The end of all wires

Chances are, consumer electronics gifts were present at your holiday celebration — and that usually means wires. In my household, soon after the various devices get plugged in, a lament rings out: “Why are there so many wires? It looks messy. Is there anything you can do about the wires?”

You got your optical cables, your patch cords, your HDMI cables, your coaxial, and on and on. Yes, Wi-Fi has done us all a great service and virtually eliminated Cat-5 in the home, and wireless speakers are pretty common (though some work better than others). But for connections that require serious bandwidth and don’t need a computer on both ends, you have to plug before you play.

[ Didn’t get the gift you wanted? Then check out this year’s excellent geek gift guide by InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman. ]

What’s needed is a low-cost, high-bandwidth wireless solution for connecting all the bits and pieces that comprise today’s digital home — sort of a superfat Bluetooth that’s cheap enough to embed in everything. If it were really cheap, it would be good for business, too: The less time admins spend running wires and plugging components together, the better.

In my case, I just need a cheap, point-to-point solution to connect a computer to the TV without a cable, and it seems I’ve found one: the Warpia Wireless USB Display Adapter from Source R&D. For around $150, you get a little base station with an HDMI port for your TV and a USB dongle that plugs into your computer. Install the DisplayLink software, which redirects your computer’s video output to the USB port, and you’re in business — up to a distance of maybe 12 or 15 feet.

Now, there are some obvious limitations, beginning with the 480MBps USB 2.0 spec. The ceiling for Wireless USB is even lower, with a practical limit of around 100MBps. That’s plenty for YouTube videos, but nowhere near enough for HDTV (uncompressed 720p, for example, demands around 1.3GBps). Also, the Warpia user experience is far from perfect. The output resolution is only partly adjustable — 1,280 by 720 had to suffice for a 1080i HD TV — so the screen is cropped awkwardly. Plus, expanding Web video to full screen sometimes freezes the video on the TV even as it plays normally on my laptop.

Yet, it works. Given how long I’ve been waiting for this kind of solution, that’s something — especially since Wireless USB, along with other ultrawideband schemes, was declared dead last year when a bunch of ultrawideband startups failed. The Wireless USB technology powering the Warpia is from a scrappy little Israeli chipmaker called Wisair, which has created an inexpensive, single-chip CMOS solution.

It may be too late for Wireless USB, mainly because industry politics are leaving further development of the spec in limbo. Yes, I realize several alternatives are in the works, including Wireless Home Digital Interface and WirelessHD.

Cheap devices based on these newly minted high-bandwidth wireless specs may be years away. So why scrap a cheap solution like Wireless USB that works? How come so much useful technology runs afoul of politics? Oh well. Gotta run. Looks like I have some wires to deal with.

This story, “The end of all wires,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.