WirelessHD's Industry Leadership And Award-Winning Solutions Fuel Consortium Expansion And Standards Harmonization

Consortium Experiences Significant Growth With Addition of Broadcom Corporation as a Promoter Company and Continued Interest From Consumer Electronics Community [The following is a release from WirelessHD]

September 1, 2008

WirelessHD™, currently comprised of global leaders in the consumer electronic and personal computing industry, has witnessed a significant increase to the momentum of the Consortium since announcing its 1.0 specification during the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show. Several areas where WirelessHD has experienced growth and momentum include new adopter interest, application breadth, and emerging technology standardization that may complement future WirelessHD development. This growth and momentum is expected to accelerate with today's announcement of the addition of Broadcom Corporation as a promoter company. With a goal of offering an industry standard for high speed audio, video and data delivery, the WirelessHD 1.0 specification represents the first consumer application of 60GHz technology and is the only standards-based approach to enable wireless transmission of lossless, uncompressed high-definition video and data for CE equipment. "WirelessHD shows good potential for wireless transmission of HD audio and video optimal for applications such as gaming and Blu-ray DVD," said Kurt Scherf, Vice President and Principal Analyst with Parks Associates. "With the availability of WirelessHD 1.0, companies can take advantage of the promise of high-bandwidth wireless video transmission. This is a catalyst for placing wireless high-definition solutions in the spotlight of connected home applications." WirelessHD Experiences Membership Growth and Application Breadth Since its formation in October 2006, the WirelessHD Consortium has received overwhelming interest from various types of businesses eager to join the WirelessHD ecosystem as Adopters and Promoters. The recent addition of Broadcom as a promoter company will provide WirelessHD with increased expertise in both wired and wireless technologies by developing cost effective home networking entertainment solutions. In addition, new participation has grown across the WirelessHD ecosystem, from CE companies including Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer and Sharp to test equipment manufacturers including Agilent, Quantum Data, and Tektronix to technology developers including Alps, Kyocera, Murata, NXP, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, ST Microelectronics and TSMC. This represents a continued interest in a variety of WirelessHD applications and signals the Consortium's burgeoning membership of over 40 committed promoters and early adopters, to date. Members are also researching new application areas including automotive entertainment, personal computing, and wireless local area networking (WLAN). "Since the recent announcement of our 1.0 specification, WirelessHD has received an increased amount of daily inquiries for more information on how to be involved in the Consortium from potential members and adopters," stated Lianne Caetano, Executive Director of WirelessHD, LLC. "This interest reflects a pent up need by consumers to share HD content wirelessly in a simple but secure manner. We look forward to involving as many industry leaders as practicable to grow the WirelessHD ecosystem and are pleased to see the success of the standard stimulate more technology innovation for future applications." An Ecosystem of Complementary Emerging Technologies WirelessHD continues to offer the highest quality in-room connection for the network of fixed and portable devices in the home. In addition, WirelessHD has emerged as the leading platform to complement existing multi-room connectivity solutions such as MOCA, Powerline Networking, and Wi-Fi which by themselves are not optimal solutions to deliver the highest quality high definition content. WirelessHD is also focusing on harmonizing and supporting the interests of complementary standardization efforts to develop new solutions for consumers and business interests. Examples of such standards efforts, particularly within the IEEE, include: IEEE WPAN (802.15.3c): Wireless personal area networking (WPAN) for high speed applications at short range is the focus of IEEE 802.15.3c. WirelessHD has worked collaboratively to employ common architecture, channelization and bandwidth sharing techniques. Common in many areas, WirelessHD extends well beyond 802.15.3c's communications focus, attempting to deliver on the "whole solution" by offering application layer, rights management and network device control functionality above the IEEE standard. IEEE WLAN (802.11VHT): The highly successful 802.11 group has formed a 60GHz effort called 802.11VHT (Very High Throughput) concentrating on wireless local area networking (WLAN). The goal of this effort is to allow a corporate or home user to roam from high throughput dense cells to wider area networks in a seamless manner. The WirelessHD Consortium is working to achieve harmonized usage of the 60GHz frequency band with this new group. "WirelessHD and its members remain committed to offering the best wireless high definition solution with zero image degradation and the greatest throughput," said John Marshall, Chairman of WirelessHD. "In the case of the efforts from IEEE, we think this anticipated broadening of applications in the millimeter wave band will have a positive economic effect on 60GHz technology. WirelessHD stands to benefit from these efforts in so far as it provides new technologies for WirelessHD to consider in future generations." The convergence of these industry leaders with a common application focus, accompanied by the latest advances in wireless technology and available spectrum, represents a unique opportunity for the industry to change the way consumers access and manage high-definition digital content. WirelessHD continues to build its industry leadership and momentum by inviting interested companies to join WirelessHD as Adopters. Interested companies can visit http://www.WirelessHD.org or email info@wirelesshd.org to learn more about how to become a WirelessHD Adopter.

Read More: