Home wireless network targeted at PC-TV........................
techweb.cmp.com
Altec Lansing and RF-Link jump into home networks
By Rick Boyd-Merritt
MILFORD, Pa. -- In the quest for a low-cost home network, two
companies are leveraging their wired and wireless technologies to turn home
PCs into home servers. Speaker maker Altec Lansing Technologies Inc.,
based here, is working with system and semiconductor partners to bring its
Hybrid Home Entertainment System to market next year, and RF-Link
Technology Inc. (Torrance, Calif.) has launched its own system, which it
plans to re-spin within the next few weeks.
Both systems would allow TVs scattered throughout a home to display data
from a PC running in a separate room. However, both networks are highly
asymmetric with huge quantities of video and audio streaming from a PC to a
TV, but with a relatively narrow control channel leading from those consumer
devices back to a PC. The two companies join other players looking to
deliver home networks based on using existing telephone wiring.
Altec Lansing is working with PC makers to bring its Hybrid Home
Entertainment System to market by the third quarter of next year. The system
uses installed cable TV coaxial wires within a home to distribute information
from a PC-including anything from DVD movie playback to a Web browser
or other PC application-to a TV. Control signals back to the PC come from
a 900-MHz RF remote-control device.of mi"Our thinking is, why create a
war between the PC and the TV? The two should coexist," said Altec
Lansing's executive vice president of engineering, Tommy Freadman.
RF-Link has a similar product concept. "The end user has already made a
commitment to the PC, why not extend its systems capabilities to other
consumer devices," said Bill Vitez, director of marketing and sales for
RF-Link.
Altec Lansing is developing two ASICs with semiconductor partners. It
hopes that partnership will bring the cost of its system--which would take the
form of an external PC add-on box or a PC adapter card--to an estimated
retail price of about $249, Freadman said. The company is still courting
OEM partners and hopes to show demo units by the middle of next year.
The company has received a U.S. patent on its method of using coaxial cable
to transmit data around the home while using a notch filter to block data from
going out of the home.
The network scheme has been in the works for more than two years,
Freadman said. The rise of faster processors, true multitasking in Windows
95 and upcoming options to support multiple simultaneous displays in
Windows 98 is helping finally to push the project toward the market, he said.
The nature of installed coaxial cable in the home--with the unpredictable use
of signal splitters--prevents the product from migrating toward a true
two-way multimedia network. But the company hopes the RF back channel
could be a kind of in-home teletex for e-mail messages to TV or PC screens.
Altec also sells a home intercom system that could be linked to the network.
For its part, RF-Link started shipping late last month its Wireless PC@TV
system which sends PC data over a proprietary 2.4-GHz spread-spectrum
wireless network to a converter box that translates the VGA display data into
an NTSC or PAL format. The RF transceivers on which the product is based
had previously been sold as a consumer electronics add-on product named
Wavecom Sr., which was positioned as a way to share a single
direct-broadcast satellite or VCR signal with multiple TVs in a home.
"This is our first foray into the PC marketplace," said Vitez of RF-Link. "At
Comdex this year we demonstrated the product and started to speak with
PC OEMs for the first time."
RF-Link's product includes a pair of wireless transceivers and an infrared
wireless keyboard and a VGA-to-NTSC converter box, which runs software
to enhance Web pages on a TV screen. The 2.4-GHz transceivers' unique
circular-polarization directional antenna provides a coverage area, the
company said, of up to 300 feet over unobstructed distances.
At a retail price of $499, WirelessPC@TV will bump up against
lower-priced Internet TV set-tops; that's one reason the company plans a
quick respin of the product. RF-Link's plans for the Winter Consumer
Electronics Show include a version of the product using a 900-MHz RF
wireless keyboard. It eliminates the need for some of the IR-to-RF
conversion circuitry the current system requires to support the control back
channel. That system could also include an upgraded VGA-to-NTSC
converter.
RF-Link is currently selling its product through retail outlets but is looking for
OEM partners to sell or customize its technology for next-generation
products. |
