foolZONE Special Reports for April 1, 2006

by Lee H Goldberg, Fax Developments Senior Correspondent, analogZONE

In a ground-breaking development in tele-cuisine, pizzaShack^TM has joined forces with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to develop V.34pz, a global standard for pizza-over-fax (PoF) transmission. What started as another round in the delivery wars between competing fast food chains has evolved into an international standard that will enable people to receive fresh, hot pizza over a standard modem connection. The V.34 committee is already developing a preliminary draft of the V.34pzx annex which will enable delivery of high-definition digital pizza over DSL or cable modem connections.

The current specification includes the ability to send a set of detailed instructions that enable a pizza-enabled fax machine (PEFAX) to reproduce small, medium and large pies with a variety of toppings. Included in the 128 kbyte standard file are descriptor fields for sauce flavorings, texture, and placement patterns for the cheese and up to eight vegetable or meat toppings. The basic file format currently supports only thin-crust transmissions, but there is a reserved field which can be used to specify other crust types as PEFAX technology evolves.

At least two major printer manufacturers have demonstrated prototype PEFAX units and announced plans to have products in the stores in time for the 2006 holiday season. Hewitt-Porsche is already touting its PizzaPerfect^TM technology which it plans to integrate into its popular all-in-one Fax/Scanner/Printer products. These units will have specially-designed feed mechanisms that accept the thicker edible substrates used to build up the digitally-transmitted pizza. HeP says that they will offer a PoF upgrade kit that allows several of their high-end printers already on the market to be retrofitted with new feed rollers, a simple software update and a set of standard pizzaShack^TM pizzaJet^TM cartridges that contain the sauce, cheese, and toppings. Trebuchet Inc. has also introduced its own line of PEFAX products, including a series of designer ingredient cartridges, developed in conjunction with noted chef, Wolfgang Puck.

"The V.34pz standard is a great leap forward for the pizza industry," said Peter Hainsworth, chairman of the Home Pizza Alliance (HPA), an industry consortium which helped generate consensus on PoF within the delivery pizza community. "Within the next year, we expect to begin work on other V.34 annexes that extend tele-cuisine technology to other essential flat foods such as potato and corn chips, and move on to bigger challenges like donuts, bagels, and perhaps even simple sandwiches by the end of the decade."

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