WHDI - A New Hope?

It is my first tech blog in more than a year. So I can make it worthwhile.

In the recent CES, WHDI arrived with a bang, much to my surprise. While I was sleeping, looking like the wireless connectivity world was taking huge strides. Curious to know how well will this fare.

Here's a short summary:

• WHDI is a networking solution that makes it possible to share HD, uncompressed video in the network.
• Unlike DLNA, which is more of a software intelligence that helps in discovering (using UPnP) devices, listing content and sending/rendering media across the room, WHDI is more of a hardware solution that uses a separate band for transmitting HD content. It uses a dedicated video modem. See here for more.
• WHDI was developed by Amimon and now the consortium has several CE industry leaders including Samsung, LG, Sony and Motorola.
• WHDI doesn't restrict the source to render to a single target. One can stream from any device on to any other device.
• WHDI is a video-aware transmission technology, which means it can recognize the "elements of visual importance" in the stream

To be honest, initially baffled me a little bit till I got hold of an old friend and multimedia cat, Girish Shenoy, to translate this to plain text. After the explanation, WHDI really seemed like a really exciting technology indeed.

Coming from the DLNA background, it was important for me to figure out what the similarities and differences between these 2 technologies are.

Similarities are superficial really: both DLNA and WHDI aim to make life easier for the user to render content on home devices such the TV and the computer over a wireless channel. A lay user doesn't need to know any more than that.

Under the hood, however, these technologies are a world apart. WHDI doesn't really override DLNA but offers an alternative solution that may to be a much better way of handling wireless media connectivity.

Here are some differences from the top of my head:

• WHDI stems from the fact that most digital rendering devices by default process only uncompressed data. Content stored in your DVD or delivered to your set-top box are typically compressed. Compression is necessary to preserve bandwidth. However, compressed data needs to be uncompressed before rendering and this is quite slow in cases. DLNA transmits compressed content over the regular Wi Fi link and this needs to be uncompressed on the TV end which is why DLNA will always have some rendering latency. WHDI, however, transmits uncompressed content directly to the renderer (pretty much like HDMI). In theory, this will always make it faster than DLNA
• Since there is no compression involved, the codec incompatibility problems that one may face with DLNA are no longer an issue.
• As mentioned earlier, DLNA is typically a software/firmware solution. WHDI defines a whole communication stack and hardware.
• WHDI supports "multi-room" transmission, that is, it can penetrate walls. WirelessHD does have this option (though DLNA can work if the WiFi Link is good). It can also stream to multiple players (most DLNA implementations limit to one player at a time).
• WHDI operates in its own unlicensed band (5 MHz). This makes it somewhat similar to 802.11n WiFi. However, WHDI is tailored specifically for video and is highly optimized for it. While 802.11n promises raw data rates of up to 600 Mbit/s, WHDI promises up to 3 Gbit/s.
• DLNA uses UPnP's robust device and service discovery mechanism. It is not clear how does WHDI handle the discovery part.
• WHDI devices will be inter-operable with the HDMI devices already in the market. So this means that with a dongle that connects a WHDI transceiver to your TV's HDMI port, you can switch over easily to WHDI. In theory, such a dongle can work with DLNA as well - not sure if anyone has tried it though.

In short, WHDI may finally revive Home Media. Let's wait and see.

Photo courtesy: F-l-e-x from Flickr.

This is how easy it is to share media!

Media sharing as a technology is somehow very desirable for the average phone user. Today there is enough content (UGC or not) that people want to share and there are relevant technologies (like UPnP) that enable such sharing. The trouble is that there are very few apps that are simple and intuitive enough for the layman to use. The pre-requisite geekiness level for media sharing apps still remain quite high.

UPnP Adoption
UPnP, for instance, has been around for more than 10 years but unfortunately has a poor penetration. That is not because it is not mature enough to enable various sharing use-cases, but because there has been a severe lack of apps out there that make this a nice and easy. Several CE devices have UPnP today, but the end user is so smothered with 4-letter technologies printed on the box that it is difficult to filter anything useful from the noise. There is no clear way to figure out if you can easily share your content with your TV or Hi Fi systems, unless you learn it from a UPnP-whiz (either on the web or in person). The products somehow always address the super-users, who would be 1% of the buying population. At best.
To quote Carl Sagan, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
Unfortunately, vendors still aim for the super-users, the Über-geeks, the mavens. People like you and me have little value to add here. No wonder technologies like UPnP, ZeroConf and DLNA languish for years before they make it to main stream. We need more applications!
Over the years, there were lot of technical problems that plagued media content sharing: Wi-Fi networks were hard to configure, expensive to set up and very difficult to maintain; plus the shared content was limited and nearly everything was heavily copyrighted; finally the UPnP enabled CE devices around costed a bomb!
Over the last 6-7 years, many of these issues are resolved. Most Wi Fi routers practically work in a plug-n-play fashion (which shouldn't be a surprise with UPnP working inside them!). CE devices have become cheaper and UPnP is present right on the PCs. What's more, you have Wi Fi right on your phone. Plus there is HUGE amount of sharable content out there, a big chunk of it generated by the users themselves. There is enough to share and easy means to do it! But media sharing still has a long way to go just because there are not enough apps out there that would entice a lay user to share stuff.

Do I see some hope there?
Breaking from my whine mode, things are improving slowly out there.
Visit the Orb website.
It is an old idea, but I like the way they have developed this into a powerful, easy-to-use solution that even non-geeks can use. It is basically setting up a server on your personal computer, converting it into a Media Hub. The good part is that it can be accessed over Wi Fi on your phone, over the net. One can even share over email or blogs! Orb guys do not quite give away how did they make it work, but I couldn't rule UPnP out as one of the enablers. Well, as an end user I wouldn't care less how does it work really. Would you? And yes, it is free!

BTW, I couldn't helping noticing this scrolling on the main page: "Your iPhone", "Your Wii", "Your DAD's Nokia". Huh? Is Nokia oh-so-80s already? Or Orb wants to target the young guns for now?

Simplify Media is also similar, though seems to cater to a few devices.

So there might still be some hope...

Streaming from Linux to XBOX - nice tutorial

Courtesy: @arthursucks
A reminder that technologies like UPnP can talk over OS/machine boundaries where most remote protocols falter. Unfortunately UPnP is still looked upon as only for super-geeks technology and this is where the difference needs to be made!

Wi Fi Direct

Last month saw a lot of buzz around Wi-Fi Direct, which is basically like an ad hoc wi-fi network on steroids. Now ad-hoc wi-fi capabilities been around for ages, but there are not commonly used and interoperability was often questionable. A side-effect of this was Wi-Fi was chiefly used in Infrastructure mode and, that too, typically in an Internet Gateway Device type setup. For wireless devices, there are further limitations. Mobile phones have been carrying Wi-Fi for ages now, but the primary use-case has been to set up an Internet access point with the home wi-fi router and browse. Most of the mobile Wi-Fi applications are built around this premise.
Of course, there is Home Connectivity and DLNA, powered by UPnP, which exploit the local sharing spectrum of Wi-Fi. But unfortunately, there are a very few phones with DLNA/UPnP.Surely, I can do more with the mobile over Wi-Fi!

Fact is that due to these limitations, Wi-Fi is not a popular choice for gaming, sharing information, creating information epidemics. Bluetooth has filled in this gap. With the coming of Wi-Fi Direct, some speculate if BT will pushed over.
Well, that remains to be seen but it is interesting to see that BT itself is trying address the low-power requirements on one hand (BT LE), while trying to score high on the speed & bandwidth requirements (through BT 3.0).

It is too early to comment on that (nor am I the best person to talk about either technology), but what needs to be seen is whether it makes life easier for the end-user. Today, there is a serious lack of IP-based applications that can work consistently over mobiles and other computing devices. Today, most mobile IP-based applications stand alone.

Service Discovery
OK, so what's in it for me or my Service Discovery package? Well, my point of interest comes from the fact that there are several Service Discovery applications that can built on top of Wi Fi Direct. Ubiquitous Wi Fi could possibly unlock a large number of services that our mobiles support.
Want to know what news are the other commuters on your train reading right now? Bored in the transit lounge, want to challenge the rest of the people there to a racing game? So on...
Well, it's easier said than done. There are security issues, power issues to deal with. The key point here is there will be a surge in the "services" that our mobile phones can provide or more stuff that we would want to share with others (partly because it is easy to do so). In other words, Service Discovery will have a greater role to play in this world.

Further Links:
Wi-Fi Alliance Press Release
http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2009/10/wifi_direct_peering.html

Images are from MorgueFile => A great place for finding creative and free images.

Eric Schmidt at Gartner meet

Information prophet or Google's spin-doctor, parts of this 45 min odd presentation are quite interesting. Ignore the Gartner guys - they are too busy trying to look sophisticated.


Refer to the TubeChop here for topics related to future of web.
The key take-aways were that Google sees itself pretty much in the center of the next internet revolution. There focus is primarily towards getting more and more customers for enterprise solutions.
On mobile phones, in particular, Schmidt answers "it depends on the growth rate of hi-quality mobile phones". Surprisingly, he doesn't touch upon Android.

Smartphone OS comparision

Very American in flavour. I do not complete agree from an engineer's perspective as I think there are several important bits that are left out. So this is far from an endorsement.
However, I think this is the sort of comparision that the layman (read the person who buys smartphones and sustains the market) makes.
http://www.cio.com/article/465071/Smartphone_OS_Showdown_iPhone_Android_BlackBerry_Windows_Mobile_Symbian?page=1

Hmm, so what is Motorola upto now?

I everyone was watching Sanjay Jha's first move to bring Moto devices division back on track. After having finally lost to Sony Ericsson in the last quarter and falling to 4th place, Moto seems to have a new plan.

The idea is to ditch Symbian UIQ platform altogether and reduce their (strangely large) portfolio of 6-7 OS solutions. The idea now is to jump on the Android bandwagon (for mid-to-high tier phones) and enjoy the ride while still keeping the Windows Mobile option for high-end and enterprise phones. Some plan, eh?

What shocks me is that this is Moto's nth volte-face in the last 2-3 years. An author has currently described Moto as polyamorous. One would also be tempted to add the adjectives confused and fickle-minded. They missed the "Razr is beaten to death" wake-up call, they missed the smartphone boat, in desperation they clinged on to UIQ (bought half of it, even). With weeks of UIQ event, Motorola was happily on Android OHA boat and swore that this is the way of the future. Within a few months of that, they would be spotted on the Symbian Foundation board as well. And now suddenly they decide to do away with UIQ altogether.
I do not have the mind of a market analyst to understand what is going on, but it is clear as mud to me. And by now, I should have become too inert to get excited about Moto's strategy changes. But they tend to surprise me anyway.
What was interesting to see was that Jha accepted that Moto currently lacked many skills to come back in the market as a leader and there is homework to be done. 3000 people in Moto will taste the axe and Jha has promised to turn things around by 2010 (there is FAT bonus there ~$100m). He, however, mentioned that Moto business will get worse before it gets better. For some reason this statement has always excited analysts and even now they are applauding.
Well, good luck to Moto. And let's wait and watch.

Further reading:-

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/10/motorola_causin.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE49T8OJ20081030
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9118586
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/29/motorola_layoffs/