14 DAY TRIAL // According to the latest news on the web, at least four distinct standards for transmitting HDTV wirelessly over home networks are supposed to be unveiled at CES 2009, yet some analysts say that the technologies are still incipient and not ready for demonstration. While vendors already talk about plans to demonstrate their achievements, analysts say that at least some of these wireless approaches, if not all, are still in development phase.
The Parks Associates analyst firm announced that it planned holding a panel discussion at CE 2009, and that companies that promoted different wireless HDTV specifications would participate. The companies expected to take part at the event are SiBEAM, the sustainer of Wireless HD, AMIMON, which supports WHDI, Pulse-LINK, opting for HDMI, and ProVision, which advocates 802.11n. According to Professor Andrew Nix, co-founder of UK-based ProVision, currently, the IEEE's 802.11n can be considered “the only standard capable of cost effectively transmitting interactive HD video signals across all rooms in a home.”
Noticeably enough, WHDI and Wireless HD are currently gaining a lot of fans among major PC vendors, has stated Steve Wilson, an analyst at ABI Research, earlier this week. Heavy names of the industry including Hitachi, Broadcom, Motorola, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony have already announced their plans of joining the WHDI Special Interest Group (SIG), which is a 5 GHz wireless platform advocate.
Meanwhile, Samsung and Sony are backing the 60 Hz approach adopted by WirelessHD as well, along with other companies like Intel, Panasonic, LG Electronics, NEC, and Toshiba. According to Wilson, there are few products that made it to the market until now, although the two teams have collaborated.
“Sharp and Hitachi are shipping high-end consumer TVs with wireless connectivity in Japan,” according to the analyst. “However, in the US, no one but Sony has yet been able to bring any of these technologies to the consumer market.”