Nicolas Catania

Breaking open the set top box

In this paper we describe the work being done at HP Labs Bristol in the area of home networks and gateways. This work is based on the idea of breaking open the set top box by physically separating the access network specific functions from the application specific functions. The access network specific functions reside in an access network gateway that can be shared by many end user devices. The first section of the paper present the philosophy behind this approach. The end user devices and the access network gateways must be interconnected by a high bandwidth network which can offer a bounded delay service for delay sensitive traffic. We are advocating the use of IEEE 1394 for this network, and the next section of the paper gives a brief introduction to this technology. We then describe a prototype digital video broadcasting satellite compliant gateway that we have built. This gateway could be used, for example, by a PC for receiving a data service or by a digital TV for receiving an MPEG-2 video service. A control architecture is the presented which uses a PC application to provide a web based user interface to the system. Finally, we provide details of our work on extending the reach of IEEE 1394 and its standardization status.