Homes still search for HD-capable video network
I can’t help but wonder whether the latest UWB noise is just a last-ditch attempt to salvage a problematic technology.
By Maury Wright, Editorial Director -- EDN, July 5, 2007
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 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. Pulse-Link is still pursuing the technology and has made subsequent IC announcements but doesn’t appear to be shipping ICs for revenue.
Lately, some of the more mainstream WiMedia UWB crowd is touting that technology as a candidate for distributing digital video over coax. At the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas in April, Sigma Designs demonstrated video over a UWB link. Sigma has focused on set-top boxes and has been a player in the video-codec market. I assume that the company believes that it can usurp the network link.
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In June, Tzero 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,”).
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 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. Artimi also seems more interested in linking portable devices at close range than in whole-home video.
Of course, there is also an incumbent video-over-coax technology in place. Entropic Communications 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 is at work on a new project comparing power-line, wireless, and other home-networking options. He tells me that the latest power-line technology works much better than previous offerings. Both he and I have had some troubles in the past testing that technology. This situation is an example of an application waiting for a technology that works. 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,”). 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.
Contact me at mgwright@edn.com.
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Strictly speaking, Ben and Maury, Cat5e cable (which is what I use) should be perfectly adequate to reliably and robustly carry 1 GbE traffic in most network topologies....and I believe it's still notably cheaper than Cat6 stuff. True? See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_6_cable
Brian Dipert - 2007-26-7 08:01:00 PDT -
Clearly Ben you are correct that given a choice you should install Cat6 today. I'm so used to writing Cat5 that I use that term generically to mean the latest twisted-pair Ethernet technology. Being an engineer, I should know better.
Maury Wright - 2007-12-7 16:29:00 PDT -
Maury, Why should one constrain oneself to 100Mbit Ethernet in the home by using Cat 5, when Cat 6 costs pennies per foot more and allows for gigabit Ethernet? In most home Ethernet setups, far and away the largest percentage of the cost is for the labor to pull the wire, punch it down, and mount it in wall outlets. I have some fresh new 1000' reels of Cat 5, if you want one for slightly more than the price of a song... Ben
Ben Myers - 2007-7-7 19:39:00 PDT -
What about a major player from Israel, Wisair?
Tzvika Zaiffer - 2007-5-7 10:17:00 PDT
