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What is WiGig? New wireless HDMI standard to do away with cables

Latest news stories about WiGigIf like us you’re fed up with forever managing the snake’s nest of HDMI and component cables behind your TV sets then take heart – salvation is on the way in the form of WiGig.

WiGig is the common name for 802.11ad, the new wireless standard that’s just been enshrined by the IEEE, and it promises to allow for wireless transmission of data between devices.

What is WiGig? New wireless HDMI standard to do away with cables

In plain English, this means we can hopefully doing away with the need for USB, HDMI, PCI and DisplayPort cables. Much like current Wireless HDMI devices such as the DVDO Air, the idea is that future TVs and monitors and peripheral tech like your phones, tablets and games consoles will have WiGig built in and will transmit data to and from devices over the air on the 60Hz frequency band.

Allowing for data rates of 1Gbps over a short range (no more than 10 meters) this seems like the perfect solution for living rooms of the near future.

Note that despite its official technical designation – 802.11ad – it’s not a replacement of or upgrade for 802.11ac (aka WiFi AC), which will replace WiFi as we currently know it. WiGig is complimentary to WiFi AC in that it’ll allow for transmission of data around the home, albeit in a direct device-to-device fashion rather than providing universal, indirect connectivity to the internet via your broadband router.

Don’t expect to see WiGig branded gadgets for a while yet; we didn’t start seeing the first WiFi AC routers until last year and it isn’t expected to be common until 2015. We’d expect that by CES 2014 we’ll start seeing some WiGig gear.

Latest news stories about WiGig

 

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