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Bluetooth Gets a Speed Boost
Tom Keating writes to tell us that the Bluetooth SIG has announced the adoption of WiMedia's version of ultra-wideband technology for integration into current Bluetooth technology. This move hopes to push the popularity of Bluetooth by providing a new high speed option that can transmit high quality sound and video. WiMedia also has a copy of the announcement [PDF] on their site with a few additional details.
Is this going to be backwards compatible with the current versions of Bluetooth?
Now we can all throw out our old Bluetooth devices, so we can upgrade. I can't wait to take a video of my friend on my phone, then show it to him on my phone, then send it to his phone, then watch it on his phone too! I hope they come out with a newer, faster one right after I get this one.
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
It is critical that the UWB technology be compatible with Bluetooth radios and maintain the core attributes of Bluetooth wireless technology - low power, low cost, ad-hoc networking, built-in security features, and ability to integrate into mobile devices. Backwards compatibility with the over 500 million Bluetooth devices currently on the market is also an important consideration. The Bluetooth SIG is satisfied that MB-OFDM UWB technology, offered by the WiMedia Alliance, is capable of meeting all of these requirements.
With its current market penetration this will make Bluetooth the ideal choice for a Linux HTPC remote control with VOIP capability.
But will it be good enough for instant roaming networks? I would love alert fellow road users that my bike is coming out of the ally and know that someone want in at almost the same time so that we can slow down or speed up without having to brake hard when we meet face to face at the corner.
Not realy a big aftersales market like car navigation so Linux using a mass sold protocol would be ideal. Will blutooth become good enough for such applications?
is there really a need for it when we now have WiFi which has a better range ?
You're missing the point of Bluetooth, it's all about cheap low powered comms. Range is not an issue for most apps that utilize BT, for things like transferring data, performance was really the main sticking point. If they can come out with a wifi spec that used significantly less power and was cost effective for the type of devices that they wish to integrate into, then perhaps something like wifi will supplant BT.
UWB has signal range like wireless - in the tens to hundreds of feet. Easily across the house. Freescale have demonstrated the OTHER UWB standard (UWB Forum) streaming MPEG2 video from one device (a home theater box) to a UWB TV. It was really quite neat.
e rWirelessUWLCDTV.php
:) won't be too hard for them.
http://www.audioholics.com/news/pressreleases/Hai
Hopefully adopting the WiMedia version and using Bluetooth as the remote control method of choice (why not control your TV and media center from your mobile phone, even?
the point of bluetooth is to be LOW POWER so it can be REALLY SMALL and you can't have video capable bandwidth in a micropowered device.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This makes me really glad. Now that I am out of the project and focusing more on open source projects, I don't get to read about Bluetooth much. This just made my day.
If you RTFA, you'd have noticed that they are trying to keep the same power requirements by making efficiencies in the design. But you do make a valid point - how much power could they save without this high bandwidth?
really use bluetooth?
...so now we've got ultra-wide bandwidth combined with rapid frequency shifts. That's going to suck up big chunks of the unlicensed broadcast band at a time - I hope no-one's using a microwave (or a wireless router, especially a pre-N one) when I'm transferring my pr0n from my phone to my portable video player...
I did read it, I also know that the amount of processing power required to juggle a little itty bitty mono audio stream in two directions from my earpiece to my cellphone, vs the amount of processing power required to process and transmit video (presumably one way) is much more electrically intensive.. it's going to use more electricity, the power requirements will have to go up.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
My guess is that there is going to be a performance slider in the options. Let you scale up the range at the cost of power, much the same way that you can scale the brighness of the screen. That way, if you are using yout Laptop or PPC or whatever plugged in, take full advantage of it. On the road and trying to connect to things like keyboards and mice and such within a meter or two, you have no need for the massive range.
New Bluetooth
+ GPS
+ Dad's hunting Rifle
= Playing the "Real" Counter-Strike in your own neighborhood!
Lagito ergo expectabo
But that would present an incompatibility between communicating devices. It's much simpler in terms of design to keep the speed the same. Also, even if you could change the power levels, it wouldn't be part of the standard, just some optional extra.
The biggest cost, as the parent poster has pointed out is the real world usage of transferring audio/video via small devices. But I don't see how any new bluetooth standard is going to increase this. Let's face it, people want more and more from their mobile phones these days and battery technology will simply have to improve
The licensing costs of Bluetooth are the reason for its slow adoption.
There is no reason for a Bluetooth wireless headphones to cost $200 or more, other good quality wireless headphones with proprietary wireless technology could be purchased for $80.
Bluetooth mice and keyboards are like 50% - 100% more expensive then those wireless mice and keyboards with proprietary wireless technology. In fact, I heard it was cheaper for a company to developer their own wireless technology rather then licence Bluetooth for their products.
With wireless USB entering the market this year, I would be reluctant to buy anything Bluetooth until we see how Wireless USB will handle and how inexpensive it will be to license and use the product. My guess is that most companies using a proprietary wireless connection will adopt Wireless USB quickly.
For now, the only niche market that Bluetooth is succeeding in is in cell phone headsets. When it comes to general computing, Bluetooth's days are numbered.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
As I understand it, bluetooth (like most wireless) isn't very secure. If that's the case, wouldn't it be prudent to fix this before giving it a speed boost?
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
is there really a need for it when we now have WiFi which has a better range? Obviously you haven't tried to backup all your porn before... We have WRT-54g routers that are client bridged, but when it comes to the porn, best to break out the ethernet cable... because otherwise it takes hours... WiFi needs best-case, routers-sitting-on-top-of-each-other, clear-skies, low-tide, happy-music-playing, world-peace-and-end-of-poverty type conditions in order to actually hit 54mbps... and even then I think you would have to sell your soul to Satan... I for one welcome our UWB Overlords...
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
I use bluetooth to connect my pda to the internet both via my laptop when it's nearbye and online as well as to my cell phone nearly everywhere. I use bluetooth headsets to connect to my laptop for Skype and Googletalk when I'm not using it for my cell phone.
If I connected my pda to the internet using 802.11b it would drain a full battery in 20 minutes. Using bluetooth I can go for an hour and a half.
It's like one of the posters above said, 802.11 and Bluetooth are for different uses. If I'm connecting to something nearby as a way to eliminate a cord it's great. If I need a longer distance and higher speed (at least until there are new devices with the faster standard) I connect via 802.11.
You wouldn't want to wear a headset that had a battery big enough to let you talk via 802.11 for 8 hours.
I once had the opportunity to meet with and talk to one of the men who was involved in breaking the Enigma cipher during World War II. "If you have anything important to say," he said, "don't transmit it over the air. You can be sure someone will be listening, if they want to. And if you've encoded it, it's a matter of time before they decode it. If the Germans hadn't been so dependent on radiotelegraphs and had bothered to use cables, we wouldn't know half as much as what we finally found out."
I prefer using wired connections... it gives me the security of knowing that if I fall off a cliff while talking on the phone I will at least have a tether.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Another thing to keep in mind is that higher speed doesn't always mean more battery consumption. Compared to Bluetooth 1.2, Bluetooth 2.0's higher data rate means a shorter time where you have to have the transmitter powered on and therefore an overall power savings.
That's just being ignorant.
In 1951 Remington Rand was selling UNIVAC1 computers to the government. The thing could do about 1,900 operations per second and had I think about 72kilobits of ram.
It drew 125 Kwatts of electricity.
The laptop sitting in front of me now is about 300,000 times faster and draws 25 watts during peak usage.
What on earth makes you think that just becuase something is faster/better, it therefore must (by some magical law of physics I'm sure) draw more power?
With advances in chip fabrication alone, it is possible to massively reduce power usage. Not to mention any progress they make in the actual protocol being used by the system that may reduce transmission.
Also, you seem to be mistaken on the work the chip actually does. It is not processing any audio or video streams, it could care less if it was transmitting HD video or text, it'd just passing on the packets.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Isn't technology great?
Al, Tipper says that breakfast is ready.
Gimme bluetooth Ipod earbud style headphones, the logitech ones are terrible
After all, the SIG took forever to approve Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. They are a slow moving body. Not to mention it will take at least 1/2 a year to a year for someone to develope a test system to even test the chips. Plus an other 1/2 year to validate it. These things take time
Does anyone seriously think that this would even be put into cellphones and not horribly crippled by the major providers? Time and again we've seen artifical restrictions put on cellphones in an attempt to charge exorbitant fees for things as simple as moving cameraphone pictures to your computer. We're no longer being nickle-and-dimed to death, now it's a dollar or five at a time. Want to transfer video to your phone for viewing on the train using this new bluetooth high speed feature? No problem, you just need to sign up for our BlueVideo plan at a scant $9.99 per month, and expect download speeds to be about the same as regular bluetooth since we've totally crippled the standard to prevent all you hax0rs from trying to put data you own on the phone you own in the manner of your choosing. And don't forget our soul-sucking DRM for that video format! Why have 15fps when you can get 6fps in twice the memory space?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
while (typeid(this) == single) { printf("Still single :("); }
Well crap, dude -- no wonder! Try it this way:
while (interact() != success) { printf("Still single :("); }
even better yet - autoadjust of power, range and bandwidth
So, Wireless USB is also using WiMedia's UWB technology. Does this bring them any closer to convergence, or just mean that they're two different protocols using the same bandwidth and the same spectrum-hopping technology?
I'm not talking about the radio part.
I'm talking about the handling of video part.
What will the video be used for- presumably for a human to watch.
a reciving/displaying device powerful enough to display video for a human eye will require more electricity than a simple speaker and microphone.
a transmitting/sourcing device will require more electrical consumption to suppy the video to the wireless.. e.g. if it's a camera, then the cmos will consume more than a condensing microphone
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
What's nice is the protocol is already geared for throttling up or down on power, hence bandwidth. That is ideal for a mobile environment/devices.
I too welcome our UWB-BT overloads.
see your neighbors response in part.
short form.
I'm not talking about the consumption of electricity for the radio transmission
I'm talking about the consumption of electricity for the video manipulation
consider a fm only walkman vs a personal video player.. to display video in a human consumable format, requires more electricity
larger devices, larger batteries..
I have a bluetooth headset whose weight is given in grams... how will you do that with devices for video?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
And then there were nine.
Why can't tech companies let the crippled die a peaceful death ? Bluetooth was a neat idea like ten years ago when I first read about it in Byte magazine!!!1! Why can't we just turn 802.11 into a general-purpose wireless data scheme that encompasses Bluetooth functionality ? Why must all 802.11 devices be strictly for networking ? Why can't a stupid mouse or remote control send its blabber over WiFi ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Wow, wireless television! I never thought I'd live to see the day.
bad wireless all around.
I want to compare a fm radio (or it should be walkie-talkie, as it's two way)
to a color tv, for the purposes of power consumption
you are comparing the equivelent of a black and white tv to a color tv
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random