Seoul South Korea - LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Valens Semiconductor said today they intend to launch a cross-industry alliance to promote and standardize the HDBaseT technology for whole-home distribution of uncompressed HD multimedia content.

Engaging key players across the consumer electronics and content industries, they will unite to create a global standard for advanced digital media distribution, alliance members said.

The system is designed to send and receive uncompressed HD video, audio and Internet signals simultaneously over a single Ethernet cable, enabling whole-home distribution of content. Optimized for video applications, HDBaseT can connect all the entertainment devices in a home by providing the "5Play" convergence of uncompressed full HD digital video, audio, 100BaseT Ethernet, power over cable and various control signals.

The HDBaseT Alliance intends to create "a global standard for advanced digital media distribution," with standardization activities planned to cover "the entire value chain of the digital media ecosystem and the various market segments: TV sets, projectors, professional A/V equipment, home theater, content providers, IT companies and more."

The alliance members said that some of the existing technologies in the market for in-home content distribution are limited by bandwidth and cannot support uncompressed video.

"The demand for in-home converged distribution of HD multimedia content and the lack of adequate existing technologies are driving the industry toward an HD digital connectivity standard such as HDBaseT, which increases distance of uncompressed HD multimedia content transfer, expands distribution, simplifies installations and lowers overall system cost," a statement from the alliance said.

"As the demand for high-quality HD content distribution in the entire home is already huge, we are hoping that HDBaseT will play the trigger role in advancing this market, since HDBaseT enables simultaneous multi-room distribution of uncompressed HD multimedia as well as data, control and power over a single CAT-5e cable," said ByungJin Kim, research fellow, LG Electronics.

"HDBaseT is an advanced solution for securely delivering high-definition video content within the home network," said Mitch Singer, chief technology officer, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

"We firmly believe that in today's industry a standard must have broad consensus and support from the major players in the industry.  For this purpose, we are actively working with such leading companies across the value chain to assure broad support and active participation in the newly formed HDBaseT Alliance," said Dror Jerushalmi, CEO, Valens Semiconductor.

The four founding companies said that the alliance is expected to release new details about more global leaders joining the alliance in the upcoming weeks.

Founding member representatives will be at this year's International CES on Jan. 7-10, 2010.