RCA DLP HDTV - IEEE1394 question

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

> ... RCA DLP HDTV ... Western Digital USB/Firewire external HD ...

IEEE-1394 (the wire) supports a hierarchy of protocols and middleware
stacks, and you're trying to connect two devices that were never intended to
talk with one another. In particular, IEEE-1394 devices tend to be PC
oriented or CE oriented, with each PC and CE camp having a fairly well
defined and unique protocol/middleware stack :-(

For example, your HD is designed to look like a data filesystem to a PC, and
probably uses the "SBP2" protocol stack.

Your HDTV (and Camcorder) on the other hand are designed to stream media and
TV/VCR commands around, and uses the IEC audio/video protocols (MPEG-2,
MiniDV MJPEG) and the AVC command control protocols (looks like a VCR, a
Tuner, an Amp, ...) to get the work done.

What you need to do is buy a storage system that is advertised as being a
PVR or DVR or AV Hard Drive. RCA sells such a device. At least on the CE
side, the industry has tried to use a logo program to indicate what the
IEEE-1394 port on a particular device supports, with "DTV-Link" and one for
MiniDV being the most obvious to date.

For now, it is rare to see a single storage system that has both the PC and
CE protocols/middleware stacks on it.

See http://www.vividlogic.com/products [...] heet_2.pdf for a basic
description of most of the protocol/middleware modules that IEEE-1394
supports.

Thomas Gilg