Quest for power, speed drive the latest technologies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Quest for power, speed drive the latest technologies

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Columnist, 4/14/2003 [ an old Iper]

          

Despite all the wonderful things copper wires have done for humankind over
the past century, we seem remarkably eager to be rid of them. About half of
all Americans now have cellphones. People marveled when Starbucks coffee
shops began offering customers WiFi wireless Internet access; now McDonald's
is doing it. 

Wires are fetters, chaining us to wall jacks and data ports. We can't be rid
of them fast enough. Yet we're not entirely free, because our wireless data
systems still aren't fast enough. Yet.

For instance, lots of us now store our recorded music on computer hard
drives as MP3 digital audio files. But few of us have decent speakers
attached to our PCs. It'd be nice to blast our Metallica collection from the
computer straight to the living room speakers, yes?

And now you can, wirelessly. Hewlett-Packard Co. makes a digital media
receiver that connects home computers to home entertainment devices like
stereos and TV sets. There's a $199 version that relies on old-fashioned
ethernet cables, but for $100 more you can get a wireless media receiver
that uses WiFi to broadcast music files to your audio system or still
digital photos to the TV.

Note that last bit. You can use the device to send still photos to the TV.
Why not live video images? Newer computers like Hewlett-Packard's Digital
Media Center PCs have built-in digital video recording capability. Plug a TV
cable into the box, and its video card will compress and record standard TV
signals onto the computer's hard drive, for later viewing. It works
beautifully, if you don't mind watching "Iron Chef" on your PC monitor.

Far better if you could beam the signal to your home TV. The trouble is that
today's WiFi standard can only transmit data at 11 megabits per second.
That's quite enough for most applications, but for high-quality video it's
not fast enough. To beam videos from PC to TV will take a good deal more
bandwidth.

A big improvement arrives this year, in the form of 802.11g, the advanced
form of WiFi. It'll transmit and receive at up to 54 megabits per second,
fast enough for decent quality video. Texas-based Snapstream Media Inc. is
working with two other firms, Prismiq Inc. and Broadq LLC to make it happen.
Prismiq makes a WiFi-enabled set-top box that works with Snapstream's video
recording software, while the Broadq system converts an existing Sony
Playstation 2 game machine into a wireless video receiver.

And there's more to come. Even 54 megabits per second isn't enough to
deliver high-definition video and surround sound from the PC to the home
theater. We'll need more bandwidth than even advanced WiFi can offer --
ultrawideband, in fact.

You probably know wireless networks and other devices that pump out radio
signals must use specific frequencies assigned by domestic and international
regulatory bodies. Ultrawideband devices mock the regulators by using huge
swaths of the radio spectrum assigned to others, but at such low power
levels that an ultrawideband device won't interfere with the other equipment
using those frequencies.

"This is a fundamental change to the way communication has been done," says
Chris Fisher, vice president of marketing at the ultrawideband company
Xtreme Spectrum Inc. Outside the United States, ultrawideband is still
viewed with skepticism by the broadcasting bureaucrats. But last year, the
Federal Communications Commission authorized the use of ultrawideband
systems.

Because they use so little power, ultrawideband radios have a range of only
about 30 feet. But because they use all of the available frequency spectrum,
they can pump out vast quantities of data. Fisher says his firm's
first-generation chipsets will handle 100 megabits of data per second and
will hit speeds of half a gigabit per second by 2005.

Fisher said Xtreme Spectrum is already selling ultrawideband chipsets to
Japanese and Korean consumer electronic companies, which plan to introduce
the first ultrawideband consumer products by Christmas. First up: adapters
that will plug into TV sets, DVD players, and stereo speakers. Instead of
running wires from the DVD to the TV and stereo, the movie will be broadcast
to them over an ultrawideband connection.

Ultrawideband holds out the promise of wireless bandwidth so plentiful that
the only wires connected to a home's digital devices would be the ones
supplying electricity. For most people, that day can't come fast enough.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray () globe com.

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