Consumers Want Multi-room Wireless
To date, wireless systems have played a small role in the distribution of HD video content within the home. This is in stark contrast to many other use cases, where wireless products have become strongly preferred over wired solutions, to the point where some wired solutions have nearly disappeared (e.g., telephones).Recently, a number of wireless solutions are promising to deliver compelling HD video in the home. How do we evaluate the potential of these technologies to enable wireless connectivity? How can we tell which solutions will deliver the most consumer value and thus achieve the greatest market success?
As a start, it is a bit obvious to state that consumers love wireless products. From “cordless” phones to the now ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks, consumers love the ease of use and flexibility of wireless. So what can these solutions tell us about consumer expectations for a wireless solution? The answers are clear: First, in the home, consumers expect the ability to use their wireless systems in more than one room - they expect to be able to connect any device, anywhere in the home. This is what consumers immediately think of when they hear about “wireless” in the consumer electronics world.
To emphasize this point, imagine if previous wireless products were limited to in-room uses. How fast would adoption be for a cordless phone that could only be used in one room - or for a wireless network that allowed you to connect your laptop to the Internet anywhere in a single room? Sure there is some value to the consumer, but it is obviously limited and not what consumers are expecting.
A second expectation that consumers increasingly have of wireless devices is the ability to connect to any source of HD content - whether a traditional CE source like a Blu-ray player, portable devices such as notebooks or camcorders, or even mobile phones. Consumers want access to their content without having to worry about whether their devices are wired together.
One of the reasons that some wireless HD systems have yet to achieve wide CE adoption (e.g. WirelessHD and UWB solutions) is that their underlying technology is limited to single room, single cable-replacement solutions. In most cases, this means the replacement of a single HDMI cable, from one source to one TV. A key limitation is that these solutions enable few or no new use cases for consumers. In fact, because some such solutions cannot pass through a solid surface (e.g., 60Ghz solutions such as Wireless HD), they arguably enable fewer use cases than cable. This is because such systems will not work in many common installations, such as an A/V cabinet or hutch with doors (as in my living room), or the increasingly common A/V closet. This issue has the potential to generate significant consumer confusion and frustration as well as increased support requests and product returns as customers attempt to match their expectations of wireless with the inherent limitations of this technology. As we saw with HDMI-related technology issues (remember HDMI versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 or CEC interoperability issues?), it is difficult for retailers to effectively explain such technology limitations to consumers on the show room floor.
Another limitation of today’s wireless systems is that most of these are “closed” solutions, where consumers cannot connect multiple wireless sources to one TV or multiple wireless TVs to one source. Moreover, with such systems, users cannot mix products from different manufacturers. Consumers are essentially buying a locked pair of devices. Such solutions are obviously not providing the full value of wireless to the consumer.
This is not to say that there is no value to in-room only and closed systems - certainly there is. However, it is multi-room solutions, such as those enabled by the Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) standard, that can also connect all CE, PC and mobile sources, which will provide the most value to consumers and generate the most excitement in the market. This is because solutions that deliver both in-room and multi-room connectivity, combined with the ability to connect mobile sources, will meet consumer expectations and enable consumers to take advantage of the latest use cases emerging in the market. It is only WHDI that combines the range, robustness, image quality and the scalability to ultra-low power which are required to meet these expectations.
With WHDI, customers can connect any HD source or TV to all of the other HD devices in the home. Consumers increasingly want to take advantage of the high-quality, inexpensive TVs on the market. Recent U.S. statistics from Nielsen show that the number of TVs per household is steadily increasing (now nearly three TVs per household), and surpasses the number of persons per household. With WHDI’s multi-room connectivity consumers can easily add a TV to the bedroom, exercise room, kitchen or patio - and immediately connect to the set top box or Blu-ray player in the entertainment room. Such multi-room implementations are the hardest cases for wired solutions to solve because they often require expensive custom installation involving cutting/drilling and equally expensive equipment or cabling to achieve the long-cable run. This makes multi-room wireless a compelling solution for such installations.
Moreover, with WHDI, consumers can also take advantage of the increasing number of HD sources and the increasing amount of content that they are delivering or generating. Whether a PC or laptop in the office, or your iPhone or camcorder charging in your kitchen - all of these devices are increasingly becoming sources of HD content, and WHDI enables consumers to bring them all together. What’s more, with WHDI, consumers are not giving up quality. WHDI has the advantage of delivering the highest quality (easily supporting uncompressed 1080p/60) for both in-room solutions and the whole home.
I was involved in creating and growing the HDMI standard, and from the beginning we were keenly aware that for a CE standard to be successful, it must enable an entire ecosystem. And it did: HDMI enabled new opportunities for consumers, CE makers and retailers, and even content producers. Multi-room/ multi-platform (CE, PC, mobile) wireless solutions, such as WHDI, are uniquely poised to enable the same ecosystem. WHDI benefits consumers by enabling them to consume content where and when they want. CE manufactures and retailers will benefit as consumers purchase more sources and displays to view this content. Content providers will benefit as consumers will increasingly consume more content. No in-room only wireless system (or closed system) provides such benefits to all players in the ecosystem.
A number of standards have been trying to enable wireless HD applications in the CE space for several years. While these closed, in-room only wireless solutions have generated some excitement and new products, I believe that it will be the robust, multi-room and multi-platform connectivity of WHDI that will truly drive consumer excitement and create this new wireless CE ecosystem.
William Ellis commented:
Can anyone tell me what technology did Sony go with, in the XBR 10 Tv.
Leslie Chard commented:
John, thanks again for the input, but let me set the record straight. WHDI technology has been chosen as a solution by more TV OEM’s than Wireless HD, and is in more products than Wireless HD. Your product rumors are not accurate.
In fact, just this week, at the TV 3.0 Summit, an IMS Conference event, in Los Angeles the WHDI technology won the TV Innovation Award for the Home Networking category (beating out Wireless HD technology).
To my knowledge, Wireless HD has only shipped in closed systems – with such products you cannot connect multiple wireless sources to one TV, or multiple wireless TV’s to one source. You also cannot connect products from different manufacturers.
Wireless HD can go around some objects, sure (often with a loss of data, and provided that the objects are not too close to the transmitter or receiver), but it cannot get through a closed cabinet or closet.
Have a good weekend.
John Marshall commented:
Interesting thoughts. Let me provide further clarification with some facts:
- WirelessHD is the only worldwide open standard with an available specification and over 40 Adopters since December 2007.
- WirelessHD CE products are available to consumers worldwide from Tier 1 CE manufacturers like Panasonic, LG, Gefen, Best Buy, Monster, to mention a few.
- WirelessHD has an active compliance test program and authorized test center to ensure specification and compliance from among the many products available worldwide from Tier 1 CE manufacturers. At this time, we have not heard of any specification or compliance program from WHDI.
- WirelessHD is a non-line-of-sight technology capable of achieving the 4Gpbs over the air data rates required for lossless Full 1080p HD. The fact is that 60GHz goes through both wood and glass. This is enabled by the beam steering technology inherent in WirelessHD to avoid obstructions (i.e. they can find an alternated path around chairs and such). As such, it has been prequalified by many retailers around the world, including Best Buy, who recently announced their own WirelessHD adapters.
Some questions for you:
- It is widely known that WHDI is lossy and compressed using JSSC (a publicly acknowledged technology by WHDI and Amimon) and multiple compression techniques as demonstrated by the many compression patents employed by WHDI companies and acknowledged by such WHDI member companies. This is written about by Amimon’s CTO in the company’s own white papers. Is this WHDI’s definition of uncompressed?
- Regarding WHDI being chosen by so many OEMs… I’m still wondering, like many others worldwide, why we don’t see WHDI products anywhere? There appears to be no WHDI specification published, no logo program and no interoperability commitment from any of the WHDI member companies. Most important, where can I buy a WHDI TV today?
- Can you tell us what happened to Belkin’s Flywire product being the most visible with a public announcement by Belkin? And what of the other discontinued programs from Sharp, Funai, and Sony?
Sharp wireless TVs are no longer available, Funai announced 60GHz solutions in lieu of 5GHz at IFA this year, and Sony announced its new XBR10 with 60GHz technology at CEDIA, a migration away from WHDI/Amimon’s 5GHz. The fact is that almost every single OEM that initially selected a WHDI solution has moved to a 60GHz solution. Clearly, the market is acknowledging that 60GHz is the preferable route.
Great discussion though, Les.
Leslie Chard commented:
Regarding the Performance of WHDI, let me add the following:
WHDI supports wireless delivery of uncompressed 1080p 60Hz including deep color modes, with a range of about 100 feet through multiple walls. Video quality is like HDMI and with practically no latency (less than one millisecond), so the wireless experience is the same as the wired one both in the room and throughout the home.
WHDI supports delivery of such high-rate video by using a unique video modem approach which provides more protection on the wireless channel to the more important video information.
WHDI operates in the 5GHz unlicensed band which indeed is also used by other applications such as 802.11n. WHDI avoids interferers by continuously monitoring the channel and switching to a vacant channel when an interferer appears on the WHDI channel. This is done seamlessly without the user noticing.
There are approximately 600MHz of spectrum in the US in this unlicensed band, which is plenty for multiple WHDI and Wi-Fi transmitters (each occupying between 20MHz to 40MHz). WHDI also has multicasting capabilities which enables multiple displays to tune into the same WHDI transmission occupying a single channel.
Leslie Chard commented:
Hi John,
Thanks for participating. Sorry, I still believe that WHDI beats WirelessHD in in-room solutions. First, let me correct you: WHDI is uncompressed and not lossy. In fact, in the room WHDI is more stable than WirelessHD, as it is not subject to physical blockages, such as people or furniture. People walking about the room have no effect on WHDI systems, while they cause noticeable artifacts to a WirelessHD (how can you have artifacts and still claim you are lossless?). Also, WirelessHD still has no solution for all of those people who prefer to store their A/V systems behind a glass or wood door in an A/V cabinet or closet. How are retailers supposed to pre-qualify these sales to prevent product returns?
But don’t take my word for it, WHDI technology has been chosen as a wireless TV solution by more TV OEM’s than any other technology. WHDI is also included in award-winning professional video cameras and in the only FDA-approved wireless surgical camera.
I think that you miss the point of whole-home connectivity. It is not to enable central servers, but to allow simple connectivity for the devices that people want today. If I want to add an additional TV to my house, I don’t want to just want to watch BluRay movies, I want access to all of my content. The easiest way to do this is wirelessly. That way, I can easily connect to my Set Top Box, BluRay player, PC, mobile phone, or whatever source, without having to re-wire my whole house. With WHDI, this connectivity can happen automatically (and the devices can be managed from the comfort of my bed). Yes John you will need to put the movie disc that you want to watch in the player before you go to bed (unless it is stored on a media player). Note also that WHDI advantage is that it can easily scale down in power and cost for mobile and portable devices, which makes it not only whole-home but also cross-platform. Even better: WHDI can share the 5GHz radio already existing in these platforms, making the added cost only marginal.
John Marshall commented:
Les, thanks for your comment. Let me start by initially thanking you for your acknowledgments that WirelessHD is the best solution in the market for wireless HD connectivity in room. As the only uncompressed and lossless 1080p/60 wireless solution, it solves a consumer need for HD A/V connectivity that is second only to wired HDMI. Currently both 2.4GHz and 5GHz solutions are unfortunately challenged by interference problems for high quality A/V that completely degrade the HD quality, even in room, which the consumer finds distasteful. Even the best 5GHz technology available for HD video, namely WHDI, completely degrades the video quality using a range of lossy techniques and compression techniques for dropping important video and audio. For in-room, WirelessHD is the right solution.
I think your comments focus on a different question… is the market ready for whole home streaming? In short, it is a popular misconception that consumers want their media “streamed” everywhere from everything. In reality, a study commissioned by WirelessHD found that 75% of 2000 respondents around the world prefer to have a wireless connection for highest-quality A/V connectivity in one room from a range of source devices, rather than lossy, compressed video like WHDI solutions delivered throughout the entire home. This need is tied to the fact that consumers have more A/V devices in a single room that they wish to connect rather than a centralized media server from which to stream common content to each room.
If we actually think about media today, it is delievered to the home on a range of media for a range of unique source devices designed to optimally decode such content for the specific experience desired by the consumer (sterero vs. surround sound, SD display vs. HD displays vs. multiple displays, stationary vs. mobile, etc). Given that media is not yet stored centrally on a server, the ONLY application that really makes sense for whole home video streaming is one wherein the consumer has somehow merged ALL of their media onto a single media server in the home so that it is commonly accessible in an organized and intuitive way, perhaps the set-top box of the future. I know the temptation is to argue this conceptually, however let’s instead focus on today’s real world use cases… As an example, the only “mass market” mechanism available for watching a movie in one’s bedroom when the BD player is in the living room is to get out of bed, walk downstairs, load the right movie in the BD player, press play and go back upstairs. Who wants to do all that walking? Nobody. Most would rather just buy an additional BD player for the bedroom, especially at sub-$200 pricing! This creates an in-room experience, not a whole home streaming experience. And there’s no wireless technology yet developed that can wirelessly move the BD disc from its case into the BD player. (Note that there are all kinds of edge cases to be cited, such as BD jukeboxes, but we’re really talking about mass market, aren’t we?) Until consumers have migrated to a model of centralized storage of their media content, either in the home or through a service provider, whole home streaming of content just doesn’t make sense. The in-room experience is what is dominant and critical today.
And even if such a usage model were to emerge today… Neither 2.4GHz nor 5GHz can cover the requirements sufficiently at this time. Specifically, the requirements outlined by multiple service providers in North America are for 150 feet of wireless coverage through 3 walls of mixed material supporting 5 unique HD streams in parallel with multiple clients in the home surfing the Internet in parallel. And that’s not even mentioning Europe or Asia where the walls are made of clay or concrete, where 2.4GHz and 5GHz signals are exceptionally challenged! We’re at least 7-10 years away from such wireless capability for any geography, let alone the most challenging ones.
For now, the answer is to focus on the in-room experience over a clean channel in the unused 60GHz band for high-definition audio and video.
Jian Huang commented:
This article will be more convincing if it show the current performance of WHDI, such as max distance, interference resistance in home environment, number of simultaneous full HD connections; and how this technology can fit into existing and/or upcoming standardized home networking frameworks.
