Published on October 23, 2007

HDTV without wires

If you have one of those flat screen HDTV sets, you probably love the sleek form factor, but hate the ugly cables spreading all over the place.

IBM jointly with MediaTek is entering the rather crowded market where others like Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard attempt to solve the problem.

The technology is called mmWave and is using the 60GHz free/unlicensed band. It features a large amount of bandwidth and a large worldwide overlap for interoperability. The IEEE 802.15.3c group is standardizing the use of the 60-GHz band.

Besides the wireless HDTV the mmWave will enable applications like wireless laptop docking stations and extremely fast downloading of files.

The mmWave requires direct line of sight, and it will not work through walls.

Lets hope that it will be as plug-and-play as a cable.