Yet another WiMedia Alliance member, this time DVD and set top chip vendor Sigma Designs, has launched a Ultra Wide Band implementation that can work with both wireless, as well as be carried across coaxial cable, and says that it can be used to carry HD video around the home.
Previously WiMedia Alliance member Tzero made the same claim and immediately came up against a legal patent action from UWB inventor Pulse~link, which we are told is on the verge of being settled in its favor.
Pulse~link has partnerships with both distributor Geffen, offering its own Cwave chip, which supposedly runs at something close to 1 Gbps, offering its chip as a coax based HDMI offering, and has another distribution deal with Westinghouse Digital to use CWave in the pure wireless format in digital signage applications
Pulse~link has also 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 keeping up with the 400 Mbps speed requirement.
Previously we all thought that the WiMedia Alliance would offer products pushing 480 Mbps both through the air and through coax, with perhaps a usable 300 Mbps or so, but the WiMedia Alliance has been unable to confirm any tests operating above 160 Mbps, and an external test at test company Octoscope has only confirmed a performance of 50 Mbps.
Despite all this US distributor Monster has taken the Sigma Designs Windeo system-on-chip and will offer it as both a wireless HDMI entertainment distribution system and running over existing coax cable as well.
The wireless system will emerge as the Monster Wireless Digital Express HD system, and it will even use the same Pulse~link motto of ‘no new wires’ which it uses with its Cwave coax system.
Monster is claiming that the chips can support full 1080p resolution between HDTV displays, DVD players, and set-top boxes within a room and that the coax system will deliver the same signal up to 330 feet away anywhere in the house. Monster said that it had evaluated other wireless solutions for A/V cable replacement, and chose Sigma because its components were the most reliable.
The Sigma wireless device also uses what it calls an Intelligent Array Radio with three separate antennas and uses its own HDAV streaming which is based on the industry standard H.264 codec, this particular version of it from Fujitsu. The Pulse~link system uses the JPEG 2000 lossless codec when streaming video through the air, which uses more bandwidth, but means that the signal arrives in just the same shape as it was sent. H.264 is better for a constrained bandwidth environment and is likely to reduce an 720p HD signal to around 6 Mbps or a 1080p at perhaps 13 Mbps.
Using the limited bandwidth of the WiMedia technology the H.264 codec might represent the only way multiple 1080p signals could be carried wirelessly around a room, given its lack of total available bandwidth compared to the Pulse~link system. Sigma says that the chip will support a throughput of 200 mbps.