We've known for some while that Celeno had a thing for high-def over WiFi, and that favoritism has never been more clear. Today, the outfit is announcing a partnership with Ralink that will hopefully lead to an array of WiFi home networking designs that are optimized for HD video distribution. The first solution will combine the CL1300 and CLR230 802.11n chipsets along with Ralink's RT2880 and RT2850 chips. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if Celeno is announcing any set-top-boxes to contain said solution just yet, but hopefully that's just a few months away. Hey, CEDIA ain't too far off, is it? Full release is after the break.

If price was the only thing separating your living room from a Sony DMX-WL1 wireless HD unit, maybe news that SonyStyle is unloading them for $499 (down from $799) is enough to initiate a purchase. Maybe having a pricing edge over the Gefen EXT-WHDMI setup is enough to separate the two, but Sony's pair is still limited to 1080i as opposed to 1080p streaming, so we'd take a careful look at the reviews before laying down green for either one, though we may just stick with our old school wired-HDMI lifestyle for now.

Yes folks, we're back to the drawing board. Again. With a litany of wireless technologies floundering about and struggling to find real traction in the market, a cadre of market powerhouses have joined up to take wireless streaming to the next level -- or so they say, anyway. The newly formed WiGig Alliance aims to use unlicensed 60GHz waves in order to stream just about anything you can think of: HD video, images, phone contacts, instant messages, audio, etc. This "unified" approach differs from most other alternatives, which generally pick one niche (1080p video, for instance) and stick to it. If the more than 15 technology firms have their collective druthers, the WiGig specification will find its way into everything from set-top-boxes to telephones to home stereos, ready and willing to stream to other WiGig-enabled devices at a moment's notice.

The group consists of household names such as Microsoft, LG, Dell, Samsung, Marvell, Nokia, NEC, Intel and Broadcom (just to name a few), and when we spoke to executives about the announcement, they told us that plans were to have the specification available to member organizations in Q4 of this year. The sad part is that this likely means we won't see shipping products with the WiGig logo for another year after that -- if we're lucky. We can't argue that some stability would be nice in this volatile sector; after all, we've been waiting for promising products like Belkin's FlyWire to ship for well over a year. The execs we spoke with couldn't speak on behalf of the partner firms in terms of what WiGig products were looming on the horizon, but as we alluded to earlier, the playing field is wide open. Honestly, we'd love for this to take off and finally give high-bandwidth wireless applications the support it needs to flourish, but as we've seen over the past few years, the road ahead ain't an easy one to walk. The full release is after the break.

AMIMON, the company behind the wireless HD technology (WHDI) in Belkin's FlyWire (among other devices), has just introduced its second-generation chipset. The device, which utilizes video modem technology operating in the 5GHz unlicensed band, consists of the new AMN 2120 transmitter and AMN 2220 receiver, both of which are angling to slip into set-top-boxes, HDTVs and all sorts of other HDMI-enabled devices in short order. AMIMON asserts that this chipset is the first capable of "delivering full uncompressed 1080p/60Hz HD content throughout the entire home," with a range of beyond 100 feet through walls, under one millisecond of latency and support for HDCP 2.0. Best of all, the new kit is available now for manufacturers to snap up, so for the legions of consumers waiting for someone to get wireless HD right, let us say this: "get to snapping." The full release is after the break.

And you wonder why people refuse to take wireless HD / HDMI seriously. A full 15 months after Belkin's FlyWire was introduced at CES 2008, the world is still waiting for it to ship. When launched, it promised the consumer world a device that would take multiple HDMI devices and stream them (one at a time, obviously) to your HDTV sans wires. The box itself relies on AMIMON's WHDI technology, and while we've seen with our own eyes just how marvelous it works, Earthlings won't be able to purchase one until -- drumroll, please -- August 2009. According to a Belkin PR manager that we spoke with on the matter, the January 2009 ship date has now slipped to late summer for the US market, though the altogether painful $1,499 price tag remains firmly in tact. So, what's the over / under on Belkin actually keeping its word this go 'round?

Update: Contrary to some reports, the delay is absolutely not related to WHDI. Belkin's own PR team has confirmed that the hold-up is in no way related to WHDI, but that it is "paying very close attention to the user experience." In other words, it's delaying things to get things totally right, and for $1,500, we'd expect nothing less than perfection.

You know what's most annoying about wireless HD solutions? Two things, really. First off, 95 percent of 'em only come out to play at trade shows. Secondly, the other 5 percent require you to refinance your now-worthless home to even procure 'em. Sewell, a company known for delivering unexpected treasures when it comes to adapters, has just pumped out its very own wireless HDMI media extender. The good news is that it's shipping right now and it relies on 802.11a/n technology rather than WHDI, UWB or any other less ubiquitous option. The bad news is that 15 to 30 feet of cord-free AV goodness will set you back $1,199.95. You can weigh the pros and cons yourself, but we'll be begrudgingly sticking with coat hangers cheap-o interconnects 'til it becomes just a touch more of a bargain.

Earlier this year, Celeno and Cavium teamed up to pump out a WiFi-based wireless HDMI Solution, and now the former company has notched yet another partner in its quest to spread the joys of wireless video the world over. Announced at the IPTV World Forum, Comtrend has selected Celeno's HD WiFi chips for its wireless video adapters, which are available now for service providers worldwide. Their purpose? To distribute multiple HD IPTV content from any Ethernet-equipped home gateway or DVR to IP set-top-boxes. In other words, the solution ensures reliable IPTV home networking, providing whole home coverage without any new wires. There's no specific word on where we'll see this stuff roll out, but those over in London can check it out in person starting tomorrow. Full release is after the break.

As the wireless HD world continues to turn, Celeno Communications is back with news that it's already field testing OptimizAIR WiFi based hardware. Promising 1080p video at distances of up to 120 feet through walls and floors to WiFi-capable devices, its MIMO technology is expected to see "massive deployment" by this summer, with IPTV customers likely to get the first shot. We're still concerned at a lack of vendors lining up behind it, though backwards compatibility certainly gives a leg up on Wireless HD, WHDI and the rest. Making a note in the calendar to check for possible product rollouts once the weather warms up seems like a reasonable next step.

[Via SmartBrief]

So much for those UWB death knells, right? In all honesty, we highly doubt that Gefen and Staccato can save the flagging ultra-wideband format all by themselves, but given that Gefen had already come so far with this thing, there was really no point in canning it now. The UWB-based Wireless for HDMI Extender is finally shipping to those looking to extend HDMI signals over-the-air from up to 33 feet away. The box can also handle 5.1 channel surround sound, and setup is said to be a lesson in simplicity. Of course, at $999, you're going to have to detest those cables an awful lot, but hey, it's still better than waiting around for the Belkin FlyWire.

It's been a slow, painful death, but it's about time to just pull the white sheet over ultra-wideband and let the wireless standard rest in peace. After Intel pulled its support for UWB and proponent WiQuest shut down late last year, all that the format really had left was TZero. After successfully surviving some legal issues, we thought the company was good to go in fighting a hopeless battle against wireless HD upstart AMIMON. Now, it seems that WHDI (that's AMIMON's magic) is free to take the market by storm, but only time will tell if wireless HD is even remotely close to mainstream. In one sense, we're sad to see competition die, but on the other hand, it's always good to see fruitless format wars fade away. Don't be too down on yourself, TZero -- it's not like anyone really had high expectations for you or anything.

CNET took the Gefen EXT-WHDMI out for a spin, and came back with an overall good impression of the $800, Tzero-based solution for breaking free of HDMI cable runs (at least within a 30-foot radius). Once the automatic input switching was mastered and video sources were set to conform to the unit's 1080p/24 upper limit -- 1080p/60 is not supported -- the unit generally turned in respectable performance. Of course, comparisons to Sony's similarly priced DMX-WL1 were warranted, but neither unit scored a knockout blow. We'll let you hit the read link for the gory details, but rest assured that the Gefen unit didn't drop any frames or otherwise wreck the image quality. For the asking price, you'd expect nothing less, but there were some caveats -- we agree with CNET's bottom line of picking one up from a dealer with a good return policy in case it doesn't all work out for you; that $800 will buy extenders and a lot of cable, after all.

A ProVision exec proclaimed last month that WiFi was the only suitable wireless HDTV medium, and it appears that bigwigs at Celeno and Cavium Networks emphatically agree. The two have joined up to debut a whole-home 1080p60 HDMI over WiFi solution here in the desert, with the gem of the show being the CL1300. Said microchip is designed to be integrated into essentially any device (a set-top-box, router, TV, toaster oven, etc.), enabling the host device to deliver H.264 compressed HD streams over long distances. In fact, it promises 802.11 beaming of up to four concurrent high-def streams. So, here's a perfectly good wireless HDMI option based on a standard that everyone and their grandmother has already adapted too -- too bad there's not a laundry list of companies already signed on to integrate it. Full release is after the break.

Slowly but surely, AMIMON is establishing itself as a serious player in the wireless HD space. Right before our eyes, the outfit has announced that it's playing a major role in the world's first HD wireless display designed specifically for use in the operating room. Stryker Endoscopy's WiSe HDTV is embedded with AMIMON's WHDI technology, though few details beyond that are being disclosed. We've no idea if this is just the beginning of AMIMON's domination of the OR, but it's certainly a good start. Here's hoping we see some similar announcements in the consumer space at CES -- it's about time some of these wireless HD doodads stopped looking pretty and started shipping out.

Merely a day after we heard that the ITU had ratified G.hn as the new global standard for HDTV home networking, along comes Valens Semiconductor to keep the whole HD-over-Ethernet conversation going. Hailed as the first system to send and receive uncompressed HD video, audio and internet simultaneously over a single Ethernet cable, its HDBaseT technology will be showing off to the world at CES 2009. Reportedly, it's working towards "creating HDBaseT as the new digital connectivity standard for HD multimedia distribution," but we don't suspect that will be an easy road to traverse. Both the VS100SK (receiver) and VS100SR (transmitter) ICs are scheduled to be commercially available in 2H 2009, and we're even led to believe that they could be integrated within Blu-ray players, set-top-boxes, HDTVs and projectors. Full release and diagram is after the break.