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Displays Cellphones Handhelds Networking Television Wireless Networking Hardware

Gigabit Wireless Will Link Smartphones To TVs 75

Posted by CmdrTaco from the radiating-your-junk dept.
judgecorp writes "More progress for WiGig, the proposal for 3Gbps wireless links on 60GHz radio waves. The WiGig group has signed a deal with VESA, the display standards group, to include WiGig as a fast wireless option in VESA's DisplayPort standard. As well as letting you use a TV as a display for your phone, without having to connect a cable, it will also make synching and file transfer quicker."
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Gigabit Wireless Will Link Smartphones To TVs More

Gigabit Wireless Will Link Smartphones To TVs

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  • An other encryption disaster ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lennie ( 16154 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2010 @10:23AM (#34112192)

    Most are still using nothing, wep, wpa or the wrong wpa-2 options. :-(

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 )

      Most are still using nothing, wep, wpa or the wrong wpa-2 options. :-(

      And, just because the WiGig people signed withe the VESA people, have the MPAA/RIAA people allowed this?

      Is broadcasting a movie over unsecured wireless from your phone to a TV an "infringing" use? I'm sure some lawyer will try to say that it is, and you're not allowed to do it.

      They're not usually big fans of new ways for us to use the digital stuff we already have.

      • I imagine it'll use HDCP, the same encryption as HDMI. Possibly with a new master keyset or a few tweeks, as the current implimentation is compromised now. CEs will like HDCP - they can use already-designed-and-manufactured chips with just a wireless bridge attached.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shark ( 78448 )

          I wonder how much overhead all this nonsensical encryption adds.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            I wonder how much overhead all this nonsensical encryption adds.

            None at all. Most HDCP implementations are done in hardware. Last I looked you can get HDMI transmitters and HDMI receiver chips with built-in HDCP engines, and the keys and everything are built in too. You can query a register to figure out if HDCP is active or not, but for the most part, the encryption is handled purely in hardware.

            And there's no real need for new keys - they can do it, but capturing video this way is highly inefficient, and

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 )

        Is broadcasting a movie over unsecured wireless from your phone to a TV an "infringing" use? I'm sure some lawyer will try to say that it is, and you're not allowed to do it.

        As a lay person, I would think if the signal was restricted to a single TV at a time from your smartphone, I'd say that would be legal even if the content was copyrighted. The MPAA/RIAA might complain all they want but if they can't block Slingbox (which transmits content over the Internet), they would have a hard time arguing against a short range (30ft), local broadcast. The FCC said in 2008 that the MPAA may not selectively block video inputs. [arstechnica.com]

  • Until very recently, it was hard to find anything beyond 802.11b in most cellphones. Now they're talking about leapfrogging all the way up to WiGig? How big are WiGig chips, what kind of power budget do they require, how expensive are they? This sounds like it might be a neat idea for 5+ years in the future, but it's completely impractical for anytime in the near future. I'm guessing the target market is people who want to play back video they've recorded from their phone camera on a big screen.

    • Re:How long until cellphones have WiGig? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2010 @11:57AM (#34113868)

      Nexus One has an 802.11N chip, and its a year old. The lack of higher end features was more about the cost of chips, and the power drain on using them, than the phone's capabilities to take those chips.

      That said, I really don't see a large market for this kind of tech. I mean I have a PC sitting in my bedroom that stores all my files, and use PS3 Media Server to serve them up to my TV. I would never think: Hey lets download something large to my phone and stream it to my TV. It sounds retarded actually. The same thing goes for 'bringing videos to friends house'. Do you really see having large videos on your phone just waiting to play which aren't available for instant streaming on the internet?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        I would never think: Hey lets download something large to my phone and stream it to my TV. It sounds retarded actually.

        And even if you did have such an idea, if you wanted to stream video over wireless, modern TVs have their own players in 'em, so you would just run minidlna or something like that on your phone, so that the compressed video would be sent over wireless and decoded with ffmpeg on the TV. You wouldn't have the phone decode the video (a kind of intense thing to be doing on a battery-powered

  • OK, great (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2010 @10:30AM (#34112342) Homepage Journal

    That's great.

    Except that no one uses DisplayPort. It was basically invented in order to avoid paying royalties to Intel, who holds patents on HDMI and DVI. There are more TVs with VGA ports at this point, and that's unlikely to change.

    • And you can still find LCD monitors that only have VGA and not DVI. What's your point? DisplayPort is still new. It'll take a while. DVI wasn't adopted overnight.

    • One big reason for the lack of DisplayPort on TVs is that you don't need DisplayPort for 1080p. If you want to go past 1920x1200, you either have to use the dual-link-DVI stuff(also not on any TV) or DisplayPort.

      DisplayPort outputs always have a "DVI mode" where you just have to level shift the signal to HDMI/single-link-DVI.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luyseyal ( 3154 )

      And what about audio? This sounds like a nice way to use your phone as your workstation (wigig + bluetooth) but for watching video with sound, it would be craptacular without bluetooth headphones or speakers or something.

      -l

    • Displayport would die very quickly if not for the support of one very influencial company, Apple. I use them on my mac pro.... together eith DP->VGA adaptors, because the only monitors that support DisplayPort natively are Apple's ridiculously-overpriced displays.
    • DisplayPort is relatively new. Some newer computers are starting to come with DisplayPort. Apple has started putting it in all their products and ATI/AMD has started to put it in some of their video cards. DisplayPort is somewhat backwards compatible with older ports. From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

      Although DisplayPort's signal is not compatible with HDMI or DVI, Dual-mode ports (which are marked with DP++ logo) can use DisplayPort wires to transmit single-link HDMI and DVI signals which are then converted to higher signal levels by passive external adapters. Dual-link DVI and analog VGA are supported through powered adapters which perform active conversion.

    • see also: history.

      If it can be packetized, it can be repeated and routed. Look for DisplayPort over IPv6 before it's dead.

  • Droid in 1080p... *glorious*

  • designed to lock open source competition out and yet another splurge of patents, but "with a phone on your TV" tacked on them to make them seem novel...

  • a sea change in computing (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The phone is going to replace the desktop and laptop PC for most user. (Ok, someone always point out some niche use that will remain, but it's just that: niche). It will talk to your high res monitor, keyboard, mouse, internet, and other phones, but it'll just be carried with you in your pocket and wherever you go, it will be there too. True mobile computing with all the advantages of fixed resources when you are near them.

    The traditional desktop PC will fade away. Phones are getting increasingly powerf

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      > It also means safer computing and less viruses, because app stores will be a barrier for malware.

      All you need for "safer computing" is to just ditch Microsoft.

      You don't need Steve's Walled Garden at all.

  • This is exactly what I need to pull that phone to display trick Tony pulled in Iron Man 2.

    You have to admit that's cool. Some of your friends are watching a movie and you point your phone at the screen to commandeer the display and show video of your recent surgery, or stupid cat tricks, or even live video surveillance of your empty bedroom...

  • Range and attenuation (Score:3, Informative)

    by molo ( 94384 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2010 @11:14AM (#34113170) Journal

    I believe that in this microwave frequency range, the signals will be attenuated by atmosphere, so there will be natural limitations on range, especially at low power.

    In ham radio, there are people doing 47 GHz propagation of morse code (CW) and voice signals via rainscatter. (think of weather radar) The record range is 343km from mountaintop to mountaintop using high-powered directional dishes (W6QI and AD6FP).

    -molo

    • 60 Ghz, if I recall, is the resonance frequency of atmospheric oxygen. Using this off a battery-powered device will either mean having the device VERY close to the other stuff you want it talking to, or torching the battery by way of increased broadcast wattage.

      To me, it seems to be a solution looking for a problem.

  • At that frequency you ought to have directional antennas.. and probably use ur phone to cook food (as a death ray..??) ..!!!!

  • goatse (Score:2)

    by vlm ( 69642 )

    As well as letting you use a TV as a display for your phone, without having to connect a cable,

    So, what you're really telling us, is that soon, with a directional antenna and a little work, I'll be able to goatse the tv aisle at best buy, walmart, and the local sports bar.

    I'm liking it!

    • Only an idiot would leave their TV on "wireless input takes priority" mode. Heck, I would love it if input priority was even an option on my monitors. Otherwise, if they're already displaying something there's nothing you can do about it.

  • It would just be nice to be able to just hook up a little connector from my iphone to the TV set, and then i could watch my netflix movie running on my iphone over to my TV screen, or whatever my iphone screen was showing, is this even possible...if so how?

  • Old technology made new. I thought it was some kind of microwave and such. Funny how the human mind can come up with almost anything just to label things "cool" Learn DSLR Video Store [learndslrvideostore.com]

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