The Digital Audio-Visual Council(DAVIC) held its 12th meeting in Seoul, Korea from 4th to 8th of March, hosted by Korea Telecom. More than 400 experts in the field of multimedia gathered together from all over the world. These experts from more than 200 companies and organizations represent most of the major players in this field.

The goal of DAVIC is to promote broadband digital services using a variety of delivery media such as optical fiber, cable or satellite, by ensuring compatibility and interoperability on a world-wide basis. This will be advantageous to all parties - equipment manufacturers, network operators, content producers, service providers and most importantly consumers.

After completing its first specification, DAVIC 1.0, at the end of last year, DAVIC is now working on a major extension and has successfully frozen it at the Seoul meeting, and is making it available to industry for thorough review and validation test.

Jules A. Bellisio, the president of DAVIC said, "One of the major DAVIC achievements is that it has demonstrated its ability to rapidly move ahead in an industry which evolves on almost a daily basis."

In DAVIC 1.0, technical specifications cover a wide range of applications using emerging digital technologies, such as broadcast, video-on-demand, tele-shopping and other interactive services. It also covers the precise specifications for multimedia servers, distribution networks, and set-top boxes at the home.

In DAVIC 1.1, new functions, tools and technologies such as:

(a) Internet access including the cable modem,

(b) A virtual computing machine to support downloaded software, and

(c) MMDS(Multi-channel, multi-point distribution service)

(d) LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution Services)

are added. By using this specification, industry can develop multimedia systems which are capable of handling high quality, digital audio-visual services as well as emerging Internet services seamlessly. The virtual machine provides flexibility on the set-top box by reconfiguring it through software to become a receiver, a computer, or a game machine as directed by user. LMDS is a new type of wireless broadband digital interactive multimedia service.

DAVIC will conduct its next meeting in New York, USA in June this year hosted by Columbia University, where, if necessary, the DAVIC 1.1 specification will be modified according to suggestions from the industry as well as the result of validation tests. It will be frozen again for another three months for the final review before publication.

DAVIC will continue its effort developing state of the art specifications to meet the requirements of a fast-growing multimedia industry to provide mutually agreed inter-operable systems.

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