UWB is dead! Long live... UWB!
by Darren Murph 
posted Mar 16th 2009 at 2:12PM
Ultra-WideBand posts
Gefen ships UWB-based Wireless for HDMI Extender
by Darren Murph posted Feb 26th 2009 at 12:05PM
TZero closes up shop, UWB all but dead
by Darren Murph posted Feb 12th 2009 at 10:14PM 
Wisair's Wireless USB Display Adapter Set coming soon for $129
by Darren Murph posted Jan 5th 2009 at 6:37PM
It's debatable whether wireless USB is on its way out or on its way in (for real this time), but regardless of which way it's swaying, Wisair's got some availability you should know about. The outfit's Wireless USB Display Adapter Set, which is a screen-centric variant of the kit introduced back in November, will be available this quarter in the US and Europe. Based on Wisair's WSR601 Wireless USB single chip solution, the device offers up VGA and HDMI connectivity options, supports resolutions up to 1,400 x 1,050 and is USB-IF certified. If you're struggling to understand the purpose here, the two-piece bundle enables USB-equipped PCs to stream content to TVs, monitors and projectors sans cabling, and it'll do so for just $129. Now, if only it were 1080p compatible...Radiient to demo UWB-based Roomcaster: makes your entire 5.1 system wireless
by Darren Murph posted Dec 20th 2008 at 1:31PM
SiBEAM founder says WirelessHD is best for "in-room" applications
by Darren Murph posted Dec 10th 2008 at 8:40AM
While AMIMON is busy gloating about its 100,000th chipset shipment, WirelessHD is quietly lurking in the background waiting to exploit a niche of its own. In a rather telling interview, SiBEAM founder John Marshall (pictured) confessed that it was going after a different market rather than taking on the WHDI (and similar) format directly. He stated that its milliwave'-based WirelessHD technology -- which just received a cash infusion from Panasonic and Samsung -- "targets in-room use, whereas the others target whole-home use." He continued by noting that it "limit its use to inside a room to make the most of milliwave's properties, without assuming content transmissions through walls." Finally, we're led to believe that certain partners will be making product-based announcements at CES 2009, though judging by the history of cord-free HD, we wouldn't expect anything to start shipping right away. Or ever, even.Researchers develop world's smallest ultra-wideband antenna
by Darren Murph posted Sep 18th 2008 at 5:13PM
It's hard to say if ultra-wideband (UWB) will catch on (or get squashed by WHDI) in the wireless HD realm, but the applications for UWB outside of your living room are still many. Researchers at Virginia Tech have reportedly "developed an efficient compact ultra-wideband antenna (CUA) for a range of home, automotive, medical, and military applications," and according to inventory Taeyoung Yang, it has "achieved a near optimal performance for size and bandwidth." Better still, the design is said to be "cheap and simple to produce," which makes us hopeful for embedded wireless devices (receivers, STBs, Blu-ray players, etc.) sooner rather than later. We can't say for sure if this stuff is any closer to taking off in the mainstream, but at least we're making progress somewhere.HANA Entertainment Box looks to pass along HD content over coax
by Darren Murph posted Aug 26th 2008 at 3:11AM
Coaxial cabling has long since been viewed as a premiere option for passing along high-def content within the home. After all, in most places it's already neatly installed within the walls. The High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance (HANA) has announced its intentions to release a HANA Entertainment Box reference design based on the new (UWB-based) 1394 Over Coax standard; products based on said design will enable consumers to "download HD content from any broadband connection or HD cable set-top-box and watch it in any room in their home with a coax jack and a remote control." HANA is hoping to have the reference design and initial prototypes out the door in Q4, though we wouldn't hold our breath.US patent office supports Tzero, rejects Pulse~LINK patent
by Darren Murph posted Aug 25th 2008 at 3:05AM
While it was Pulse~LINK winning the last (but obviously not final) round of this multi-year tiff, the tables have turned once more. Tzero Technologies has just announced that the US Patent Office "issued an office action rejecting all claims of US patent number 6,970,448 asserted in a lawsuit brought by Pulse~LINK against Tzero in June 2007." This decision, coupled with a stay issued by the district court, will evidently bring the lawsuit to a close "for the foreseeable future." We're told that the legal struggles between the two are now officially over, but we're admittedly hesitant to believe it.Pulse~LINK's UWB-based CWave wireless HD tech gets DCP approval
by Darren Murph posted Aug 1st 2008 at 6:38AM
Boy, that's a mouthful, is it not? Shortly after Motorola, Sony and a whole crew of others teamed up to support AMIMON's WHDI wireless standard, in limps Pulse~Link attempting to act like it still has a shot at gaining traction. The left-for-dead CWave wireless-for-HDMI platform -- which is based on UWB (ultra-wideband) -- just received certification by Digital Content Protection as an Approved Retransmission Technology. This, along with the FCC certification received in 2007, enables CWave to start shipping in commercial products. As expected, a couple CWave-equipped Westinghouse HDTVs are slated to hit stores this fall, but it remains to be seen if anything will actually be released to take advantage. Format wars never end pretty, do they?Federal court ratifies Pulse~LINK UWB patents in Tzero case
by Darren Murph posted Jun 24th 2008 at 4:46PM
CoAir: world's first UWB chipset with wireless, coax and gigabit Ethernet
by Darren Murph posted Jun 24th 2008 at 8:47AM
Sigma Designs has been dabbling in wireless HD technologies for eons, so we aren't going to get too excited until we see this here system-on-chip (SoC) actually hit some products that we care about. Still, the CoAir is a fairly sweet concept, wrapping integrated wireless, coax and gigabit Ethernet capabilities into one single chip aimed at whole home networking. Put simply (or as simply as possible), this chip is the world's first to "simultaneously deliver multiple independent streams of video and data over coax cable, Ethernet cable and wirelessly without compromising quality of service and throughput." Based on the WiMedia standard, it can reach speeds of up to 480Mbps with UWB (ultra-wideband) wireless streaming, and room-to-room linkage via UWB-over-coax can peg those same rates. What we have here is a great basis for building a whole home server on, but until said device emerges and performs flawlessly, we'll just smile and carry on.Study confirms that wireless HD is still far from mainstream
by Darren Murph posted Jun 20th 2008 at 11:02AM
[Via Connected Home News]
Hitachi's UWB-based TP-WL700H wirelessly transmits HD to Wooo HDTVs
by Darren Murph posted Jun 1st 2008 at 12:09PM
[Image courtesy of Impress]
Monster Cable prepping wireless UWB gear
by Darren Murph posted May 28th 2008 at 1:19AM
Monster Cable -- the firm famous for grossly overcharging for its wares and suing nearly every company on Earth with "monster" in its title -- is going wireless. Yep, rather than gouging customers for Unicorn-like wiring, it'll now be promising to transmit signals through the purest air -- the kind only a Monster box could attract, most likely. Over at Hometech 2008 in Dubai, CEO Noel Lee affirmed that it would soon be "coming out with wireless," also noting that the elusive product(s) would be based on ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and support 1080p. Beyond that, it looks like we'll be waiting for specifics, as an official announcement of the device won't come until the "second week of June." Lee also stated that it "[wouldn't] be inexpensive," and threw out a $600 estimation for "a pair of boxes," while each additional room would cost $200 to connect. Color us absolutely unimpressed.
