HANA releases 2.0 design guidelines for home networking industry

January 14, 2008 – The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) has announced that it has released its HANA 2.0 Design Guideline, intended to allow consumers to share high-definition and standard-definition content between devices anywhere in the home over a single cable and using a single remote control.

“We are excited about the simplicity that HANA 2.0 is bringing back to home entertainment with its one cable, one remote capabilities,” said Jack Chaney, HANA Technical Work Group Chair.  “HANA 2.0 utilises 1394, guaranteeing the Quality of Service required by consumers for today’s HD content.  1394 is the only network that provides isochronous delivery of HD video and audio programming without any complications.”

The 1394 interface enables consumers to use their existing coax wiring to connect products throughout their homes, eliminating the need for rewiring, and also to send cable programming to any HANA DTV in the home from a single set-top box.  HANA 2.0 also implements other industry standards including many used by Universal Plug n Play (UPnP) to discover devices on the home network.

HANA 2.0 features include the sharing of a minimum of five simultaneous HD content streams throughout the entire home, simple browser/server architecture, plug-and-play simplicity for consumers, high speed, guaranteed Quality of Service, the ability to add new devices to the network without having to download new device drivers or update firmware, and the ability to reserve device resources for future use to enable time-shift recordings.