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Sony, Sharp, Hitachi, Samsung and Motorola Agree on Amimon Whole-House Wireless HD Standard
Posted by John Mahoney at 7:00 PM on July 23, 2008
Be happy: A new wireless HD video standard guarantees that major brands including Sony, Sharp, Hitachi, Samsung and Motorola will have interoperable wireless video streaming. Amimon--the chip makers behind the "video modem" wireless HD tech we've been seeing on and off for the last few years, and most recently in Belkin's Flywire--is announcing the WHDI consortium with the above members, formed to standardise their wireless HD spec and embed it in member companies' TVs, projectors and HD video sources. The result is a network of HD components, streaming uncompressed 1080p video not just through one room like competing UWB standards, but to and from any source to any TV in your entire home, with a range comparable to Wi-Fi. Pretty impressive stuff.
The change in range is due to the chunk of spectrum being used (5GHz for WHDI and anywhere from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for UWB). UWB is a low-power, short-range broadcast because it has to play nice with the other protocols found on the wide breadth of spectrum it calls home. (For better or worse, Monster's wireless HD kit is wireless up until the point it needs to use your home's coax wiring to gain whole-house coverage).
WHDI, however, is camped out in a chunk of unlicensed 5GHz spectrum just like 802.11n Wi-Fi, meaning it must be able to tolerate the reasonable levels of interference only from other devices that use the same frequencies, and can broadcast at higher power levels than UWB--enough for a range of "over 100 feet." WirelessHD, a third major spec also funded by Samsung and Sony, plus Panasonic, Toshiba, LG and NEC, uses the 60GHz band, and apparently has problems unless the transmitter and receiver are within line-of-sight.
Components will be paired through menu systems using a pass-key, like Bluetooth. The spectrum can hold around six streams of 1080p video at a time, although real-world interference may vary. A likely scenario would be streaming from a WHDI cable box or Blu-ray player downstairs to 3 TVs throughout your house while still having room for HD gaming in the den.
The fact that a few heavies like Panasonic are still notably missing could mean another standards battle is on the horizon. While WirelessHD already claims a published 1.0 spec, and Monster's UWB product should be out by the fall, the WHDI spec is due to be finalised at the end of the year, with products hopefully popping up in time for CES '09. Stay tuned until then--as one format war ends, another begins.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Joseph
Posted 8:58 PM 23/7/08
So does it still make sense for me to replace all my RJ-10's with RJ-45's?
Joseph
vitamincm
Posted 10:15 PM 23/7/08
Wow, that's shocking. The consumer electronics giants have actually cooperated to do something beneficial to the consumer! What next Bush reinstates the Constitution?
vitamincm
DisposableInterloper
Posted 10:05 PM 23/7/08
Why can't we have one highly extensible do-everything-be-everywhere wireless standard for data, video, audio, telephony, cellphone tethering, home automation, and whatever else people can cook up? Is it really that impossibly hard to just invest resources into converging all these standards?
DisposableInterloper
rrwakc
Posted 10:41 PM 23/7/08
and house slowly transforms in to "walk in microwave"
rrwakc
Joseph
Posted 10:25 PM 23/7/08
@DisposableInterloper: Then you have single point of failure. Plus technology changes so fast that by the time that by the time the "highly extensible do-everything-be-everywhere wireless standard" is implemented, someone will invent something twice as good for half the price.
Joseph
N@tedog
Posted 11:22 PM 23/7/08
Be right back guys. Gotta go buy a bajillion shares of Amimom stock.
N@tedog
Chromeo is typing this on his iPhone 3G
Posted 11:18 PM 23/7/08
...and by Panasonic, I of COURSE mean Toshiba.
Just testing everyone...you all FAIL!
Chromeo is typing this on his iPhone 3G
Chromeo is typing this on his iPhone 3G
Posted 11:17 PM 23/7/08
Just wait until Panasonic teams up with Microsoft to come out with their own format...
HD-Wars continue!
Chromeo is typing this on his iPhone 3G
liquidsoapdispenser
Posted 11:35 PM 23/7/08
I'm wondering if data networks will be able to work their way into this protocol. Uncompressed HD seem like an impressive amount of data to move through thin air!
liquidsoapdispenser
reddingofish
Posted 12:21 AM 24/7/08
When this comes out can I finaly buy a HDTV without worrying that it will be incompatable with any other HD equipment I might buy?
reddingofish
VideoVampire
Posted 12:05 AM 24/7/08
rrwakc:
and house slowly transforms in to "walk in microwave"
HA! So thats it, its all clear to me now, when the robots and cyborgs take over they will make a few subtle code changes and everyones wirelss network streams will become microwave streams and cook everyone right in their house!
So it's not "KILL ALL HUMANS!" it's "COOK ALL HUMANS!" LOL
And then maybe blend us all...
VideoVampire
dmexs
Posted 12:30 AM 24/7/08
@reddingofish: Do you really have to worry about that today? Unless you're coming from PAL to NTSC or vice-versa..
Why uncompressed HD though? Couldn't they get a lot more out of this standard if they had transmission and receiver side compression/decompression ? It just seems like a raw muscle kind of approach. I'm sure it's cheaper this way, but they could get a lot more out of it I feel. Thing about what kind of wireless standard this could make for computers with this amount of data throughput uncompressed. Or am I missing something?
dmexs
shawn_dude
Posted 1:56 AM 24/7/08
One single point of failure = one single point of control.
Sounds like another attempt to fill the "analog hole".
shawn_dude
DisposableInterloper
Posted 3:37 AM 24/7/08
@shawn_dude:
Not if that standard were maintained by a non-profit foundation, with the full specification kept free and open.
Further, it wouldn't be just some unyeilding, monolithic standard. If a particular problem would be encountered, the standard could be extended or modified to fix the problem as a temporary solution, and the developers working on maintaining the standard could then be notified. Similarly, if new functionality is needed that is otherwise not available, an extension to the standard could be created to fill the gap.
DisposableInterloper
DisposableInterloper
Posted 3:30 AM 24/7/08
@Joseph:
But that's the point of it being extensible. Whenever any given aspect of it can be improved - range, speed, quality, et cetera - that part could then be updated and the benefits would be enjoyed across all hardware up to snuff for the update. Thinking about it, I suppose in addition to extensible, such a standard could also be called modular.
DisposableInterloper
SneakerFiend
Posted 4:58 AM 24/7/08
Well i think that they should work with motorola here or linksys because those are two heavyweights in the wireless field since linksys makes routers and so does motorola.
SneakerFiend
whootowl
Posted 4:35 AM 24/7/08
With the home becoming one big microwave oven, this might shave a couple decades off the average life expectency, which might in turn soften the Social Security and Medicare funding crisis. It all just works out so swell.
whootowl
CapitalC
Posted 4:25 PM 24/7/08
"...Toshiba misunderstood, heard only 'HD' and got excited about HD-DVD revival. It was later the figured out what everyone else was talking about, they then suggested a different protocol."
CapitalC
DaSmith
Posted 9:40 PM 24/7/08
Oh man... do they really have to begin another f-ing format war?! Stupid companies.
DaSmith
StefanHamminga
Posted 7:45 PM 23/7/08
The picture already shows what's wrong with the idea: The central place of the TV in entertainment is long gone and it should stay that way IMHO... Better integrate a proper H264 decoder and proper WLAN instead of clogging the atmosphere with yet another single purpose radio device...
StefanHamminga