There is a place on the Hawaiian island of Maui named Hana. I visited this beautiful spot many years ago, and it was characterized as much by how hard it was to get to as it was by its beauty. Now I am seeing the name Hana in the context of a new consortium being formed to create consumer electronics standards that are network-aware, unlike the brain-dead interfaces like IR, DVI, and HDMI.

This is a drum I have been beating for quite a while now. IR remote controls are open-loop control, which makes them famously unreliable. Add to that the fact that every manufacturer does theirs a little differently and none of them are standard and it’s no wonder that coffee tables are littered (and wives frustrated) with piles of remote controls. I have seriously considered programming a PDA to send commands across my home wireless network, but it is always frustrated by the fact that there is no way to get status back from most consumer devices. This consortium plans to use 1394 and other standards to standardize and update those interfaces.

More power to them. I have tried to get the 1394 interface on my Mitsubishi TV to talk to the one on my Scientific-Atlanta cable box with no real luck. I believe I have a way to do it, but it involves inserting a PC into the mix to intermediate. At one point I figured I must be the only one on the planet that was trying to do this, but it turns out that the AV discussion boards have many people trying to get this to work. It shouldn’t be that hard.

If this consortium can get off the ground and make some headway I am all for it. I have heard that they have since put in a much better road to Hana (the island location) since I have been there – maybe that is a sign that this destination can now be made reachable by ordinary people.

Larry Mittag