UWB - Cut the Hype, And Quickly

I recently came across a press release entitled, "Freescale Launches UWB-based LCD HDTV Screen," announcing that China's Haier Corp. and Austin's Freescale Semiconductor were rolling out the "world's first Ultra-Wideband (UWB)-enabled LCD TV." (Read ExtremeUWB.com's coverage here.)

As I read through this otherwise well-written press release, I stumbled about the following words: "any content, anytime, anywhere." O tempora, o mores - my hopes were yet again dashed by the most familiar of convergence marketing spins.

Since when could UWB make such lofty aims? What happened to UWB's inherent range problem? Did mesh networking technology jump from lab research to the mainstream while I was sleeping? And when did all these people start to purchase wireless media servers - an integral part of making UWB-enabled TVs a true reality?

Since none of these answers revealed themselves within a few seconds, I went back to my notebooks and checked some UWB-related info... and here is what I came up with.

Read the rest of this ExtremeUWB column at "UWB - Cut the Hype, And Quickly"

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.