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10 - The wireless home

Posted on 10 Dec 2007 at 11:14

Web pages and music may already be flying around your home wirelessly, but 2008 will see the unwiring of much, much more. It's in the area of UWB (Ultrawideband) that the most exciting potential lies, as it's free from interference from existing devices and can transfer data at rates far beyond Wi-Fi. At its most basic level, we'll see wireless USB hubs, so you can have your peripherals all hooked up together in a corner of the room, while you print documents or access a USB hard disk from the sofa.

But it's the battle for a reliable way to stream HD video that could benefit most people, and several different approaches to this could render the whole 802.11n saga irrelevant. Philips will soon launch its wireless HDMI adapter, which connects an HD video source to a TV up to 10m away over UWB, without the need for an HDMI cable. A dream come true for anyone with a wall-mounted TV or a ceiling-mounted projector; it's totally lossless, fast and, most importantly, tidy.

Chip manufacturer Amimom has produced its own alternative called the Wireless High-Definition Interface (WHDI), which operates in the 5GHz unlicensed band and boasts an improved range of up to 30m. And a consortium of giants, including Sony, Samsung and Toshiba, has formed the WirelessHD group in order to develop a universal specification for the transmitting of audio and video HD without cables. The wireless battle is on and it will certainly bear fruit in 2008.

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Author: Stewart Mitchell