The pre-Christmas hubbub created by independent testing lab octoscope over the performance of WiMedia Alliance versus the ‘real’ UltraWideBand concept used by Pulse~link of using pulses of wide spectrum radio, with no carrier wave, has brought the future of UWB alive.
Previously we all thought that the WiMedia Alliance would offer products pushing 480 Mbps through the air, with a usable 300 Mbps or so, and that Pulse~link was perhaps double that. Technology history can point to many a lonely innovator which produced a better product, which was overhauled by big and powerful companies, backing a slightly inferior technology.
But that octoscope report really unearthed a problem with the WiMedia approach of using a limited OFDM carrier wave, one fundamental to short range, high speed radio communication for consumer electronic devices.
Next generation WiMedia Alliance technology may arrive shortly and it may make hay in the wireless USB market, connecting at perhaps as high as 100 Mbps, but that is a long way, several years away, from delivering no nonsense high speed, multi-stream, high definition video all over the home. The 60 GHz technologies that are attacking that market are just as likely to get their first, as WiMedia. Which really leaves us looking only at Pluse~link for the next few years of wireless HDMI and its equivalents.
Which is perhaps why Pulse~link has suddenly re-captured the imagination of some commercial suppliers after a 7 year fight to get its technology recognized. At CES Pulse~link announced deals with Westinghouse to use its CWave chipset in digital signage , with distributor Gefen to use the same chip in a coax based HDMI offering and Pulse~link has managed to combine the 1394 Firewire specification with its CWave chip, signaling over coax, supporting both the isochronous Quality of Service protocol in 1394 and the content protection technologies inherent in the 1394 standard, as well as keep up with the 400 Mbps speed requirement.
Perhaps the most significant is that Westinghouse Digital Electronics, which is one of the top 5 LCD TV suppliers in the US, is happy to use Pulse~link how it was designed to be used, through the air, as an UltraWideBand Wireless HDMI system
The Westinghouse Digital Wireless HDMI HDTV will initially only be released to the business to business digital signage market, where video advertising is served to screens around a store. Perhaps when it successful there the company will push it into the domestic TV market and inside its LCD TVs.
The CWave chip uses data encoded with lossless JPEG2000 video codec, the same codec used by movie theaters for ‘Digital Cinema.’
The OctoScope study in December showed CWave delivering usable throughput of 890 Mbps when the video source and TV were close up, and over 500 Mbps when 8 feet away and above 115 Mbps up to 40 feet away.
“Pulse~LINK has addressed a significant technical challenge for streaming premium content around the home,” said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association. “The 1394 TA is pleased to see Pulse~LINK delivering a solution for the market. By combining the high data rate performance and end-to-end QoS of the CWave MAC/PHY with the digital rights protection inherent in 1394, we were able to define a solid specification for products to be developed.”
The FCC mandated 1394 connections for cable and satellite set-top boxes back in 2003 because it liked its throughput and content protection and as a result HANA, the cross-industry organization which is trying to push co-ax as the main in-home network has chosen 1394 as a method for premium content distribution. HANA’s demonstration at CES will include Pulse~link too. So now CWave supports 1394, Ethernet, HDMI and Wireless HDMI from a common chipset. Next stop, power cables.