An Israeli startup company, Amimon has raised a total of $21 million in venture capital to help fund their chipset designed to transport HDTV around the home wirelessly. This kind of technology has enormous potential, and will undoubtedly spur a huge crop of new products making enthusiasts and custom installers alike very happy. The technology allows for streaming rates up to 3Gbps, which is enough for 1080p HDTV. The standard, dubbed WHDI (Wireless High Definition Interface) could be placed in HDTVs directly, bypassing the need for external boxes. Thus, as with a matrix switch, you could consolidate your sources into one rack and stream them wirelessly throughout the home. The current costs associated with having multiple HD cable or satellite boxes include both a rental and programming fee, and can add up quite a bit if you want to have HD on more than one TV. The ability to cut those costs while still having HD content available to you anywhere in your home is a fantastic proposition. I can’t wait to see this technology mature!

Via Silicon News

Amimon’s Website

Think much about HDMI? Some people think about it a lot. Enough to make this whacky little HDMI connector that lets you bend an HDMI connector for easy HDTV hookup.

Not only that, AVReview did a survey, asking about how many HDMI inputs would be needed on your next screen. The result puzzles me. If I were to use some kind of switching device to switch my HDMI devices, then all I would need is one HDMI input. But if I didn’t use such a switcher, then I’d want as many inputs as possible. There’s my SA8300HD PVR. My upcoming PS3. What if I bought an HD DVD player, and/or a dedicated BD player (there’s one already in the PS3)? That would be four HDMI inputs. Add another one, just in case, and that would be five. Why, then, did the poll result in a large vote for two HDMI inputs? The choices were 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 inputs. I would have expected to see lots of votes for one and four, not two. But two got 51% percent of the vote.

Weird.

Am I missing something?

AVReview’s HDMI vote result!

Calibre announced what looks to be a killer video product this week; the Vantage HD video scaler/processor featuring the highly regarded Silicon Optix Realta HQV video processing engine. In addition to getting some of the best video processing around, you get a world class switcher as well. I see two additional perks that might make this product a home run for videophiles.

I would love to see this baby pared with a 1080p projector, such as the Sony Ruby. That would be pure video bliss!

Is there a hole in your computer waiting for an HD disc burner? You got some money to spend? Maybe Hitachi-LG fill that computer hole and put a hole in your wallet at the same time, with their new 4X speed BD burner. The model GBW-H10N only burns BD-R discs at 4X speed, so BD-RE’s are still going at a pokey 2X pace.

The burner is due to ship this month for an undisclosed price. My guess is about $1000, like most other BD burners.

Hitachi-LG Readies World’s First 4X Blu-ray Burner

Sony has made their BWU-100A BD burner available for pre-order. This burner for your computer is available in August for the price of $750, which is about $250 cheaper than competing burners.

This burner can read and write single-layer DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD+RAM discs, dual-layer DVD+R, and CD’s in addition to its BD writing capabilities. It can write BD-R’s and BD-RE’s at 2x speed.

Sony unveils BWU-100A Blu-ray burner

Sometimes your display doesn’t have such a great scaler / video processor. In that case you might want to look into something from VDO or from this company, Algolith. The have a processor they call the Dragonfly, based on Realta’s HQV technology.

The Dragonfly will up- or down-scale, de-interlace and cadence-correct all video signals from 480i to 1080p. A key feature of the unit is its true 1080i and 1080p de-interlacing capability, which uses the full four-field processing window for HD video de-interlacing and cadence detection, preserving rich details in HD imagery, rather than discarding half the resolution, as the firms says conventional image processors do.

The suggested price of the Dragonfly is $2,995. That’s as much as some pretty good projectors, so I have to wonder. You’ll buy a processor like this if you have the money to spend to buy a really expensive display. And if you have such a display, won’t it include processing adequate to the task? I know that not all scalers are created equal, but some displays even include Realta’s HQV technology, so where’s the sense in that? Is this processor only meant for display not equipped with such?

Algolith Ships Dragonfly Home Theatre Processor/Scaler

Just like CD and DVD before it, BD writers will increase in speed as manufacturers work up the technology to create faster drives. The PS3 when released will read BD drives at 2x speed. But here LG has a burner that can write at 4x speed. And when I say “here” I actually mean Taiwan. And when I say “burner” I’m talking about their GBW-H10N SKU. There is a small catch - it does 4x burning for BD-R discs, but only 2x burning for BD-RE discs.

Here are the write speeds:

BD-R (SL) 2x, 4x CLV
BD-RE (SL) 2x CLV
DVD-R 2x, 4x CLV, 8x, 12x PCAV
DVD-R Dual Layer 2x, 4x CLV
DVD-RW 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x CLV
DVD-RAM 2x, 3x ZCLV, 5x PCAV
DVD+R 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 12x PCAV
DVD+R DL 2.4x, 4x CLV
DVD+RW 2.4x, 4x, 6x, 8x ZCLV
CD-R 4x, 8x CLV
CD-RW 4x, 8x, 10x CLV

This writer will sell this week for the equivalent of about $923. Now I wonder when this drive will make it to North America?

First 4x Blu-ray Burner Hit the Shelves in Taiwan

Blu-ray may be behind when it comes to selling stand-alone players, but there seems to be a lot of manufacturers making Blu-ray recorders for computers. Plextor has announced their PX-B900A BD writer. The PX-B900A can write BD-R and re-write BD-RE discs at 2x speed. It’ll write up to 25GB on a single layer disc and up to 50GB on dual-layer discs.

Not only is it a dual-layer BD burner, but it does dual-layer DVD discs as well. It combines the DVD+/-R/RW and RAM formats into one. Write speeds are 2x BD-R/BD-RE, 8x DVD+R/-R/+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD+R/-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW.

The Plextor PX-B900A BD writer will be available in September or October.

Plextor Launches its First Blu-ray Drive