FireWire 800 9 pin to 9 pin - 3 feet - Bilingual 1394b

FireWire is Apple Inc.'s brand name for the IEEE 1394 interface (although the 1394 standard also defines a backplane interface). It is also known as i.LINK (Sony's name). It is a personal computer (and digital audio/digital video) serial bus interface standard, for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. FireWire has replaced Parallel SCSI in many applications, due to lower implementation costs and a simplified, more adaptable cabling system. IEEE 1394 has been adopted as the High Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) standard connection interface for A/V (audio/visual) component communication and control^[1]. FireWire is also available in wireless, fiber optic, and coaxial versions using the isochronous protocols. Wireless FireWire is being integrated into the WiMedia Alliance's WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) standard.

Almost all modern digital camcorders have included this connection since 1995. Many computers intended for home or professional audio/video use have built-in FireWire ports, including all Apple and Sony laptop computers and most Dell and HP models currently produced. It is also widely available on retail motherboards for do-it-yourself PCs, alongside USB. FireWire was used with initial models of Apple's iPod, but later models eliminated FireWire support in favor of USB due to space constraints and for wider compatibility.

FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b), the newest generation of FireWire technology doubles the throughput of the original FireWire interface to 800 Mbit/sec. This increases the maximum distance of FireWire cables and connections. Not only is FireWire 800 twice as fast as before, but it can be used over much longer distances.  FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) allows the use of various types of cabling, each offering different speed/distance capabilities.  

The FireWire advantage can be summed up in three words: speed, speed and more speed - at 800Mbps, it has more than two times the usable bandwidth of USB 2.0, which makes it the perfect choice for high-speed storage and serious video capture. The extra speed of FireWire 800 over USB 2.0 makes FireWire much more suitable for bandwidth-intensive applications like video and graphics, which often consume hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of data per file. For instance, single hour of DV-format video consumes about 13 thousand megabytes (13 GB).