Tzero responds to Wireless Networking panel follow up

Thank you Dave Borison with Tzero Technologies for participating on the Wireless Networking panel at the CONNECTIONS Summit at CES.

For purposes of our blog, can you please reiterate the range at which your solution is most likely going to be used?

Typical usage is about 10 meters (within a room or two) although we show product demonstrations in our office of (a) 20 feet through two walls, and (b) line of sight to 40 meters

Can you explain “lossless compression”? How would you answer the criticism that you’re compromising the quality of the video with expensive and proprietary solutions?

Unlike the proprietary 60 GHz and 5GHz solutions, TZero’s solution is 100% standards compliant: It uses a WiMedia Alliance certified Ultra Wideband radio -- over 300 member WiMedia Alliance member companies, based on Ecma368 standard -- and an ITU compliant H.264 codec. In terms of video quality, we regularly demonstrate a side-by-side comparison of streaming 1080p60 video using a wired HDMI connection and TZero’s wireless video solution. Customers/press/analysts/consumers can not tell the difference between the wired and wireless link, proving beyond a doubt that TZero’s commercially available solution does not degrade video quality.

As a follow-up, is “wireless HDMI” really a term that can and should be used to describe these solutions?

“Wireless HDMI” is a term used fairly widely in the industry by press/analysts/consumers, and it describes these products well (just as “Wireless Ethernet” describes the 802.11 products well). That said, the HDMI Licensing LLC has a trademark on the word HDMI, and prefers that alternate terms such as “Wireless for HDMI” or “HDMI Wireless Extender” are used instead

What are we realistically looking at for BoM costs to implement your solutions? What is your expectation going forward for where we’ll see the BoM costs?

TZero’s BOM cost is ~$100/set in volume, and we expect it to reach sub-$50/set within the next 12-18 months

How does your solution play internationally in light of regulatory or other restrictions?

TZero’s solution has passed regulatory certification and can be shipped in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Additional regulatory agencies around the world (e.g., China, Korea, etc.) are also drafting regulations that will permit the use of our products in their regions as well

For more information about TZero Technologies, visit http://tzerotech.com

Wireless Networking Follow Up Interview with Celeno's Lior Weiss

Thank you Lior Weiss, VP of Marketing of Celeno for your responses!

For purposes of our blog, can you please reiterate the range at which your solution is most likely going to be used?

Celeno targets multi-room or whole-home applications. We quote 40m (120ft), 4 brick walls, 3+ floors, but granted this is a statistical factor depending on the actual home where the set up is. These particular numbers have been tested multiple times in European-style built homes which are even “harder” then north American home, as they are built with thicker interior walls from tougher materials such as bricks, ceramics, etc.

Can you explain “lossless compression”? How would you answer the criticism that you’re compromising the quality of the video with expensive and proprietary solutions?

Well, for one our solution is not proprietary and this is important. We believe we have the only solution which is fully standards based: WiFi radio technology and H.264 compression technology. Expensive is also a relative term, but suffice to say that as a standards based solution it has the ability to enjoy the aggressive price curve of the 802.11n mass market for example. As far as “lossless compression”: First, I would say that other than 60GHz technology all other technologies use some kind of lossy compression. And even 60GHz technology will need to use compression in the future as video quality scales up and adds higher resolutions, deeper color depths and higher frame rates. All digital media is lossy compressed, otherwise it would have been impossible to get HD video to the consumer. In fact even IPTV and Blu-Ray normally use H.264 lossy compression. Now, when combining radio technologies to send the video over the air, compression becomes even more important. Lossy compression is the only efficient-enough technique to send over the air video over distances while mitigating the fluctuations of the radio channel capacity. The trick is to build a solution that will work this out with “Perceived lossless” quality to the human eye and even more so – doing it in a standard way. It is a fact that WiFi+H.264 built correctly (with high enough throughputs and zero packet error rate) achieves “Perceived lossless” video quality over distances and robustly enough while being standards-based and achieving the right price points. The importance of standards-based is clear when one watches WiFi technology embedded into TV’s anyway for Widgets and over the top video delivery.

As a follow-up, is “wireless HDMI” really a term that can and should be used to describe these solutions?

We sometime use also Wireless HD. But typically we use Wireless HDMI to differentiate and stress that real-time compression is required vs. Wireless HD where video comes in already compressed in the home network (for example in an IPTV deployment)

What are we realistically looking at for BoM costs to implement your solutions? What is your expectation going forward for where we’ll see the BoM costs?

BoM is really a question of volume and timing. But with 802.11n chipsets solutions hitting already the sub-$10 mark, suffice to say we believe the combination of WiFi and H.264 is a winner in the long run. Also, when one considers BoM , one needs to take into calculation the bigger picture. With WiFi radio technology there are greater efficiencies as on the TV receiving side – WiFi is already mandatory as well as H.264 decoders for over-the-top services as well as widgets. So BoM is shared over applications !

How does your solution play internationally in light of regulatory or other restrictions?

With WiFi being standards-based we don’t have any regulatory issues.

For more information about Celeno, click here.

Wireless Networking Panel comes to CONNECTIONS Summit at CES

On Thursady, January 8th at 9:30 AM, Kurt Scherf , VP of Research and Principal Analyst at Parks Associates, will moderate the Wireless Networking panel at the CONNECTIONS Summit at CES in Las Vegas.

This panel examines the development of multimedia wireless networking technologies and their respective applications. Topics include the latest advances such as 802.11n, wireless HDMI, UWB, and the associated solutions that can be implemented on both fixed and portable CE devices. The panel focuses on wireless technology’s capability to facilitate multimedia (especially video) consumption in the home, a key area of interest to CE vendors, service providers, and chipset developers.

Panel speakers include the following companies: AMIMON, WirelessHD, ProVision Communications, and Pulse~LINK.