Home Networking Meets Home Theater

— -- LAS VEGAS -- With the next major wireless standard in a holding pattern, companies are broadening the features of their Wi-Fi networking products, particularly in the area of home entertainment.

Most developers are waiting to see what 802.11n, the major next Wi-Fi standard, will look like before doing major upgrades of existing Pre-N, loosely called MIMO, wireless products. The IEEE standards body is expected to vote on an 802.11n proposal later this month. This proposal is submitted by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC), a coalition of 49 companies that includes Wi-Fi chip manufacturers Broadcom and Atheros.

The EWC's proposal supports maximum data-transfer speeds of up to 600Mbps. Notably missing from the EWC is Airgo Networks, whose competing True MIMO wireless technology powers several popular high-speed, long-range Wi-Fi routers.

While the industry hashes it out, Wi-Fi networking manufacturers are expanding the functionality of their current product lines, particularly in the area of home entertainment. Several companies here showed off products that take photos, video, and music from a PC or network-attached storage device and stream them to a traditionally living room-bound home-entertainment system.

Linksys, Buffalo Technology, and U.S. Robotics showed off media-related Wi-Fi offerings. The $130 Wireless-G Media Storage Link Router with Speed Booster from Linksys plugs into any USB drive and streams media contained on it to a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) compatible media adapter, which connects to your home-entertainment center. U.S. Robotics also announced the 802.11g-equipped $249 Digital Media Player, which will be available in the second quarter of 2005, as well as early plans for a Digital Media Server, whose capacity and price are still to be determined.

Buffalo Technology presented a networked entertainment scenario centered around the company's Wi-Fi routers, storage devices, and media players. New products included the $99 LinkTheater Mini, which plugs into your home-entertainment center and can connect to the network wirelessly through an optional wireless Ethernet converter. Another Buffalo product is the LinkStation Home Server ($399 for 300GB and $549 for 400GB) for storing media. Both products will be available at the end of January and both support DLNA, a new interoperability standard for home-entertainment networking products.

Buffalo Technology also showed some speed-boosted products. Its $99 AirStation Wireless A/G High Power Smart Router and $79 AirStation Wireless A/G High Power USB Adapter with Antenna use antennae to extend range and speed of wireless connectivity. These products support 802.11g for greater device compatibility as well as the 802.11a standard, which Buffalo Technology says is suited for large file transfers and video streaming.

In the second quarter of 2006, D-Link expects to release a sub-$200 Office Router, which uses Ubicom's StreamEngine QoS technology to prioritize network traffic and also has four Gigabit Ethernet ports. On the consumer side, D-Link says that it's next-generation MIMO router will be EWC a??compatible and may be out as early as mid February 2006.

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