Wireless HD standard under development

With the uprise of HD video, a market has risen for transferring the content wirelessly. Two weeks ago, we reported about Belkin's FlyWire. This set of transmitters and receivers makes it possible to transmit HDMI-signals 'through the air'.

The Belkin product works with its own propriertary signal, since there is no known standard for wireless HD yet. This means that the transmitters and receivers aren't compatible with other brands and have to be connected to the devices with small HDMI-cables.

To solve this problem Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung, Sony, Sharp and Amimon have joined forces. The last company features a working technology called WHDI (Wireless High-Definition Interface) which the group wants to develop further to create the standard for wireless HD video and audio.

WHDI is HDCP-certified and currently uses the 5 GHz frequency. The end goal is to stream uncompressed 1080p HD audio+video between difference devices such as tv's, projectors, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and gaming consoles. While the Belkin set only replaces HDMI cables without approaching the devices, WHDI will be directly integrated into the hard- and software with a special chipset.

The group wishes to have a first standard finished by the end of this year. Several products with Amimons current WHDI implementation are already available.