Couldn't be much more timely than this. This article talks about maturity of 60 GHz, but to me the most important aspect of this is simply that a 60 GHz in-room link's advantage over the existing (and still brand new) UWB options is bit rate. The fact that UWB includes lower frequencies is what limits its bandwidth, compared with a technique that can count on a 60 GHz carrier. I still fail to see anything approaching "disruptive" in any of this. To me, this is a slight tweak on wireless PANs. After this 60 GHz technique has lived out its very short lifespan of usefulness for the trade press, the next hype will be a UWB version of this, where the frequencies spanned will begin at around 60 GHz and go up from there. And so on. Bert -------------------------------------- 60-GHz radio not ready, says WiMedia chief Rick Merritt (11/01/2006 12:58 AM EST) URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193500877 SAN JOSE -- Consumer electronics giants who announced Tuesday (Oct. 31) plans to roll out a specification for 60 GHz wireless links for high definition video in the home are getting ahead of themselves, said the president of the WiMedia Alliance. "The regulations for 60 GHz radios are not all in place, and the standards aren't ready yet," said Stephen Wood who heads the group that primarily promotes ultrawideband technologies such as wireless USB. Yesterday, LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., NEC Corp., Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd, Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. along with wireless startup SiBeam, Inc. announced they have formed WirelessHD. The group aims deliver early next year a specification for 4-5 Gbit/second home networking. Chips could sample as soon as late 2007, the group said. Wood said the WiMedia Alliance is studying 60 GHz technology and concluded it could take another two years to be ready for the market. The need for multiple sources of chips and interoperability testing will stretch out the technology's time-to-market, he said. "UWB is the technology for today," Wood said. "We haven't talked about 60 GHz radios because they are not mature. We could get consumers all revved up about 60GHz, but we would be doing them a disservice," he added. The IEEE 802.15.3c task force is expected to accept proposals for a non line-of-sight version of the technology early next year. "At this point no one has had a chance to vet all the proposals," said Wood. He said some of the big consumer companies in the WirelessHD group will roll out camcorders and MP3 players using wireless USB, but they are not necessarily committed to the 60 GHz products. "Most big multinationals place a host of bets and use the resulting technologies that best fit," Wood said. John Marshall, chairman of WirelessHD said 60 GHz radios will open the door to lower cost and higher quality high-definition video products. That's because the 4-5 Gbit/second radios will let OEMs send uncompressed video between systems, letting them skip extra compression and decompression steps that require costly chips, degrade video quality and increase latency. The WirelessHD group is developing a complete spec for 60 GHz products that spans physical to application layer details. Initial products based on the spec could draw roughly 5W and cost a slight premium over today's wired HDMI links. They are expected to come in a one-inch-square module that is sized to accommodate a directional antenna array. "From a technical and regulatory point of view, it will be difficult for UWB to get to 4-5 Gbits/s, so I don't see that technology as directly competitive," said Mitchell. The WirelessHD group is still debating whether or not it will charge royalties for its technology. "It's such a big issue it requires significant discussion and consideration. There are reasons for both models," he said. All material on this site Copyright 2006 CMP Media LLC. All rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.