Back to the Future for TI and HomeGrid

TI had decided to rejoin HomeGrid.

TI was a founding board member of HomeGrid, but quit after about a year--Intel can be a dick sometimes.

TI seems to have rejoined too see if their crappy DSPs might be useful for slow narrowband PLC. It seems that TI engineering group is as lazy as Intellon's--"you can have a any function in your you chips as long as it is DSP"--to paraphrase Henry Ford.

TI and credibility see to be mutually exclusive consents.

TV Internet Connectivity will be $1B Market says Netgear CEO

During Netgear's Q1 2010 Earnings Call, Netgear's CEO Patrick Lo mentioned five new product categories they are targeted each with a market potential "to reach over $1 billion". Of course HAN Fan is only interested in one of the five: TV Internet connectivity.

Netgear's vision of TV Internet connectivity is very wide. Their first product in this category is Push2TV a way of taking PC connent (such as Hulu) and putting on your TV. While HAN Fan thinks this product will go nowhere fast, as TV already has widgets for this, HAN Fan also thinks Netgear is on the right track with the new TV Internet connectivity category, so Netgear please keep innovating in this category its a winner.

HomePlug Gets IEEE Standard

With what looks like overwhelming support of the IEEE members, HomePlug has become the first standard for powerline communication, IEEE 1901. Once a few comments are address, the standard will be frozen. Products are already on the market that support IEEE 1901.

MoCA V1.1 Tweaked for Satellite

According to Light Reading, MoCA, the RF cable guys, have decided to officially support satellite operators by allowing lower frequency bands starting at 500MHz instead of 850MHz. They avoids interference with the normal TV signals used by satellite operators such as DirecTV.  This decision blesses what Entropic already was   doing for DirecTV. Would have been great to hear the bitching and moaning during the MoCA board meeting by the cable operators when they accepted this.

IEEE 1901 Sponsor Ballot Approved

The results are back from the IEEE 1901 Sponsor Ballot--the last step in the IEEE's Byzantine standardization process. Over 80% of the voters approved the new 1901 powerline standard. This means that the IEEE has learned from the 802.11n slow motion 5 year train wreck, and 1901 will be completed this year.

There are a few hundreds of comments, but almost all from yes voters; dotting the i's and crossing the t's. The no voters who have been trying to slow down the 1901 process seems to have run out of energy or more likely money.

HAN Fan has been told that the final standard will now be approved in the fall of this year. The first and only powerline standard with working products from multi-vendors--let the home networking revolution begin.

G.hn Faces an Uphill Climb

Seems not everybody thinks G.hn is gong to take-over the world. Mindbranch has a report, which you can buy for $500, highlight the issue G.hn will have competing with HomePlug AV and MoCA.

"This IDC Insight looks at the development of the wired networking protocol G.hn and its position relative to other wired networking protocols for the home, particularly HomePlug and the Multimedia over Coax Alliance."

60GHz goes into hiding until 2015

According to this report by iTWire, the IEEE working group 802.11ad "has just started to hear proposals and so we expect it to be 2-3 years to a draft standard…Our expectation is that the years for 60GHz commercialisation will be 2012 to 2015 and beyond."

This aligns quite nicely with ABI Research study of nearly two million 60 GHz chipset shipments in 2015.

HAN Fan is thinking that there is no need to follow 60GHz for the next two years. This makes HAN Fan sad.

The good news, is somebody (NICTA) is thinking of a betterdifferent use for 60Ghz.

"What Sibeam [WirelessHD] has done is focus on HDMI cable replacement. ... Replacing a cable that you only have to install once with wireless does not make a lot of sense"

NICTA thinks 60GHz makes sense "when you want to send a video from your mobile to you TV"

60 GHz Cable Replacement not here yet.

According to an ABI Research study reported by Earth Times, there will be "nearly two million 60 GHz chipset shipments in 2015"--a bit less than the number of HomePlug AV chips shipping today--per month!

Seems that today the "disadvantages inhibit WirelessHD’s adoption and negate its first-to-market advantage. First, the transmitters and receivers are expensive, in the $600-1000 range. They are also power-hungry."

Replacing a $10 HDMI cable with a $600 pair of hot boxes might not be a good idea.

et tu brutus? I mean Billion Electric

Seems that even Billion Electric, one of DS2's last fans,  is deserting DS2 now that they have fallen on hard times.

While Billion still has some DS2 adaptors in Billion's 2010 product guide (pdf), all DS2 products have been removed from Billion website; replaced by HomePlug AV based adaptors in all Billions solutions: Home Networking Solutions, Business Networking Solutions and Telco/ISP Business Solutions.

Billion is even reinforcing its HomePlug AV line with two new products.