networking

Asus is to launch a new HD wireless connector called the WiCast EW2000- WiCast for short.  The device is based on WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) technology developed by Amimon, a developer of wireless HDTV semiconductor solutions.  The WiCast is design to enable households and business to project whatever is on a PC (desktop, Laptop or Notebook) screen onto a television or LCD Monitor screen wirelessly. Read more »

WD the developers of countless storage devices as join the likes of D-link, Netgear and others in launching a new powerline Ethernet AV kit called WD Livewire.  The new WD Livewire will act as a complement to Western Digital existing connected home devices, like the My Book World Edition and WDTV Media Player.  At data rate of up to 200Mbps the WD Livewire will have no problem streaming HD video into your home theatre transferring large files between devices or playing multi-player online games – all done without the need of running cables throughout your home. Read more »

Vodafone has announced that they are releasing a new DLNA compatible Wi-Fi device called the R201 – the first DLNA certified mobile Wi-Fi device. It will allow you to share your mobile broadband connection with up to five devices, along with the sharing of documents and other digital media between other certified devices.  The R201 is available on an 18 contract with 5GB data for £25 per month. Read more »

The transition from analogue to digital television brought many benefits except it is slow when browsing between channels.  Though the slow channel change isn’t enough to make us want to go back it can be frustrating at times.  Broadcom is promising to change this with its recently released FastRTV SoC solution, a channel change acceleration technology for suppliers of STB (set-top box).  Broadcom said FastRTV is will also allow you to change your channels up to 5 times faster. Read more »

Airties a supplier of digital home wireless devices has release it latest wireless solution called Air4420.  According to Airties the Air4420 works with network-enabled TVs, media players as well as IPTV or hybrid SAT/Cable/DTT set-top boxes to connect to other home devices and the internet. It is UPnP compatible and with the addition of an external drive the Air4420 can act as an UPnP media server, enabling you to play music, show videos and photos on UPnP AV compatible TVs and Media Players. Read more »

The TWG (Technical Working Group) of the Powerline Alliance has announced that they are making steady progress in the development of Homeplug AV2 specification. The group said they hope to finish the specification in the first quarter of 2011 and that they expect Homeplug AV2 specification to deliver a 5x increase in performance over existing Homeplug AV solutions. The AV2 specification will be fully interoperable with current Homeplug AV and future Homeplug Green PHY and IEEE 1901 products. Read more »

STMicroelectronics as announced that Dish TV, India's largest Direct-To-Home (DTH) company, with 7.5 Million subscribers, latest set-top boxes are powered by STMicroelectronics’ STi5189 and STi7111 System-on-Chip (SoC) solution. The STB (set-top box) decoder ICs embedded in Dish TV set-top boxes are capable of delivering Standard-Definition (SD) and High-Definition (HD) television viewing. The new set-top boxes are currently being rolled out to Dish TV customers throughout India. Read more »

The HDBaseT Alliance has formally announced its incorporation and has released the HDBaseT 1.0 specification six months after annoucing the formation of the HDBaseT Alliance.  The technology is set to revolutionise the transmission of HD video throughout the home and within the digital media ecosystem.  According to the Alliance products with embedded HDBaseT technology should be available for us to buy this year. Read more »

The days of copying your favourite songs and movies to take with us on the road will soon be a thin of the past. That is because PacketVideo has joined up with JDM Sytems Consultant to extent its popular Twonky digital media connectivity solution to the Car. PacketVideo announced that they are working with JDM on a voice activated system to access digital content at home. Read more »

Cisco thinks that Global IP Traffic will increase more than fourfold by 2014, and that the growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. Improvements in network bandwidth capacity and Internet speeds, along with the increasing popularity of HDTV, 3DTV and video streaming websites are key factors expecting to quadruple IP traffic from 2009 to 2014. They have also made their prediction tool available for us to make our own predictions. Read more »