The ideal would be if all your stereo equipment came with 802.11 chips
inboard so that they could just hop onto your wireless backbone (a technogeek
way of talking about your wireless signal footprint in your home) and
get to work. Although we think that’s not all that unlikely as technology
moves forward, it’s not the case today.
Instead, what you find today is that a lot of home entertainment accessories
are going wireless, like your MP3 players and portable speakers. One of the
most major pieces of your home entertainment system going wireless is your
TV’s set top box. Typically, to distribute video around the house, you had to
wire a home with coaxial cable. The cable companies know that they don’t
make much (if any) money on that part of the equation, so they would just as
soon run a cable into the home gateway set top box and then use wireless
signals from there. Want to watch TV by the pool? No problem — your wireless
TV signal can help you out. We expect that satellite, cable, and telephone
company video set top boxes will all sport wireless options fairly soon.
Instead of being hard-wired to your cable box, you can just pick up your TV
(outfitted with a compatible wireless adapter) and carry it to the pool. And
with your wireless remote control controlling the set top box back inside the
house, you’ll think you were in heaven. (Just keep the TV out of the hot tub,
or you might really be in heaven.)
In Chapter 14, we introduce you to the next wave of remote controls —
802.11b-based remotes that control signals in other rooms. Right now, these
signals actually go to infrared (IR) devices that mimic an IR remote control in
that room. In the near term, you’ll see onboard wireless interfaces in the set
top boxes themselves, which will again allow remote control and access to
files.
But alas, for now, only a few pieces of audio and video gear have standardsbased
wireless interfaces. You’re starting to see video projectors sport
802.11b interfaces; for example, NEC Solutions (America), Inc. is shipping the
first MT Series generation of portable projectors to offer the NEC
ImageXpress networking technology option. With NEC ImageXpress, the
MT60 Series of projectors can communicate continuously and in real time
from a PC to the projector through a wireless system via 802.11b. The wireless
option makes it easy to connect to the video projector from anywhere
nearby, without the hassles of cables to trip over. Although this particular
projector can double for home or office use, a lot of home theater projectors
are moving towards wireless connectivity, too.
SONICblue (which at the time of this writing was unfortunately going through
bankruptcy proceedings and was divesting the subsidiary that makes this
product) has a wireless-enabled Go-Video D2730 DVD player (www.sonic
blue.com; $299) and is the first player of its kind to be able to stream video
files through a wireless network to a consumer electronics component. It supports
Ethernet 10/100 through an RJ-45 wired interface as well as 802.11
through a Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
(PCMCIA) Card/bus card slot where you can plug in 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g,
and a Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA) card. The D2730 can play
MP3 and WMA audio files, JPEG image files, and MPEG1 and MPEG2 video
files.
Yamaha has an 802.11b-enabled audio server called the MusicCAST (see
Figure 13-1). This system consists of a couple of pieces. The server is the centerpiece
of the system and uses a large computer hard drive and a built-in CD
drive to rip (convert to MP3) all your CDs and store the music. The server
then uses 802.11b to send streaming music files to separate receivers
throughout your home. The receivers contain built-in audio amplifiers, so
you can plug a set of standard stereo speakers into them. Or if you have an
existing stereo system in the room where the receiver is located, you can
plug the receiver directly into that unit and use the speakers that you’ve
already got. The MusicCAST system isn’t cheap — the price of a server and a
single receiver is about $2,800, and additional receivers (for other rooms in
the house) go for about $800.
Figure 13-1:
The Yamaha
MusicCAST
enables
whole-home
audio
through
wireless.
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