Advertisement

High Definition Television (HDTV) is an already mature consumer electronics (CE) field. However, it is a field that is still cluttered by a rats nest of interconnecting wires.

Home theatre systems are often built around a sleek, flat-panel audio-visual (AV) display hanging on a wall, often connected to a variety of high definition (HD) sources; for example, cable or satellite set-top boxes, blue-ray disc players, gaming consoles and/or broadband Internet connections. An example setup is shown in Figure 1. Connecting this display (or often multiple displays) to the many HD content sources requires a suite of specialist cables and switches, most of which are costly, bulky and unsightly. Although such cables are effective at carrying the high data rates required, many users would prefer a more elegant wireless solution, if available, especially if it eliminated the mass of wires, removed the interconnection headaches, and provided seamless networking capabilities between multiple sources and viewing devices.

HDMI™ (High Definition Multimedia Interface) has emerged in recent years as the enabling CE HD digital interface. HDMI permits data transfer at rates of 3 Gbps and higher; equivalent to 1080p video, the highest specification HDTV and AV standard commonly available today (note: The “1080” stands for 1,080 horizontal scan lines, which with the common widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 implies a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels, and thus a frame resolution of 1,920 × 1,080 or 2 million pixels. The “p” stands for progressive scan, meaning all the horizontal lines are drawn in sequence. Another standard mentioned in this paper is 1080i, which employs the same number of pixels, but interlaced, meaning only each second line is refreshed each scan. This allows the system data rate to be halved, but at the expense of some picture quality degradation). More than 500 million devices are forecast to be shipped with HDMI interfaces by 2010.¹

Several wireless technologies in the 5 to 60 GHz frequency bands are under development to provide HDMI interconnectivity in living-room environments for linking together HDTV and other multi-media sources without wires. Major CE companies are starting to rollout models, with prototypes being displayed at recent CE trade shows. This paper reviews these technologies, providing an insight into the main contenders, standards, industry groups and commercial players that make up the wireless high definition landscape.