TV) [...]If it's the 921 with two ports, one *might* imagine that they don't want to lock out the possibility of recording onto the disk from another source, while still being able to output to a monitor or other device.

Frankly, I don't know how useful 1394 ports are going to be when many devices will not be compatible with each other.

Re the Samsung products, the SIR-T165 HD OTA tuner is already on the market, and is the only HD OTA tuner with firewire out. I've heard that you can plug it into a JVC D-VHS deck, but I plan to try to record HD from it on my iMac with VirtualDVHS (a free sample app included with the Mac OS X Firewire devkit).

Most of what I've read gives me the impression that firewire may be displaced by DVI-HDCP, because the latter has copy a protection protocol that would make it possible to protect material from being recorded. The firewire protocols would allow that, too, but it's currently harder to crack DVI-HDCP, because the data rate is much higher (DVI is uncompressed, whereas firewire is typically MPEG2 encoded for HD, though raw for SD).

x

[James_F]

My Mitsu HDTV uses Firewire, but I don't use it.

I had thought firewire also had copy protection built into it, or will....

[xgrep]

My Mitsu HDTV uses Firewire, but I don't use it.

I had thought firewire also had copy protection built into it, or will....It can indeed. But at least for a while it will be easier to hack, because there are plenty of sw toolkits that allow you to intercept the data stream and diddle with it. The DVI data stream is much harder to intercept and process. To my knowledge, DVI is currently processed entirely by HW. It would take some powerful HW and SW to be able to process it.

x

[James_F]

Makes sense. I don't use the firewire on my HDTV, mainly because I don't have any devices that support it and I don't have any extra cables lying around. :D

[leobag]

Yeah, I have read previously about dish wire, but what is the purpose of having 2 firewire ports? Just curious why two would be needed.The purpose of two firewire ports is [usually] for daisy chaining. So you can have one 1394 unit connected to another, connected to another, connected... etc. Well, that's the theory anyway.

Currently I have a Pioneer DVD player hooked up to a Pioneer Receiver which both have firewire. This makes the connection MUCH cleaner in the back (one skinny wire). The DVD player is a SACD and DVD-Audio player, so if I didn't have firewire, I would need analog RCA's connection all the channels (a cable mess).

I am not sure if the DishWire is going to be used in similar ways... but that's how it is used on my equipment.

- Leo

[Neil Derryberry]

The STB they are referring to in the article was going to be called the 211... looks like it was built in a 301 enclosure, and the only outputs were 2 4-pin firewire ports. I believe the pictures were posted out on claude greiner's retailer website as shown at the latest retailer summit here in Atlanta.

The box was indeed a mockup, IIRC.