Q allows for the most flexible WirelessHDMI solution through features and programmability.

Key facts:

• WirelessHDMI to supply wireless High Definition Multimedia Interface signals
• Many vendors towards UWB based solutions, require some compression
• Q is able to provide JPEG2000 and H.264 compression solutions in one chip
• Flexible H.264 encoding allows for multi-range coverage

Exploiting Q's flexibility offers a unique solution for WirelessHDMI. WirelessHDMI aims at cable replacement for high-definition signals at a short-range, with bitrates typically in the 50-200 Mbps range. Several codec options are availble to wireless HDMI (JPEG2000, H.264, SVC), which are mostly deployed using UWB signals. A multitude of vendors are developing chipsets that deploy WirelessHDMI over UWB, which are however incompatible with each other, mostly because of an unstandardised choice of codecs, bitrates and coding profiles.

Q's programmable engine supports all standards needed by the market, in particular the two strongest candidates in H.264 and JPEG2000, reducing sensibly any development risk.

The H.264 Option

H.264 is mathematically a lossy solution, nevertheless leveraged by the more widespread availability (and lower price) of H.264 decoder chips and the fact that H.264 I-frame only encoding at WirelessHDMI bitrates is subjectively equivalent (if not better) to JPEG2000.

Moreover, the new H.264 SVC (Scalable Video Coding) standard allows for bitstream delivery regardless of the quality of the link: should the link quality decrease (for example when a portable device is moved farther from the transmitter) the bitstream generation will adjust to a lower-bitrate (lower quality or resolution) picture to maintain the service.

H.264 streams can also be delivered as low-latency WirelessHDMI in-room using an I-Frame only compression. Nonetheless, long-GOP encoding is also possible enabling all-house coverage at lower-data rates (802.11n).

The JPEG 2000 Option

JPEG 2000 offers both a lossless ("uncompressed") and lossy encoding modes, with the latter scalable to maintain QoS on a link of variable quality. Also, although JPEG2000 decoders are less available than H.264, the same device can be used for both encode and decode.