THE HOWL OF THE WOLF by Denise Caruso c. 1990 Media Letter FIBER LINK FOR MEDIA A product called MediaLink Network Manager is preparing to live up to its name and become "the" consumer local-area network, carrying everything from home control to video and audio signals on a single fiber. Aiming for the Big Brass Ring of networking multiple media types, Lone Wolf founders David Warman and Mark Lecas of Redondo Beach, CA, say the company has already solved the technical problems of high-speed MIDI networking (it can already carry 16 to 20 audio channels on one fiber, via its MidiTap hardware and its 20-megabit, custom MediaLink chip), and has its sights set on incorporating digital audio, SCSI and SMTPE devices and video into its network software. "It's happening year by year," says Lecas. "We've done the MIDI part, next is the digital audio and the SCSI protocol -- we're extending the seven-device, 18-foot limit to a quarter of a million devices, and the distance problem will go away, to 2.5 kilometers." Lecas admits to a bit of hyperbole here -- only logically, not physically, can MediaLink connect that number of devices. And he admits that SCSI's present bus won't go much faster than it does now, no matter what kind of network it's hooked to. But, he claims, the MediaLink chip itself has other, equally interesting capabilities. Its proprietary direct memory access (DMA) techniques allow users to paint other screens in the network without interrupting the CPU, streamlining communications and reducing CPU overhead. "This is a network just like AppleTalk, only much faster," says Lecas, who's designing an upcoming version of the MediaLink chip to operate at 50- and 100 megabits per second. And in the hopes of hatching a new networking standard, Lecas says Lone Wolf is licensing its Network Manager "very inexpensively" as an OEM product. The company even plans to license its MediaLink chip technology to vendors who want to integrate it with their own products. As a result of all this contract signing, Lone Wolf hopes to spawn a ubiquitous consumer LAN. "My idea is to have MediaLink be the standard, so that your CD can hook to you VCR can hook to your keyboards, to your stereo, your coffee pot, your window shades and everything else." "Everything else" includes Lone Wolf's desire to achieve simultaneous transmission of multimedia formats in real time via fiber's vast bandwidth. The company is developing "Tap" boxes, a la its MidiTap product, for various media formats. "Just like a Dolby chip goes into every tape player, there would be a MediaLink chip in every computer, video disk player, CD-ROM drive and hard disk," says Lecas. Only one fiber is necessary because the "Tap" boxes can be configured either in a daisy chain or a start configuration via the Network Manager software. The silicon for TokenRing and Ethernet technologies, he says, is expensive because each has some 400 rules for operation. "But ours has about 12 rules," he crows. He won't say exactly how little the MediaLink chip costs, except that it's "extremely inexpensive" in large quantities, one of the advantages of designing custom ICs. Lecas claims MediaLink is 20 times faster at maximum load than Ethernet, for a tenth the cost. "I think that will be inspirational to vendors," he says. CALLING ALL PRODUCERS Morphonix of San Rafael, CA, has just received a little known, hard to get and prestigious grant from the federal government's Small Business Innovative Research Program and the National Institute of Mental Health to develop an interactive media program for interviewing children ages 3 to 8 to ascertain sexual abuse. The program will use animated characters, pictures and sound to help the child tell his or her story. The idea is to augment a child's nonverbal communication, prevent umpteen interviews by often- hostile lawyers and other "professionals," and to circumvent the child's natural reluctance to disclose intimate details to strangers, as well as many other goals which are well-met by the use of interactive media. All in all a highly worthy product. Morphonix president Karen Littman has a measly $40,000 to develop a prototype, after which she'll apply for additional funding to "productize" it. A film producer and writer specializing in children's programming, Littman already has on board one technical advisor and a child abuse specialist of international renown (Margaret Steward of U.C. Davis) as research consultant, but would love to hear from media-savvy altruists who would like to serve on her technical advisory board. Call her at (415) 456-2561. THIS GUY'S SERIOUS Who doesn't remember Paul Jain, the guy who founded both Paradise Computers (bought by Western Digital) and Video 7, which grew from a baby to $125 million before it was acquired by LSI Logic? Well, Jain has decided to jump on the multimedia bandwagon. Though he's not saying a whole lot about his first product, which he claims will ship in early 1991, Jain and his company, MediaVision of Fremont, CA, says it's "likely" that the product, a hardware delivery system including drivers and some applications directed toward desktop presentations, will include both Microsoft's upcoming Multimedia Windows and Intel's DVI standard -- and cost less than $1,000. The raison d'être for Jain's new venture is to ship a product that won't obsolete corporate investments in PCs while still allowing them to take advantage of the capabilities of various new compression algorithms and other multimedia features. "Color is important, I've proven that," says Jain. "Sound -- I'll provide that, too, but in a usable form so that when it's sold, users don't just sit there with it. I'll provide immediately what the Macintosh already has -- precisely and absolutely." MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS Various parties believe that the significance of Intel's five-year partnership with PictureTel in late August was widely underrated. PictureTel, of Peabody, MA, has proprietary video teleconferencing coder-decoder (codec); not only is it the most popular, but it's also considered the finest. And Intel bought the exclusive rights to convert it to a one-board VLSI product. My source didn't know who had the rights to actually sell the product, but if it's Intel, the implications could be worldwide -- the teleconferencing market might finally move out of expensive rooms and onto the desktop, which is where plenty of people think it belongs. A big, and good question: what does DVI have to do with it? CD-ROM IN THE NEWS The United States Intelligence Community probably has the clout to accomplish what no amount of yelling in the industry could -- it's proposed a standard for CD-ROM data exchange (called CD-RDx) that works across all operating systems, CD-ROM drives, access/retrieval programs and user interfaces. The Information Handling Committee (now there's a name to strike terror into your heart) developed the proposal because, as many of us have been saying all along, the lack of interoperability and myriad of standards (the nice thing is that there's so many of them. . .) has stymied the use of CD-ROM. In addition, the Optical Publishing Association has officially submitted a proposed standard for the transfer of multimedia data to compact disc manufacturer, including CD-ROM. Called the Disc Description Protocol, it is an attempt to set a standard for laying down masters for multimedia data -- that is, stuff that must be interleaved, like animated graphics, audio and motion video -- on optical disc, to date a difficult, error-prone and ad hoc process. Then there's new data from InfoTech, announced during the October 2-3 CD- ROM Expo in Boston. Quick recap: The number of new titles in 1989 increased 123 percent to 1,418. Unit sales increased nearly 500 percent for the second year in a row. The average price of a disc declined to $725 (declined to $725? Thanks a lot). Installed base of readers increased 225 percent worldwide, with average price dropping $275. The installed base at the end of 1989 was 545,000. I can't tell. Are we getting somewhere, or not? HAPPY TALK HyperPro believes that 1991 will be the year that multimedia applications start showing up for real in the business world. You may recall that its product, which used to be called Big Time TV but which is now called Video Author, creates multimedia presentation on screen. John McCuen of HyperPro says that potential corporate clients who've seen the product are now calling them for numbers (i.e., how much a presentation will cost) so they can put it into their fiscal 1991 budgets. FYI, HyperPro is also the company who developed the Fleetwood Mac "streaming interactivity" presentation product for Warner New Media, which was shown at Digital World in July. COMING UP CONTENT Word on the street is that Paramount Communications wants to start a division like ABC News Interactive, but using its movie titles. Stay tuned.