Going Wireless

David Colin, October 29, 2002

Portable Wireless Projectors

FLASHBACK - Sixteen months ago at INFOCOMM 2001 in Las Vegas (U.S. annual A/V trade
show) a wireless presentation was demonstrated by Texas Instruments using a PLUS prototype
projector, a notebook computer,

and a personal digital assistant (PDA) each equipped with Wi-

Fi technology. To the amazement of all, a PowerPoint
presentation was delivered wirelessly from a notebook and
then a PDA.

Four months ago at this year's INFOCOMM, wireless exploded

onto the scene when it took center stage for new technology
offerings as Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, NEC,
Mitsubishi, Boxlight, Hitachi, PLUS, Sanyo, and Luxeon
showed their offerings.

Gone was the smaller, lighter, cheaper, brighter focus of years

INFOCOMM 2001 - Wireless Presentation
past. Wireless projector solutions were everywhere, front and
using PDA and PLUS Prototype Projector
center and in private suites. The manufacturers clearly believe
wireless has a future in projection. Perhaps the flood of wireless local area network (LAN)
solutions in the PC industry is the reason.

If you're into home theater and you're hoping to solve your wiring problem with wireless, you
probably need to cool your lamp. Piping high quality video through the air in real time without loss
of quality is not here yet, but stay tuned as it's not far off. Work is being done to expand the
performance of wireless services to cover data, video and audio. There are also some emerging
technologies that may be better suited for home theater - read on.

If you're a mobile presenter, today's wireless projectors can lighten your travel load, reduce your
setup time, and probably give your company the look of a leading edge organization.
Furthermore, it can give you the ability to operate your computer anywhere within 150 feet of the
projector.

If you want serious mobility, use a PDA equipped with wireless and run your presentation from
your pocket while you walk freely around the room making eye contact with your audience.
Hmmm, a "pocket presentation" - maybe it'll catch on.

If your need is the conference room, you can have a collaborative meeting among notebook and
PDA users in the room without having to physically connect everyone. Meetings will never be the
same.

If you're into education or training, you can share the projector with any computer in the
classroom without "plugging" in, or drive multiple projectors from a single computer. Many of
these new products offer password security that can be a deterrent to theft as the projector will
not operate without the proper password.

Giving up the cable does have some drawbacks that will be overcome in the next few years. First,
it's not full video or even streaming video, so forget about showing movies or training tapes. The
primary focus of these early wireless solutions is data integrity and not temporal applications like
voice and video.

Second, image refresh rates will vary based on image content and the quality of the signal
between you and the projector. However, within 150 feet line-of-sight or shorter distances, if
you're going through walls or objects, you can present computer generated material, browse the
Internet, and follow the mouse without a problem.

What is this wireless technology you ask? Well it's not Bluetooth, which was designed for
personal area networks (PAN) and delivers about a half a megabit per second (Mbps) within a
range of 10 meters. It's Wireless Fidelity, widely know as Wi-
Fi. This technology has been around for a couple of years in
the computer market and arrived last year in the projector
market.

Wi-Fi 802.11b is currently the most popular wireless solution

for projectors and small computer networks for home or office.
It has a throughput capacity of 11 Mbps and an approximate
range of 50 meters. Real data throughputs for all the wireless
solutions are less than the capacity throughput due to
communication overhead and synchronization issues. Wi-Fi Wi-Fi 802.11b PC Card
802.11b will deliver data at about 7 Mbps, which is more than 10 times the performance of
Bluetooth.

Other Wi-Fi variants are 802.11a and 802.11g. Wi-Fi 802.11a is currently available in the
computer market and we expect to see it or 802.11g in the projector market next year. The
advantage of 802.11a and 802.11g is a 5 fold increase in data rate over 802.11b making them
good enough for some streaming video applications. The downside is this higher performance
also comes with a reduction in range. Wi-Fi 802.11g will be the easier upgrade and therefore the
more likely candidate for the next generation of wireless projectors.

HomeRF 1.0 is another wireless technology that offers twice the performance of Bluetooth, but
has failed to live up to expectations. HomeRF 2.0 increased that performance to slightly less than
Wi-Fi 802.11b and may have restored new life to HomeRF. This technology is trying to address a
variety of wireless needs in the home including phones, audio, video, data, gaming and home
appliances. HomeRF 3.0, although not yet available, is expected to offer half the performance of
802.11a and 802.11g. It is unclear what wireless standard will win the minds and hearts of home
users, but the battle will likely be won in the cable/modem and consumer electronics market. Like
the Beta versus VHS wars of years past, time to market and cost drive consumer decisions.

Perhaps the mother lode of wireless may be Ultra Wideband (UWB) with the first chip sets spec'd
to deliver a maximum of 100 Mbps (about 10 times the performance of Wi-Fi 802.11b), but with a
more limited range. These early offerings will more than satisfy the current needs including video
such as MPEG-2HD. You can expect the first consumer products using this technology by
Christmas 2003. It will probably appear in the form of a DVD player using the new MPEG-2HD
format for high definition.

UWB will provide the kind of performance that could solve the wiring installation problems
associated with home theater, education, and corporate users. Its fundamentally an inexpensive
technology that requires less power than current technologies, so it has the potential to be
integrated into a lot of products where mobility or connectivity are issues. It also avoids the radio
frequency (RF) interference problems associated with other wireless devices because it is not an
RF technology.
The actual data rate and range of all these wireless solutions will depend heavily on the
environment in which they're used. The numbers mentioned are typical performance. Base your
purchase decisions on your needs and not the technology.

We will take a look at a few of these wireless projector offerings over the next few months as
many of these products begin to make it to the market. Check out the current list of wireless
projectors, or do your own search through Find Projectors.

The first three products being reviewed are the Sony VPL-PX15, NEC LT260, and the Toshiba
TLP-T501.

For those interested in further reading on this subject try the links below:

• www.bluetooth.com
• www.wi-fi.com
• www.uwb.org
• www.standards.ieee.org