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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."

33 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Women! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    Tzero and Analog executives say that wireless HDMI will make for much more aesthetically pleasing HD systems, which, according to them, will make women happier in the selection of home theater systems.

    "One of the things we are hearing more and more now is that the disinterested spouse is taking a more active role in selecting and hanging the television, typically that's the wife," Bucklen said. "That's all well and good until you start dragging cables into the solution. HDI cables are expensive and bulky and we think that a wireless approach can give consumers the flexibility to put televisions where they want them."
    The 1950s called. They want their mentality back.
    1. Re:Women! by InsaneGeek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just because it was true in the 1950's and kind of has a caveman feel to it, doesn't mean there isn't a ring of truth to it. If you go over to http://www.avsforum.com/ you'd be surprised as to the number of posts talking about passing the spouse test regards to being esthetically pleasing on required cable hiding, etc.

    2. Re:Women! by legoburner · · Score: 4, Funny

      And with jpeg as the codec, they can keep their 1950s picture quality too!

      --
      Warhammer forums
    3. 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.

    4. Re:Women! by Hercules+Peanut · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The 1950s called. They want their mentality back.

      Which just goes to show how cool the 50's really were.

      Seriously, after decades of political correctness, we see that some stereotypes aren't always that far off. These guys aren't guessing that women want this, it's part of the feedback/research. My own experience (my wife and her friends) supports this. I know, my own experience doesn't offer a sample size large enough to reject the null hypothesis but it makes it a little easier to believe when I hear someone else say he same thing.

      My big concern is that the very people who have HDMI, particularly at this point, are not very likely to be interested in risking any video quality for the sake of wireless.

  2. Another Sony Delay.. by saboola · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news, in an attempt to make the PS3 future proof, Sony has once again delayed the PS3 till 2009 so that they may integrate wireless HDMI. Wireless HDMI will not come standard however, but be part of the 1500 dollar "ZOMG" SKU.

    1. Re:Another Sony Delay.. by EddieBurkett · · Score: 4, Funny

      At least that would explain why they aren't including an HDMI cable with the PS3...

      --
      The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
  3. HD compression? by MindStalker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok why would someone spend large amounts of money on an HD system only to have it compressed.

    On another note, what about the signal band already used by HD TV broadcasters, would a signal thats weak enough to stay inside your house be legal?

  4. See! by yakhan451 · · Score: 4, Funny

    See! Sony's once again ahead of the curve, not shipping the PS3 with an HDMI cable.

  5. Not really HDMI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    HDMI, in its present incantation, is just glorified DVI with DRM. But, anyways, a wireless version of a video connection which is lossy is not the same as the video connection it purports to replicate. I would propose they call it HDMI Minus (or something like that) but HDMI is already a minus.

    If lossy is allowed, my regular CRT TV from 1998 could be called HDTV. It's just lossy, right?

    1. Re:Not really HDMI by Pieroxy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have learned that the wireless equivalents are always well under the performances of the wired ones. And I'm tired to see my image freeze every time someone walks between the Wi-Fi access point and the HTPC.

      Wireless is a no-go, in any of its incarnations today, save the input devices which don't need high data rate: mice, keyboards, remotes. All the rest is just on an emergency basis.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  6. 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?

  7. Installation? by onion2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "If we break this down, it's going to be less than an HDMI cable," Karr said. "Those are about $100 plus installation."

    People pay for someone to come and install a cable?

    "It's that whole 'plugging it in' thing! It's got me completely stumped!" ;)

    --
    http://twitter.com/onion2k
  8. Let me get this straight... by squoozer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You rush out and spend god knows how much on the latest and greatest next gen DVD player, you throw away your perfectly good TV / projector / box that emits coloured light and buy a new one that supports HDMI (and HD). Finally, you then cough up more hard earned cash to buy a movie you probably already own on regular DVD for twice the price. You do all this in the hopes of getting a fantasic picture with amazing sound.

    Why, oh why, would anyone with two brain cells to rub together then install a wireless connection that uses lossy compression?

    Still, fair play for getting that many bits through the air. Personally, I won't be standing anywhere near the transmitter.

    --
    I used to have a better sig but it broke.
  9. 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.

  10. It's true! by paranode · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My wife's only complaint with my home theater set up was all the wires and how best to hide them. She was totally against me using surround sound because of the wires. Finally I ran the wires under the flooring (it's complicated) and then it was no problem. So in reality these guys have a good point.

  11. Ohhhh the audiophile victims.... by codefrog · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can already picture the audiophile products which will at no small cost somehow imbue the air in your living room with better wireless transmission characteristics...
    Maybe even a vacuum chamber so you don't degrade your digital transmission. It sure would suck to have your bits coming through the ether in low fidelity.

    Of course we all know that movies looked better on vinyl anyway.

    1. Re:Ohhhh the audiophile victims.... by Formica · · Score: 3, Funny

      Maybe this would work: WiFi Speed Spray(TM)
      Wrong frequency band, though, ....

  12. 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
  13. $100??? WTF??? by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    You can get hihg quality HDMI cables from monoprice.com for $12 or less.

    Only a complete retard would pay $100 for a cable meant to deliver a purely digital signal. Then again these are the same people Monster-brand products are amrketed to, so nothing surprises me.

    1. Re:$100??? WTF??? by charstar · · Score: 2, Funny

      My problem usually goes like this:

      1) need cable for whatever reason
      2) where can i get one around here? best buy? circuit city? compusa?
      3) drive to one of the above
      4) "where are the cables?"
      5) get pointed to a wall of Monster stuff
      6) "do you carry any thing else?"
      7) sigh
      8) GOTO 3
      9) hurt myself trying to open the packaging

  14. TZero is using lossless JPEG2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    So sayeth their presentation anyhow.

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

  15. Alternate joke by British · · Score: 4, Funny

    Future news: Sony announces that the new Wireless HDMI will not be shipped with the PS3.

  16. Re:What is the point? by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 2, Interesting
    you are more likely to start seeing a degraded signal
    True, but only at the RF level. Since it's a digital signal (presumably with ECC, I haven't taken a look at the HDMI spec), you'll easily be able to either reconstruct the stream (using ECC) or ask that it be re-sent. And probably, if you're getting less than some threshold of signal strength, the devices probably won't sync up, so you'll look at the little blinking "SYNC" light and the manual will tell you to move the transmitter closer to the TV. Either way, the actual data will retain its integrity. I wouldn't be surprised if you occasionally get artifacts like satellite receivers do, though.
    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  17. I'll tell you what... by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about we concentrate on getting systems which will modulate the original, compressed HD over coax so that 99% of the population who owns a house that is already built around the old way of doing things can still watch TV without fishing cable around?

    C'mon folks, there's a hundred usable channels with 19.x Mb/s effective bandwidth so we could *in theory* just pipe that HD signal from a remote box to the tv with the existing wires, let the ATSC STB (or internal tuner) demodulate and decode the content and display it. Hell, we could all have everything-everywhere in our houses with all the ugly gear stashed in the basement with this standard. *Analog is not the enemy* OTA HD works damned fine. Why fuck it up with expensive, unnecessary cabling?

    Disclaimer - yes I have an older home. I also have the DVD jukebox on channel 40, my Tivo on 45, my wife's tivo on 50, and a media server on 55. They get combined with the off air antenna and piped through an RG-59 coax to every TV in the house, with a Xantech IR sensor (DC coax return) at each TV. It works great, except that there's no HD. My parents just bought a new house, but can't put HD in the rooms because the builder ran (the standard) one coax to each TV location. Suprise...DTV requires 2 to get HD (I haven't verified this, mine are old TiVo units with two tuners, and need two cables).

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  18. It's not how often it fails, it's *when* by Ruprecht+the+Monkeyb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FTA: "The standard calls for link reliability of at least 95 percent...." I think that's shooting kinda low, guys. My current setup has a link reliability of 99.99%. The only time it fails is when I go running across the room to eject the p0rn from the DVD player and trip over a cable. OTOH, if they can guarantee it will always fail during commercials, maybe they're on to something.

  19. If only they just used 100baseT. by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative

    If the consumer-electronics people weren't so hung up on proprietary interfaces, consumer electronics could just use 100baseT for everything. More bandwidth than some UWB thing, can be extended to cover just about any house, cables are cheap, and interference isn't a problem. You can get a whole 100baseT/TCP/IP node in the RJ45 connector now, so low data rate sources like audio devices could play cheaply. Power over Ethernet could power some of the lesser boxes, like cable modems.

    That "30 meter UWB" link will turn out to be a huge pain. It probably won't work through walls especially ones with metal studs, so inter-room links in houses will fail. Even across a large classroom (an obvious application), there might be problems. The DRM probably won't allow multipoint distribution, so you can only have one monitor per Blu-Ray player, but that's another issue.

  20. Power Wires? by popeye44 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While I understand their desire to have a wireless standard, Are we not forgetting there is a whole home standard being devised around broadband over power lines? Could they not instead use something that would travel the power line digitally and make the connection? Perhaps BPL is a dead horse but I had not heard that it was so. The home standard was to allow devices to travel the wire path to make all sorts of connections. This would be a much better design IMHO.

    --
    Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
  21. who cares? by shummer_mc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think the model is to transmit video data to the monitor. I think the idea is to include the groovy computer that wirelessly downloads HD TV content onto a hard drive that's IN the monitor. The DVD drive, as long as the format survives, will also be included in the 'console' which we call the TV. No video needs to be transmitted. Am I missing something?

    Think of it as a giant laptop on the wall (hopefully the non-TV components will be interchangeable). IO should be the only thing that needs to be wireless... Now, if someone said that they could transmit power wirelessly (so I wouldn't need batteries), then I'd be excited-- as long as it didn't bake my reproductive organs.

  22. "Lossy" - if you are watching at home, it is lossy by GVengineer · · Score: 2, Informative

    I would not consider myself an expert, but this is my field, so let me give everyone a REALLY quick lesson in 1) JPEG2000 and 2) "lossy" video compression.

    JPEG2000 is an advanced set of tools for video compression. It is used at the highest levels of distribution, and has been proposed for consumer use as is the case here. For more on JPEG2000 a decent primer is here.

    If you are watching content at home, it already has gone through a "lossy" compression scheme. Whether it is DTH satellite MPEG2 or MPEG4), cable (MPEG2/NTSC - yes NTSC is a lossy compression scheme), or terrestrial (MPEG2 ATSC or NTSC), DVD (MPEG2), or even LaserDisc (NTSC), your content has gone through a lossy scheme.

    Remember, Google is your friend, and although not perfect, wikipedia can answer many questions. For more on video compression here is a nice little presentation.

    The short story is everyone shouldn't get real upset about JPEG2000 and it being lossy. Cheers.

  23. MOD PARENT UP by Lothsahn · · Score: 2, Informative

    It does claim lossless JPEG2000. The slashdot post is incorrect.

    --
    -=Lothsahn=-
  24. Jpeg isn't bad by luketheduke · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hey guys don't you know that every "HD" signal you currently see is compressed? Infact it's even compressed with a lossy compression when its recorded to tape from the HD camera. Unless you're taking an SDI out cable directly into a Hard Disk Recording system and hardly anyone does that. Why is all HD compressed? 1 1080i uncompressed stream runs 165MB/sec ....do the math ;) and even though its compressed it looks pletty good. One of the widest formats used with cameras and editing/storing is the DVCPRO HD Codec, Panasonic who is the current leader in HD cameras uses it with their VariCam setups. Sony uses a mixture of formats which in my opinion has hurt their market share...what else is new. At anyrate everything is captured edited and outputted using compressed HD. Then its recompressed to be broadcasted either using MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or .H264, most people suffer quality loss from dropped packets durring transmission rather than compression artifacts. JPEG2000 has a less noticable compression than the other formats it actually uses a higher data rate than the other formats (which is good) however I'm surprised they didn't go with a .H264 standard which may be better because you can get similar quality with a smaller data rate. This may confirm apple rumors about a "wireless video Jobby" similar to what Aiport Express is for audio. Since they're already pushing tv shows and it's known they are wanting to start pushing movies. Granted 2 generations of compression/decompression isn't great but you're really not going to notice it especially at 1080i. and remember HD-DVD and Blue-Ray are also using compressed HD video formats wether it be WindowsMedia, .H264 or MPEG2 so stop all your Compression whining very few people have seen pure uncompressed HD....well except maybe at the movie theater...but thats film and it looses a generation going to analog....you still have film grain, dust and scratches. :) looking forward to what apple is going to do with it all.