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Consumer electronics giants to create new wireless home networking standard

by Scott Bicheno on 23 July 2008, 16:35

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaoh3

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Update

UPDATE – 18:40, 23rd July 2008:

After posting this story we spoke to Noam Geri, AMIMON’s co-founder and marketing VP. We asked him if WHDI is going to be the technology to bring the digital home into the mainstream. “We can provide the user experience that is needed,” he replied. “Because it’s uncompressed, it’s much more consistent with the way people currently connect devices. So it’s more compatible with legacy devices and will allow a heterogeneous mix of devices.”

This would seem to be critical. You can’t expect consumers to go out and buy an entirely new suite of consumer electronics devices, no matter how attractive the technology is. By allowing people to incrementally introduce products with the new technology into their existing set-up, you make mainstream adoption a lot more viable.

Geri mentioned Belkin’s new FlyWire technology as an example of the kind of application already available that is using this kind of technology. If connecting new and legacy devices is as simple as using a hub or dongle, then that would definitely make it more user friendly.

Asked about ratification of the technology, Geri said “we’re using a different path to 802.11n, which was delayed by a lot of political debate within the IEEE. This is modelled more on HDMI, which went through a much faster process.”

There have been reports that some members of this group are using it as an interim technology, until a supposedly competitive technology called WirelessHD comes into play. We asked Geri what he thought of that. “WirelessHD is not exactly competitive, although there are overlaps,” he said. “It operates at 60GHz so it has more limited range and is used for in-room connectivity. So there is still a competitive aspect for in-room, but we’re better at that too.”

Geri concluded by stressing that a key feature of this technology is that it allows the connection of PCs to the TV, thus making the digital home possible.