Homes still search for HD-capable video network

I have obsessed over the need for a relatively low-cost-networking technology that can carry HDTV streams around a home. I continue to believe that the video-networking application will drive big dollars for everyone from IC vendors to service providers and content owners. I’ve alternately been optimistic and skeptical over the prospects that IEEE 802.11 wireless technology could serve up whole-home video. More likely, most homes may have some wired backbones that connect wireless islands. I’ve also been optimistic and skeptical over how UWB (ultrawideband) might play in the video equation. Now, UWB proponents are getting serious about running their protocol over wire as well as the air.
In all fairness, a UWB over wires of various types isn’t a new concept. Pulse-Link (www.pulselink.net) several years ago first pitched its CWave technology’s ability to run over wires. The company then claimed that the same chip set could drive links over the air, power lines, phone lines, or coaxial cable.

Lately, some of the more mainstream WiMedia (www.widemedia.com) UWB crowd is touting that technology as a candidate for distributing digital video over coax. At the National Association of Broadcasters (www.nabshow.com) show in Las Vegas in April, Sigma Designs (www.sigmadesigns.com) demonstrated video over a UWB link.

In June, Tzero (www.tzerotech.com) announced a WiMedia product that supposedly works over coax. Presumably, UWB technology would handle the backbone requirement over coax and distribution within a room over the air. Then again, Tzero has previously claimed that its UWB technology could wirelessly distribute video around a home. In fact, I wrote an article on that possibility, although the company seems to be backing off those claims (see “UWB may yet serve whole-house video,” www.edn.com/article/CA6345839).

I can’t help but wonder whether the latest UWB noise is just a last-ditch attempt to salvage a problematic technology. UWB has surely seemed promising to investors and entrepreneurs alike. The media have extensively covered it. But no one has tamed it and brought products to market. Almost everyone has overhyped UWB and UWB-based Wireless USB. Artimi (www.artimi.com) is the only exception. In its UWB briefings, the company admitted that UWB would start to ramp up late this year and reach volume quantities in subsequent years.

Of course, there is also an incumbent video-over-coax technology in place. Entropic Communications (www.entropic.com) has led the charge in the MOCA (Multimedia Over Cable Alliance) standard to distribute video and other digital communications over currently installed coax in the home. Major service providers are now shipping MOCA technology. Entropic has just announced an upgrade in link rates over coax—from 100 to 180 Mbps. The UWB folks are again touting 480-Mbps rates, although they have yet to deliver. In reality, a solid 100-Mbps technology is all that’s necessary to distribute multiple compressed HDTV streams, and 180-Mbps rates add more margin for error. Some UWB proponents tout specialty applications for handling uncompressed HDTV, but, if those applications exist, they are largely within a room and not across a home.

Meanwhile, EDN Senior Technical Editor Brian Dipert completed a new project comparing power-line, wireless, and other home-networking options (Home transportation: benchmarking power line, 802.11, and Ethernet, (http://www.edn.com/article/CA6462560.html). Power line appears to be overcoming its problematic past.

As a consumer, I’d run Category 5 wire in any home unless doing so was terribly inconvenient and expensive. Dipert recently found that a local fiber-to-the-home vendor in the Sacramento, CA, area had to install a new Cat 5 plant in his home to make IPTV work (see “SureWest: Initial Post-Install Fiber Details And Thoughts,” www.edn.com/070705ed1). Certainly, that service provider would have preferred a no-new-wires approach to simplify the installation. Still, I’m hoping one or more no-new-wires technologies can deliver video. I’m not sure, though, that UWB is the one.

* This Comment is an update of the Comment that appeared in the July 5, 2007 issue of EDN.

You can reach Maury Wright at mgwright@edn.com.