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Sibeam's 60GHz-based WirelessHD widely adopted

Sibeam announces a growing list of vendors that support its WirelessHD technology.

Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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Dong Ngo
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A wide range of products now supports WirelessHD technology from Sibeam.
A wide range of products now supports WirelessHD technology from Sibeam. Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET

LAS VEGAS--In the world of wireless display technology, so far we have WHDI with the Asus Wavi, and Intel's WiDi with the Netgear Push2TV or the D-Link MainStage. All of these devices allow for displaying high-quality audio and video from your laptop, desktop, or even a media player to a TV, wirelessly.

Now, however, if you want the devices to share more than just an audio and a video signal, but also data or the connection to the Internet, you'll want to consider a third technology, called WirelessHD, which uses the 60GHz frequency band.

Unlike WHDI or WiDI, WirelessHD is fully compatible with Wi-Fi. This means a WirelessDH-compliant TV can connect, for example, to the Internet or share data with a home server, wirelessly. In other words, WirelessHD can be considered the third band of Wi-Fi, in addition to the existing and popular 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

Generally, the advantage of WirelessHD is the fact that it's more affordable and offers much faster speed compared with Wi-Fi. The downside, however, is the much shorter range, compared with Wi-Fi, and relatively high latency, compared with WiDi and, especially WHDI devices.

At CES 2011, Sibeam, a strong advocate of WirelesssHD, today showcased a growing adaption of 60GHz-Based WirelessHD and demonstrated its third-generation WirelessHD technology, which is based on the WirelessHD 1.1 specification. The company also provided details on its road map focused on 60GHz solutions optimized for mobile platforms.

According to Sibeam, WirelessHD has been adopted in a wide range of products from prominent hardware vendors. Some examples are being showcased at CES 2011. They include:

  • Dell Alienware Alienware M17x R3 gaming laptop that features Sibeam's 60GHz-based WirelessHD chipsets. This allows the laptop to transfer wireless high-definition video to a WirelessHD-compliant HDTV, much like a laptop that uses Intel's WiDi to a WiDi-compliant TV.

  • Asus's notebooks, including the G73jW and the G53 models. Similar to the Alienware laptop, these two models also feature Sibeam's WirelessHD.

  • World's first WirelessHD docking stations for iPad and iPhone from Abocom, which provide both a charging and wireless video transmission for the those mobile devices.

  • The XWH200 Universal WirelessHD Transmitter & Receiver Kit from Vizio. The kit includes a four-port transmit adapter and separate receiver adapter that can support up to four source components connected using standard HDMI cables. This helps upgrade existing HDTVs and components to support WirelessHD technology.

  • WirelessHD-based HDMI adapters from Monster, including Monster Digital Express Wireless HDMI Kit (DX WHD1), Monster Digital Express HDMI Transmitter TX400 (DX TX 4), and Monster Digital Express Wireless HDMI Receiver RX100 (DX RX 1).

Sibeam also announced its partnerships with Foxconn and Nvidia. While the partnership with Foxconn is aimed at broadening the adoption of WirelessHD, the collaboration with Nvidia is to make sure that the company's GPUs work well with WirelessHD devices.