LG Signs On WHDI Bandwagon [LG, 14 Other Tech Companies Adapt WHDI Wireless Video Standard]

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It seems there could be a format war brewing in the wireless video space. We’ve seen Intel’s WiDi (wireless display) technology, as well as WirelessHD, but now AMIMON’s new standard, dubbed WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface), is gaining traction, as LG signed on to adapt the standard at CES last month.

On the technical side, there isn’t anything about WHDI that makes it stand out form its competitors. It transmits on a 40 MHz channel in the 5 GHz radio band, wirelessly connecting your video devices and HDTVs.

The spec claims it’s capable of 3Gbit/s and transmitting uncompressed 1080p video. Of course, that’s in the United States, where the 5 GHz band is unrestricted. Internationally, WHDI devices will transfer video a bit slower at 1.5Gbit/s. AMIMON, the developers of the WHDI tech, claim it has a range of 100 feet (30 meters) and the latency on WHDI is less than 1 millisecond.

The new standard was only finalized in December of last year, and held its big coming out party at CES 2010, where several big companies agreed to adapt the technology, including LG, who vowed to deliver several HDTV sets that carried the technology. Sharp will also delivery TVs that use the technology. Other big names, including Sony, Hitachi and Samsung, have signed on to adapt the technology, but haven’t promised any products carrying the tech yet.

No word what this means for Broadcom’s WirelessHD standard, which Sony, LG, Samsung and others had previously signed on to adapt. WirelessHD operated in 60GHz band and offered theoretical transfer speeds of 25Gbit/s (famously, they said that their transfer speeds could be faster than wired HDMI one day).

Despite all the excitement over WHDI, no word on when we can expect AV gear and HDTVs carrying the technology to start appearing in stores.