WIRELESS HDMI = LESS WIRES IN THE LOUNGE

Posted below is my most recent Herald on Sunday column about the wireless HDMI Philips was showing off at CES earlier this month. The article didn't appear on the Herald website - maybe something to do with the new position of my column in the paper. Hot Technology has become Tomorrow's World and will take on more of a Sci/Tech look and feel rather than straight gadgetry...

Also, see my Herald story about the Mobile WiMAX devices that were on show at CES ahead of Sprint's launch of these types of services in the US.

Finally, an article I wrote for the Weekend Herald about the state of broadband in New Zealand - I've had a huge number of responses to this story and will be doing a follow up based on them in the next week...

TOMORROW’S WORLD

by Peter Griffin

A couple of things were glaringly obvious at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month – flat screen TVs are getting bigger and better quality and high-definition content is no passing fad.

But those who buy LCD or plasma screen TVs and high-definition disc players in the next year to enjoy better picture and sound quality are going to come up against one annoying reality – even more cables cluttering your lounge.

Newer flat-screen TVs, home cinema projectors, computers and video game consoles come with HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) connections which ensure the best quality signal is transferred from your player of choice to your TV screen.

The cables are generally thicker than the composite cables that connect most DVD players and Playstation 2 consoles to TVs. If you have several high-definition devices, you may have two or more HDMI cables snaking into the back of your TV. It looks pretty ugly.

But Dutch electronics maker Philips has come up with a way around that. At CES it showed a wireless HDMI system. It consists of two small boxes – one plugs into your DVD player, the other into your high-definition TV. Using ultra wideband frequency, the content is beamed through the air – no cables needed, at a range of up to 25 feet. The other can be tucked in behind your TV set. The best thing about it is that there’s no degradation of the high-definition signal sent wirelessly. Philips says the wireless system is capable of shifting 1080p high-definition video, which is the highest quality level supported by this new wave of flat-screen TV screens.

You don’t have to use a Philips TV to make it work – the wireless system will work with any HDMI-capable devices. As Sky TV takes its new set-top boxes high-definition and HD-DVD and Blu-ray recorders become more widely available, these little rectangular HDMI connectors are going to appear in numbers in your living room – the equivalent of the computer USB slot.

And while there are often slight delays associated with wireless technologies, Philips claims any delay is unnoticeable with its system. Certainly, the demonstration at CES was impressive. Philips wireless HDMI is also compatible with the high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) system many TV makers are supporting to prevent movie piracy. Other companies including Asus and Tzero are also getting into wireless HDMI, which looks to be the new standard for home theatre systems without all the wires. The wireless HDMI devices are likely to go on sale in May for around US$300.

petergnz@gmail.com

TV IN A FLASH

USB flash drives are so common that companies give them away like promotional pens these days. But it’s amazing how useful they are. You can use them to shift digital files between computers. Some of them even act as music players. Now USB-maker SanDisk is taking it a step further with USB TV. Drag video files on your computer onto the USB TV and then connect it to your TV with a simple dock, letting you play the video back on your TV screen. No DVD player, cables or additional hardware needed.

www.usbtv.org

A CHANCE TO SHINE

If one phone unveiled at CES managed to drag some attention away from Apple’s crowd-magnet, the iPhone, it was LG’s Shine – a pretty new phone that turns into a mirror when it’s in standby mode. It’s a sleek silver device that like the first generation of Motorola RAZR, isn’t the best featured phone around but wins most of its points for looks. There’s a two megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a music player. But watch as that screen clouds to become a mirror. Perfect for retouching your make-up.

www.lg.com

THE WEB AT A SNIP

It combines elements of Web 2.0 darlings MySpace, Del.icio.us, Flickr, but you’re unlikely to have heard of Esnips.com, a website that combines social networking with online storage. At Esnips you are given for free, one gigabyte of storage to host digital content you want to share with others. Upload movies, photos, documents, anything you want and make them available to a select few or the general public. You can comment on the media posted, subscribe to new updates via RSS and with 1.2 million Esnip users, come across likeminded web surfers.

www.esnips.com

TELECOM'S NEW YEAR PRESENT

Surprise, surprise... Telecom has once again greeted the New Year with price increases, this time a $1.85 line rental increase for many people. The cost of calling 018 from a mobile will be bumped up to 75c per call.

Telecom has for years raised its prices early in the New Year in line with CPI increases. Normally the announcement drops much earlier in the year, in the hope that news of the increased charges will be lost in the mix of stories about the summer road toll and New Year rowdiness at Whagamata etc.

What it says to me is that 2007 is a good year to start looking seriously at VoIP. Use Skype to call long distance - get all your friends around the country and overseas onto it - you'll all save money and it's easy enough for my mum to operate so the bar is set very low (no offence mum).

When I was in the US, I looked at the premium-based VoIP service, Vonage. It's very good in that it takes any of the complexity out of making VoIP calls and is competitively priced. We have our own less-mature services from the likes of WorldXChange and Slingshot. They're worth checking out if you have your broadband business with those providers or are looking to change operator. I'm going to make it my priority this year to try and inform readers how best to unplug from Telecom completely. I hope some new and improved offerings from Telecom's competitors makes my job easier.

As for the extortionate 75c charge for calling Telecom on your mobile, I haven't done the figures, but I'd say it's almost cheaper now to connect to www.whotepages.co.nz on the web browser of your phone and searching the listings than it is to call directory.