Demo proves merits of UWB chipset

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jun 9, 2004

Micro-Star International and Freescale Semiconductor have successfully demonstrated a wireless connection between the MSI MEGA PC and two LCD screens using ultrawideband technology.

Micro-Star International (MSI) and Freescale Semiconductor have successfully demonstrated a wireless connection between the MSI Entertainment and Gaming Appliance (MEGA) PC and two liquid crystal display (LCD) screens using ultrawideband (UWB) technology.

This demonstration, held at the Computex Show in Taipei, Taiwan, is the first direct sequence ultrawideband (DS-UWB) demonstration involving a MEGA PC home entertainment platform.

"MSI is committed to advancing home theatre and entertainment products", said Price Lu, Product Marketing Manager of MSI.

"By demonstrating the ultrawideband technology today, we are giving the world a look into the future of a truly wireless home entertainment".

"Home theatre products are ideal targets for UWB technology, and we are pleased to be to be the first to demonstrate this important capability with our MEGA PC".

The demonstration included a MEGA PC that wirelessly streamed two live simultaneous video and audio streams with a collective data rate of 40Mbit/s across the room to two LCDs.

Freescale's current UWB chipset is capable of transmitting data up to 110Mbit/s, enabling up to three concurrent streams of video over a single UWB connection, if desired.

The DS-UWB demonstration showcased the technology's "wire-like" quality -with no distortion or latency.

"It's great to be working with one of the world's leading manufacturers of personal computer hardware products and solutions like MSI", said Martin Rofheart, Director of Ultra-Wideband Operations for Freescale.

"This demonstration using a MEGA entertainment PC underscores how DS-UWB can be applied to a variety multimedia-centric products".

Freescale's ultrawideband XtremeSpectrum chipset is a wireless semiconductor solution with a high datarate and low power consumption.

The chipset is ideal for products such as set-top boxes, digital displays, camcorders, DVD players, digital video recorders and digital cameras to send and receive digital streams of audio and video.