Last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas featured home networking systems heavily, using many technologies from the classic ‘ new twists on Wi-Fi ‘ to the emerging, notably 60GHz wireless Pans (personal area networks) including a reminder that the Amimon WHDI system (in wi-fi spectrum) is still hoping to compete in this space.
The big difference between SiBeam and the chip from the Israeli start up Amimon, which claim to be able to send multiple HD signals around a home using MIMO antenna and a 40 MHz wide OFDM carrier, is that the SiBeam technology makes no pretense about going through walls. It doesn’t, whereas the WHDI signals can. However most research suggests that about 75% of the market is after is a way of sending a signal across a room to flat TV screens, not around a home, which is why both technologies are being courted by so many. It looks like WHDI is to come first, and have a short life except for applications where it needs to go through walls, followed by in-room WirelessHD, based on SiBeam.
So while 60GHz is only just approaching market readiness ‘ standards are not finalized, and only a few start-ups are implementing chips in cost effective CMOS ‘ it can support 1080p speeds connections over short distances, while Amimon falls just short of that.
Back in December Samsung said it would back SiBeam and the Wireless HD consortium behind it, after backing WHDI in July. A third candidate UltraWideBand has made little headway among major CE manufacturers, but is still in the picture, pushed now mostly by its inventor Pulse~link, as well as the pallid OFDM version which the WiMedia Alliance supports, which it still insists can deliver HD video.
At CES LG managed to time its promise to support the Amimon technology by joining WHDI SIG as a contributing member alongside Hitachi, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and Sony, with its support of Wireless HD.
At CES SiBeam declared three design wins including LG, Panasonic and Toshiba, who will all ship wireless video products later in 2009. Sony at the show made it clear that it was using the Amimon chips in its new Bravia Link DMX-WL1. It said that a pair of converter boxes currently cost $799 and support 1080-interlaced, but not 1080-progreessive video resolutions at distances up to 65 feet. At those kinds of prices few will be interested, and this will not trigger an avalanche of business, though of course it will come down.
Amimon also said that Hisense, one of China ‘s leading consumer electronics and appliance brands would also use its WHDI technology in China.
The new SiBeam products promised will also use external transmit/receive boxes to link their flat panel TVs to Blu-Ray drives and set-top boxes and will be similar prices to the WHDI boxes at first, but fall with volume and new versions which use 18 antennas instead of 36, halving power consumption and cost. Taiwanese module maker AboCom Group is sampling SiBeam-based snap-on modules for TVs, which cost $240 per pair and will ship in the second quarter.
The WirelessHD group also released its test specifications and a list of features for its next generation and it plans to begin interoperability testing and certification for the first release by the summer.
As for UWB, Hitachi showed transmit/receive boxes for TVs, which it is shipping in Japan, based on WiMedia Alliance silicon from TZero Technologies, but it would give no hints of any plans for other countries, pointing to challenges with latency, and problems of interoperating UWB or 60GHz with wired HDMI systems. Quite clearly the WiMedia Alliance systems are only just getting above 100 Mbps and can only send compressed signals around a home, whereas the 60 GHz signals can offer uncompressed HD, so there is a difference in magnitude here, and the Japanese manufacturers are obsessed with ultra thin screens, with no apparent external connections, which leans towards uncompressed systems.
Meanwhile Broadcom is hedging all its bets in home networking and Pans. It showed off chips for the new Multimedia over Coax standard, which is gaining significant momentum; said it has 60GHz products in the lab, though would not reveal sampling dates; and it is implementing the new, high speed version of Bluetooth. The company also showed demonstrations of moving video between TVs, cellphones and set-top boxes, using DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) software over MoCA and Wi-Fi. Broadcom is negative on UWB, saying it lacks the device discovery and management qualities needed in the home, and may not outdo 802.11n speeds any time soon.