WHDI, another wireless HDMI standard, getting some industry support

Amimon, an Israeli company working on a medium-range wireless television interconnect solution, today announced the formation of a new consortium pledged to back their "WHDI" technology. The group includes Hitachi, Motorola, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony — the last three being heavy hitters in the HDTV display market.

WHDI operates in the 5GHz band and uses its roughly 3Gbit-per-second capability to stream uncompressed 1080p content — compressed. As they explained to me earlier in the year, their protocol attempts to deliver a full, uncompressed datastream if it can; failing that, it prioritizes video information that is most critical to picture fidelity, degrading gracefully as the range increases and the bandwidth decreases. They're shooting for ranges of around 100 feet, with the clearest, uncompressed signal working inside 30.

It all sounds great, but I haven't yet used any hardware. Neither has anyone else, to my knowledge. It's still all in the labs. Getting people like Sharp and Sony on board is a step in the right direction towards getting real products to market.

Belkin has announced a competing, incompatible "FlyWire" wireless HDMI product to be released in October. A press agent for Amimon tells BBG we can expect "chips embedded in products" in 2009.

Press Release [WHDI]

Previously • Belkin FlyWire should be the first wireless HDMI solution to market [BBG]

[#1 posted by appit , July 24, 2008 12:09 AM]

Do we really need another wireless media standard?

So far they have all been a bit of a flop because they are put in devices which are too expensive. Here is an excellent article on the new standard and its pros and cons: WHDI - Does the world need yet another wireless media standard?.

You also mentioned Belkin's FlyWire which does sound cool and it is reasonable priced. There is more information on it here: Belkin FlyWire