The WirelessHD Consortium (http://www.wirelesshd.org), the largest 60GHz initiative worldwide and the only wireless standard that provides wireless lossless A/V support, has announced immediate availability of the WirelessHD 1.1 specification announced this January at the Consumer Electronics Show.

This next generation WirelessHD specification enables HDTVs, Blu-ray disc players, PCs and portable devices to transmit, share and display content in billions of colors with unprecedented vividness and accuracy as well as instantaneously transfer large multi-gigabyte media files among a variety of devices, according to John Marshall, chairman of the WirelessHD Consortium.

The WirelessHD specification is currently supported by over 45 global technology companies. Products implementing WirelessHD 1.1 technology will be backward compatible to those products using WirelessHD 1.0 technology. Marshall says the WirelessHD 1.1 specification includes the following updates:

° Optimized architecture: it handles multi-gigabit data rates for A/V streaming and file transfer (Wireless Personal Area Networking or WPAN) at the lowest link power;

° Highest data rates: the next generation specification increases the data rate to 10-28 Gbps. This will support the demands of future high definition display devices, such as higher resolutions, deep color and high frame rates, as well as high speed data applications;

° 3D over WirelessHD: the new specification will define common 3D formats and resolutions for WirelessHD-enabled devices;

° 4K resolution support: this enables devices to support HD resolution four times beyond that of 1080p. This feature allows the WirelessHD interface to transmit content at the same resolution as many digital theaters;

° WPAN Data support: connected devices that include this feature supports sync’n go file transfers for portable and fixed devices. This new specification also provides for IP connectivity for Internet access and networking of WirelessHD devices;

° Portable device support: the scalability of WirelessHD technology has been extended to support lossless video streaming in low-power portable devices such as portable media players, netbooks and smartphones;

° HDCP 2.0 content protection over WirelessHD: in addition to DTCP, both the current and future versions of WirelessHD will include support for HDCP 2.0 content protection. WirelessHD is the only standard to support both streaming and copying of multimedia content.