Toshiba tinkers with Wi-Fi for TV

Toshiba is developing a version of 802.11a wireless technology that will more easily allow televisions and other non-PC devices to receive video or other complex files, Toshiba researcher Mitsuo Saito said at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford this week.

The idea behind the Wi-Fi specification is to fine-tune timestamps and data-buffers to reduce jitter and packet loss, and to prevent data from being displayed out of order. MPEG-2 decoders require variations in delays between packets to be suppressed to within 500 nanoseconds, Saito noted. Toshiba has already created a chip based on the specification and plans to submit it to a standards body.