Is the promised land of wireless high-definition video nigh?
Backers of the top two wireless video standards, WirelessHD and WHDI, say the first quarter of 2009 will see actual consumer electronics products using them.
After years of talking about different standards, there's been more movement in this industry of late, but we're still waiting for the floodgates to open where all the top-tier manufacturers have TVs with a wireless HD connectivity option.
Recently Mitsubishi said it would be using WHDI, which sends uncompressed, high-definition video signals over the unlicensed 5-Gigahertz band throughout an entire home, in a wireless TV it's making for the Japanese market this fall.
Sharp already has a wireless TV in Japan using WHDI, but here in the U.S., there are several products that have been previously promised to us this fall: wireless dongles from Belkin, Gefen, and Sony, and embedded wireless capability for HD video in an IDX camcorder. TVs from Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Sony should be next.
Competing standard WirelessHD transmits an HDMI signal over the air using the 60-Gigahertz spectrum up to 20 meters away, or basically within one room of a house. Samsung, Panasonic and Toshiba have promised products using WirelessHD. Expect to hear more about this at CES in January.
In the meantime, here's a video demonstration of WirelessHD from the chairman of the WirelessHD consortium, John Marshall. He stopped by the CNET office to give us a quick runthrough on how it works. Here he is showing a Blu-ray movie using a PlayStation 3, SiBeam chipset in an HDMI adapter, and Samsung monitor without any wires from the video source to the monitor.
(Credit:
CC: Flickr / JoMilla)
While companies like Sling and Orb tout their ability to place-shift TV from the living room to the cell phone screen, a new study released Monday says that only 5 percent of Europeans expressed interest in watching TV on their mobiles in the next 12 months. Apparently, Europeans are more content with simply making voice calls and buying music, whereas 20 percent of surveyed Asian consumers say they'd watch TV on the really small screen.
Overseas users are all fine and dandy, but what about you? Would you be interested in watching TV on your cell phone?
Wireless digital video connections are all the rage these days. Or at least saying you've made the appropriate chipset is. Companies keep putting out press releases promising that one day soon your television will be able to receive high-definition signals sans wires, but consumers have been, for the most part, left hanging.
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WiQuest Communications)
Though many have claimed to be first, Texas-based WiQuest Communications says its WQST100/101 chipset is "currently shipping to customers." That still doesn't give us an actual date as to when these will be sold as adapters for TVs, game consoles or DVD players, or better yet, integrated into the aforementioned gadgets.
WiQuest uses ultrawideband (UWB) technology to send video at 1Gbps between devices, and says that it even plays nice with other protocols like Certified Wireless USB and other WiMedia-based protocols.
There will be more news about wireless specs like this at CES, so stay tuned.
(Credit:
Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)
Samsung showed off phones for the coming HSUPA (that's High Speed Uplink Packet Access) standard at the ITU Telecom show in Hong Kong this week, paving the way for universal understanding between nations and fast video downloads.
HSUPA will deliver downlink speeds of 14.4 megabits per second, but a 5.76 megabit uplink. That means uploading five MP3 songs will only take about a minute. By contrast, the same procedure takes about five minutes on the WCDMA standard.
Samsung is one of the more aggressive cellular companies and for the past few years has tried to leapfrog past Motorola to be the number two provider. The picture here shows the the first Samsung mobile phone along with a more modern version.
Thanks to Hyo-Jeoung Kim of ZDNet Korea for sending this over.
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