“Several leading consumer electronics companies are expected to announce Tuesday that they are working together to develop a new standard for transmitting high-definition audio and video signals wirelessly,” Erica Ogg reports for CNET News.
Ogg reports, “Supported by LG, Matsushita (Panasonic), NEC, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and semiconductor maker SiBeam, the digital interface WirelessHD would enable high-speed streaming of audio and video content between consumer electronics devices like televisions, DVD players, game consoles and other portable devices without using cords. The group plans to release the specification in spring 2007.”
“Because it does not compress the digital video, the experience will be the same as using a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) or digital video interface (DVI) cable,” Ogg reports. “WirelessHD will use the unlicensed 60GHz radio frequency band to send uncompressed HD video and audio at 5 gigabits per second at distances of up to 30 feet,”
Full article here.
WirelessHD info: http://www.wirelesshd.org/
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “AshNazg” for the heads up.]
How will this differ, if at all, with 802.11n?
In only working at 30 feet; in bringing up new legal issues with the use of a new part of the spectrum; and, ultimately, in only being supported by these Far Eastern companies.
It’s the Memory Stick mentality.
Is Erica Ogg any relation to Ogg Vorbis?
“How will this differ, if at all, with 802.11n?”
Uses a different frequency (less interference with cell phones, microwaves, and the other 802.11 specifications) and can transmit data at a much faster rate.
Question:
What ever happened to wireless Firewire? I think it was part of the Firewire 1600 specification.
How are they different?
802.11n bandwidth is about 300 Mbps to 600 Mbps. The proposed Wireless HD bandwidth should be about 5Gbps.
These are very different protocols, with different bandwidths, different ranges, and different purposes.
I wonder why they don’t at least do lossless compression of the digital signal to free up some bandwidth? What is going to happen if you have three devices operating wirelessly within the same 30-foot radius? Let’s say you have a camcorder streaming to a computer, which does some sort of processing on it and outputs to an video monitor. That’s two signals competing for bandwidth. I wonder if this will work. Or, alternatively, a cluster of dorm rooms all watching TV at the same time, each with its own stream.
In other words, wireless HD is very exciting, but I hope it works. And I wish they were doing lossless compression.
This is absolutely line of site stuff. Don’t put anything significant between the sending antenna and receiving antenna or you won’t get a signal. Put a 1/2 inch piece of wood in the way and you’ll have no signal. Put a TV or other piece of electronics in the way and you’ll have no signal. Put any significant piece of furniture in the way and you’ll have no signal.
Basically it’s IR type of transmissions on extreme steriods. (Iknow. I know. IR is optical and this is EHF, but they are both essentially line of sight.)
Yikes! I’m not sure I really want something at 60 GHz transmitting at 5 GB/S flowing through my living room. That’s a TON of energy being dished around….
I am dissapointed. I though someone came up with a wireless Hard Drive. See now that is something that is useful…wireless fire wire. I guess hat would be called fire wireless or fireless wire.
too many standards are coming out. kind of reminds me of the six or so different memory cards we have to deal with. its annoying.
I wouldn’t worry about the energy output, unless you are watching TV pelvis first….
Where did wireless Firewire go?
I wonder why they don’t at least do lossless compression of the digital signal to free up some bandwidth?
I’m almost certain that the article is misleading: The wireless interface doesn’t compress the data stream any further – but every digital video stream is already compressed.
The relevant information here is that this “native” data stream including its compression is simply routed through – the decompression (from MPEG or other formats) then happens on the receiver side.
In effect there is still a loss of quality overall, just not an additional loss of quality when going through the wireless interface instead of a direct cable.
It’s relatively pointless to try compressing an already compressed video or audio stream any further, so the useless effort is simply avoided here.