Scott Wilkinson

Unlike WirelessHD, which I wrote about yesterday, Amimon's WHDI (Wireless HD Interface) is now included in several TVs, but they are only available in Japan. Sony's Bravia Wireless Link module and Belkin's FlyWire also use WHDI and are available in the US. WHDI uses the 5GHz band to transmit up to 1080p/60 with second-generation chips over a distance of up to 30 meters through walls with a latency of less than 1ms. Amimon's hotel suite has 10 streams going at once across three rooms in addition to WiFi in the same 5GHz band with impressive results. Pictured are two WHDI receiver modules—a major reduction is size from the suitcase-sized box I saw a couple of years ago. Members of the WHDI Consortium include LG, Sharp, Sony, Hitachi, and Samsung.

You may not have heard of Analog Devices, Inc. because the company makes integrated circuits and other components, not consumer products. But ADI is big into video. I saw a demo of a video-transmission system based on JPEG2000, the same compression technology used in digital cinema. Dubbed HDAnywhere, the system can be used to send video over any wired or wireless medium very efficiently. The demo included two TVs displaying the same content—one was receiving conventional HDMI over fiber-optic cable while the other got its signal wirelessly using UWB (ultra wideband) over a distance of 50 feet. There was a slight delay in the wireless image, but they were nearly identical otherwise. Hitachi is shipping a TV with an outboard input/processor box that uses HDAnywhere via UWB, which I'll take a close look at when I get over the Hitachi booth.

The big message at Panasonic's press conference was 3D with "full HD" resolution (i.e., 1080p)—many current 3D systems cut the effective resolution in half to accommodate two eyes separately. The company is spearheading a drive to develop a standard for 3D HD content production, mastering, and display this year, with products appearing in 2010. Director James Cameron is on board, and Panasonic Hollywood Labs, Panasonic's R&D arm, is working with studios and manufacturers to achieve these goals. I've never found 3D all that compelling, and it sometimes gives me a slight headache after a while, so I welcome any substantive progress toward a standardized improvement.

In addition to many TVs, LG also introduced two new Blu-ray players, the BD370 and BD390 (pictured here). Both are BD-Live ready (the BD390 has 1GB of internal memory), and both can stream content from Netflix, CinemaNow, and YouTube via Ethernet as well as access content on networked DLNA servers. The BD390 can also stream via WiFi, and it has 7.1 analog outputs.