It's going to be a while before you can take advantage of the new60Ghz Wi-Fi technology to connect your Blu-ray player to your TV wirelessly. To get similar high-bandwidth wireless connectivity between home entertainment devices soon, however, there's an alternative.
Amimon, a member of the WHDI consortium and a developer of wireless HDTV solutions, announced Monday that it has surpassed half a million units in sales and orders for its 1080p Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) chipset. This suggested a very strong demand for the technology and it is expected that the first WHDI-enabled products will be launched in the next few months.
The company revealed that its chipsets have been shipping in volume to leading manufacturers worldwide, including Asus, Brite-View, Gefen, Haier, Hisense, IDX, LG, Mitsubishi, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Stryker, and Zinwell.
WHDI is a new standard for wireless high-definition video and audio connectivity. It promises to provide a high-quality, uncompressed wireless link with data rates of up to 3Gbps on a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band and up to 1.5Gbps on a single 20MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band. This translates into the elimination of data connectivity cables such as HDMI.
The standard has the technical wireless range of around 100 feet, the ability to penetrate walls, and the latency of less than 1 millisecond. According to Amimon, WHDI enables a wireless video link that offers the same functionality, cost, and quality as a wired link.
Though similar, WHDI is different and is not compatible with Wi-Fi, which is currently widely used to connect computers, electronics, and portable devices and can transmit more than just video and audio.
Other key features of the WHDI standard includes :
- Full 1080p/60Hz HD video and high-quality computer graphics
- Hollywood approved HDCP 2.0 copy protection
- Low power consumption modes for portable devices
Low cost; mass adoption price points
- 5GHz unlicensed band with support for Dynamic Frequency Selection and over-the-air switching
Amimon says that its WHDI chipsets can be embedded into any consumer electronic devices such as LCDs, plasma HDTVs, multimedia projectors, AV receivers, Blu-ray DVD players, set-top boxes, game consoles, computers, DVRs, PC-to-TV adapters, and so on.
Your house will soon be free of so many cables and you'll have the freedom of placing different pieces of your entertainment system exactly where you want them.