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Wireless HDMI Prototype Announced

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the thats-a-lotta-bits-in-the-air dept.

legoburner writes "Tzero Technologies and Analog Devices announced that they have created a wireless HDMI interface for HDTVs, next-gen DVD players, and set-top boxes. The backbone for the technology is ultrawideband, also used as a future replacement for wired USB. The Analog Device compresses data with the [lossy] JPEG2000 video codec, which is then packetized and encrypted, and transmitted via the Tzero MAC and PHY chip."

6 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. JPEG2000 is not inherently Lossy by topham · · Score: 4, Informative

    JPEG2000 has both lossless and lossy modes.

    Did I miss something in the article indicating which they were using?

  2. Most people's HD is compressed anyway by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you get your HD from digi cable or dish (which 90% of HDTV owners do), then the signal has already been compressed in MPEG2 or MPEG4 on it's way down the pipe.

    Then again, this thing is just adding in another compress/decompress cycle - not good IMO.

    1. Re:Most people's HD is compressed anyway by JonTurner · · Score: 3, Informative

      >>If you get your HD from digi cable or dish (which 90% of HDTV owners do)
      >Only 90%? Seems more likely to be 100%.

      The other 10% is Over The Air (e.g. Antenna). If you're after the highest possible quality, this is what you want. OTA HD broadcasts are usually of higher quality than cable or dish. It sounds counterintuitive, but it's true -- The cable/sat company (re)compresses the signal, introducing visual artifacts. In effect, you're getting a second-generation copy.

  3. The One Use for Ultra-Wideband... by loose+electron · · Score: 3, Informative

    Remember - JPEG is a compression standard. By definition it is a "lossy" comnpression. Picture quality loss remains TBD. Need to read the details.

    This is a first generation UWB wireless interconnect. When the concept of UWB mas marketed around a few years ago, the claim was that it would be a low power RF communication method.

    Low power at the antenna, yes, at the power supply, no.

    However, the power consumed for all the signal processing in the receiver & transmitter is pretty huge. The channel bandwidth is 250MHz and uses OFDM modulation. The implication is gobs of juice to run an ADC to deal with that high bandwidth, and "must have" DSP to do all the signal processing. (OFDM requires rather fancy signal processing, which can not be implemented using a lower power analog method.)

    The net result - The "low power of UWB" may be true at the antenna, but the electronics require huge amount of juice to get the job done. Consequently battery powered applications are no-go. Now you got this fancy new wireless standard and a limited use for it, with all the applications needing to be plugged into the wall.

    IMHO? Poke a hole in the drywall at the floor, run the cables up thru the wall and into the display. You have to do that for the power cord anyhow, so why not? It's not like you are going to be moving the silly thing much after you install it!

    UWB won't see the widespread use of WiFi or Bluetooth.

    --
    www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
  4. TZero is using lossless JPEG2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    So sayeth their presentation anyhow.

    http://www.tzerotech.com/site/demo/

  5. Re:Women! by strstrep · · Score: 4, Informative

    JPEG and JPEG2000 are very different lossy image compression algorithms. JPEG uses discrete cosine transforms, whereas JPEG2000 uses wavelet transforms, which are much better at representing non-periodic data, like you'd see in motion video.