Squeeze it until it hurts
That’s not to say it isn’t possible – there are some products like Q-Waves Quicklink HD, based on a chipset from WisAir, that will send HD video, but only from a PC. You can’t hook up a Blu-Ray player, for example.
Q-Waves Quicklink HD
Slightly more flexible are products based on Cavium’s PureVu technology, like the Actiontec MyWireless TV, which allow any HDMI device to be connected to any HDMI display, with Wi-Fi technology used to link transmitter and receiver. It can even send the same content to multiple displays. But there’s a fly in the ointment: to fit 1080p content over a wireless link, it has to be re-compressed - using H.264 - so there’s inevitably some loss of quality.
If you prefer your video not to be recompressed after it’s come off the Blu-Ray or out of your Sky box, there are three potential competing systems that could provide a wireless replacement for your HDMI cable.
First up, the WirelessGigabit Alliance. Though not focused specifically on HD video, it aims to offer a high speed, high bandwidth system that can be used for a range of tasks. WiGig can use both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands that current Wi-Fi standards use, as well as taking advantage of space in the 60GHz band for higher bandwidth requirements, like driving HD displays.
Actiontec MyWireless TV
With a single system that supports both display connections and network access, it’s more an alternative way of getting HD material to a display than a straightforward replacement for an HDMI cable.
Next page: Real HDMI?
COMMENTS
Goose objection.
This seems like a great way to spill gigabytes of traffic into the air making it even harder to use WiFi. All for devices which for their years of life; NEVER MOVE!
It should be illegal for stuff that sits still to use wireless connections, use a cable FFS!
OFA?
So in the days of cables the "big sell" was oxygen free, gold plated, diamond encrusted uber-cables to link kit.
Hmmm, I wonder if Dixons et al will be eager to sell some extortionatly priced "Oxygen Free Air" for the pre-requisite inter-connect between devices?
The wrong solution
I'm with Bracken. There are plenty of good reasons for wireless connectivity, but not being bothered to hook up a 3m HDMI cable between two completely static devices is not one of them. There isn't an infinite amount of wireless bandwidth available; I live in fear of a neighbour getting a wireless TV extender that lives in the same band as my existing 802.11 and will cripple my bandwidth through the wall. Even the 60GHz solution has the ability to interfere, depending on what your walls are made of.
If you're going to stream video wirelessly, better to transmit the original h.264 bitstream and decode it at the display device. Decoding it wastes vast amounts of bandwidth; decoding it and recompressing it will introduce horrible artifacts (ever used a DVD recorder on the output of a digital receiver?) Better yet, just use some cables, then they won't interfere with (or be interfered with by) anything. Doing this wirelessly is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist nearly so much as the average consumer might think it does, and people have been trying to punt various version of it for years - fortunately with limited success.
If you really want to get an uncompressed video from the back of the room to a display at the front, make your neighbours happy: buy a projector.
Wireless communication is all good and well but people live too close to each other
I was in Toronto a short while back staying over in an apartment on the 15th floor of a building. Scanning for service I found I had 71 WiFi signals detected using a TP-Link directional antenna. These included 5 coffee shops, two McBarf outlets (not the same one), and other commercial establishments along with all the domestic installations.
There are simply insufficient channels to accommodate all these co-located signals.
Likewise, at a very nice hotel in the Far East, all the rooms had TV and audio equipment from the same manufacturer and every so often the programme would be interrupted by signals from an adjacent room.
Things are unlikely to improve from an accommodation standards point of view so it is incumbent upon the standards people to enable systems that at in close proximity to operate without interference. Infra red, possibly, is an answer.
An apartment
Can't wait to see how brilliant these things are in a high density environment. In an apartment block, if this ever took off, it would be a nightmare. It's bad enough with WiFi, and that's not transmitting all the time!
Also as previously pointed out it's dumb as hell to be re-encoding content and then transmitting it, just shuffle the encoded content over the air so quality isn't compromised.
I can see these things working if they join the WiFi fabric, and stop trying to be an HDMI replacement, just make them a tranport for encoded content! Could work well for laptop/projector use as well.
