Two recent trends that I believe will continue through 2007 are the increase in wireless technologies and HD-technologies. It’s that time of year again where gadget geeks get to see a glimpse of soon to hit the shelves and future technologies.
This coming Monday (Sunday for press) is the launch of CES 2007 in Las Vegas. Last year’s big item was 1080P HD Televisions. And if holiday sales of HD televisions are any type of indicator, it was a very good year for HD Televisions. I believe you will continue to see an abundance of High Definition electronics at CES this year, with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray continuing to try to make an impact, and HD-Audio trying to find thier place in consumers’ eyes.
Another recent trend has been the disappearance of wires. At CES, for the last couple years wireless trinkets have continued to surface and some rumored wireless technologies have been missing. One such technology, Wireless HD or WHDI, is finally making its CES debut.
Amimon has recently raised a large sum of money to have WHDI available in 2007. They have made some lofty statements including, “WHDI™ technology enables wireless delivery of uncompressed HDTV throughout the home with video rates of up to 3Gbps (uncompressed 1080p!) in the 5Ghz unlicensed band, with the same quality as a wired connection and no latency.”
In theory, this is great. But there will still be two big road blocks for the technology.
1) Pricing. With the abundance of HD televisions available, consumers have see prices drop dramatically. Will WHDI be available on affordable HD-TVs?
2) Rock solid connectivity. The wireless technology will require flawless transfer and protection against interference on the unlicensed 5GHz bandwidth. You are selling to consumers that want quality. Pixelated and lost images won’t be acceptable.
All that being said, they will still need to offer something to differentiate WHDI from standard HDMI. This may prove to be difficult with addition of features in HDMI 1.3 and the fact that most HD televisions (that are not mounted on walls) are normally relatively close to the HD source and only require short cord. I think that WHDI has some great potential, but it’s going to take some time and money to get there. Hopefully, Amimon and other companies realize the potential and run with it.
Personally, I am a huge proponent of both wireless and HD trends and hope the technologies continue to evolve and become more feature rich and useful. Here are some items I would love to see at CES, and more so on the selves of my favorite tech store:
- Wireless Lossless Headphones and Speakers
- Wireless Computer Monitors
- A Microsoft OS running fully on flash memory
- Bluetooth Friendly Home Accessories (i.e. wireless door lock, light switches, etc…)
Discussion
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