A group of consumer electronics companies, including Sony and Toshiba, is hoping to help people cut the tangle of cords behind their entertainment centers.
The companies are promoting a new short-range wireless technology that would transmit high-definition audio and video data. For example, the idea is that consumers would be able to connect new high-definition DVD players to their big-screen televisions and get a perfect picture without wires.
``If you talk to any consumer on the street, they'll tell you they have difficulties putting together their entertainment systems,'' said John Marshall, chairman of the WirelessHD Consortium, which plans to unveil the new technology today. ``They have a zillion cables. It's a nightmare to manage.''
The group expects to finalize the WirelessHD specification next spring. Products that use the technology could be on store shelves as early as 2008, Marshall said.
The technology is intended to replace HDMI, S-video, Firewire and other technologies -- and their cables -- allowing consumers to link a range of devices, including set-top boxes, portable media players and game consoles in addition to televisions and DVD players.
Among the companies jointly developing the new wireless standard is Sunnyvale-based SiBeam, which has been working on high-speed wireless chips.
Other backers of the consortium include Samsung, LG Electronics, Matsushita and NEC. That the major consumer electronics manufacturers are supporting the WirelessHD efforts gives it credibility, said Brian O'Rourke, senior analyst at In-Stat, an industry research group.
The big question O'Rourke has is whether the WirelessHD group will be able to make chips with the speed needed for the highest resolution video at a low enough price that electronics makers would be able to afford to use it in their gadgets.
``To get (this) out in two years at a low price will be quite an accomplishment,'' O'Rourke said.
That's not the only challenge for the new technology. The consortium does not yet include major PC makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Nor does it include Apple, whose iPod has been one of the biggest hits in the consumer electronics world in recent years.
Their absence from the consortium could prove important, considering that other comparable technologies, such as USB and Firewire, have come from the PC industry. And the computer industry is already working on arguably a competing solution with a wireless technology known as ``ultrawideband,'' or UWB.
``Great, it's one more standard,'' said Danielle Levitas, an analyst with IDC, another industry research firm. ``It's going to add more costs if companies are going to have to support multiple technologies, which isn't the answer for consumer electronics in particular.''
Marshall noted that Sony and NEC make PCs. The WirelessHD group hopes to attract more support and interest from the other PC companies, he said.
SOURCE : San Jose Mercury News
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