WHDI Reviews – Wireless HDTV News

Planex has brought something that can be seen as the missing link to a lot of video set up. It is a wireless HDMI adapter that bridges a HDMI box with a HDTV through a 60GHz wireless link. Based on 60GHz Wireless HD standards, this will bridge almost any HDMI signal producing device and an HDTV or similar HDMI accepting video output. The applications are of course endless and hence this device should see some adoption in the market. That is, of course, given that the set up is trouble free as well.

Planex’s HDMI-WKIT or HDMI 1.3 Wireless kit allows you to set up something like a Blu-Ray player or a gaming console with HDMI out with a HDTV without the messy cables that are usually associated with such set ups. The adapter seems to be plug-n-play in terms of set up and supports a wide array of video-related protocols. It lets you display 1080i or 1080p video streams. It also supports Linear PCM surround sound, Dolby AC3, DTS, etc. for high definition audio. Video playback is at 60fps and the whole set up apparently has an effective range of 10 meters, which is roughly 32 feet.

With enough signal strength, the setup should ideally work through walls to have multi-room set up with one player serving multiple rooms. Since it operates outside the overtly crowded 2.4Ghz, there should be minimal interference from external sources. The price is, however, quite prohibitive at US$790 (exchanged from Japanese Yen). But with the economics of the country taken into account, it will probably cost less if it ever makes it outside Japan.

But even at a slightly lower price, it should’ve had more inputs/outputs. Also, there’s no support for any kind of 3D video or SRS DSP technologies, the latter being quite a common standard in HD set ups.

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