OK, so I’m not a big fan of mobile TV, in the sense of watching TV on one’s mobile handset. Sure, we’ll watch a music or corporate video or two now and then, but not TV, at least not on a regular basis. Sporting events and breaking news, yes, but whipping out one’s phone to watch a sitcom at 9:00 on Thursday? Not going to happen. And I’m philosophically opposed to wasting both battery life and minutes on my data plan to watch commercials.
But wireless video in the residence, and, I think eventually in the enterprise, well, that’s another story. And it’s potentially a huge one – big flat-screen HDTVs are going in all around the globe, with mounting on the wall the preferred approach, especially in high-end custom installations. And don’t kid yourself; there are a lot of these. The folks at the custom-installation trade association CEDIA report that the market for custom installation services in 2003 was over US$3B. Even assuming zero growth today (and that’s most certainly not the case), that’s still a lot of bucks. And I think the trend to upscale home-entertainment systems will accelerate now that many people, even those who can afford custom-installed home theaters, will be staying home a lot more.
So one of the big challenges in wall-mounted TVs is running the required cables. You might argue that the video cable (usually HDMI today) is no big deal since one has to run a power cable anyway. But often the source of the video signal will, unlike the AC, not be located near the TV or display. In Farpoint Group’s Wireless Media Facility, where we test such things, half the electronics today resides on one side of the room, and half on the other. And there’s no way to run a cable between the two, at least at a reasonable price.
Going after the wireless-video opportunity in a big way, Belkin today announced their Flywire product line, which is based on the truly fabulous WHDI video processing technology from Amimon. Amimon uses video-specific channel coding to produce outstanding (yes, I’ve done A/B comparisons with straight-off-the-DVD source material) video quality with no latency or visible artifacts. The only real drawback is the price – the initial whole-home (there will shortly be an in-room version as well) FlyWire product is $1,000. But that could be very cheap indeed when compared to the cost of custom-installed cabling, which is exactly the same argument that was made for going with WLANs back before mobility entered the picture. The game isn’t over; there are many other similar products either on the market or due shortly. But I hope to test this product in the near future, and I’ll let you know just how well it works.
I also think wireless video will become important in enterprise settings, as wireless connections to projectors become more popular, and as video distribution within the enterprise assumes a greater share of corporate communications. I think that eventually HDMI (with resolution of 720p most of the time) will become the video interface of choice for all types of displays, and we’ll thus have a single standard for wired video that works everywhere. Will we have a single wireless-video standard? It’s doubtful (hey, even HDMI has a competitor in DisplayPort), but with today’s announcement we’re at least getting closer to a volume market nonetheless.
