Amimon showed us its WHDI (Wireless High Definition Interface) working perfectly at last January's CES and today the company is shipping that chipset to manufacturers of TVs, projectors and other consumer electronics products. That's fine, but the big deal is that they've confirmed that 1080p over wireless is a go. Hurrah! It does use an interesting trick, though.

They're doubling the chipsets in each TV to get that 1080p signal. One set enables uncompressed 720p and 1080i video to be transmitted over the 5GHz wireless band, using 20MHz of bandwidth and reaching distances up to 100 feet with the same quality as HDMI cable. Two of the chipsets ganged together send 1080p video wirelessly, using 40MHz of bandwidth. The company also revealed that version 2.0 will combine two chipsets into one for the 1080p solution.

Amimon is a fabless semiconducter company, so it won't be building dongles and boxes using this tech, but will supply them to consumer electronics manufacturers. Amimon is hoping WHDI will become the new wireless HDMI standard, and told us by January, 2008 at CES, a variety of its partners will be announcing products with the WHDI interface, either installed internally or deployed in the form of dongles that transmit and receive the WHDI signal.

Amimon wasn't willing to give us a complete list of manufacturers set to receive the chipsets or embrace the technology, but did mention European high-end TV manufacturer Loewe and Japan's Funai would demo WHDI at the upcoming IFA convention in Berlin. Amimon added that Sanyo was also planning the use the tech (and we saw a demo of its projector running WHDI at 720p at CES last January) and said that Motorola is also an investor in the company.

When we asked about pricing of the WHDI chipset, Amimon wasn't willing to spell out specifics, but said the components would cost "several hundred dollars" at the outset. The company added that as economies of scale improve, the chipset should add less than $10 to the price of a device. [Amimon]

Here's the Amimon press release:

AMIMON Announces WHDI Chipset Availability

Whole-home HD Video Connectivity Net Now Unwired and Uncompressed;
WHDI HDTVs To Be Demonstrated at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show

Santa Clara, Calif. - August 28, 2007 - AMIMON Inc., an emerging leader in semiconductor technology for wireless transmission of high-definition (HD) video, has today announced the availability of its Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI™) chipset. The WHDI chipset (AMN2110 and AMN2210) enables CE display and device manufacturers to develop home entertainment products that connect wirelessly.

The WHDI chipset can be embedded into CE devices such as LCD and plasma HDTVs, multimedia projectors, A/V receivers, DVD players (HD-DVD and Blu-ray), set-top boxes (STBs), game consoles, PCs and HD video accessories (wireless for HDMI dongles), allowing wireless streaming of uncompressed HD video and audio.

"With WHDI chipsets in hand, CE manufacturers will now be able to offer consumers wireless HDTVs and other HD wireless video devices based on the WHDI standard," said Noam Geri, vice president of marketing and business development at AMIMON.

"Consumers should see initial WHDI-based products at the end of this year, with a wide variety of WHDI-based CE products available in 2008."

AMIMON's WHDI makes it possible for a wireless whole-home HD video connectivity net that allows the devices to share HD content throughout the entire home, up to 30 meters (100 feet) through walls, while maintaining superb, wire-equivalent quality and robustness with no latency. WHDI is the only uncompressed wireless technology with the capability of covering the entire home.

"Home entertainment enthusiasts are asking for wireless HDTVs that can be hung on the wall without having to run cumbersome and unaesthetic audio/video wires," said Roland Bohl, Loewe's director of R&D. "AMIMON's WHDI technology enables us to meet this demand while maintaining the high quality of HDTVs."

CE manufacturers Loewe and Funai will be demonstrating wireless HDTVs based on AMIMON's WHDI technology at the IFA Consumer Electronics tradeshow in Berlin, August 31 - September 5, 2007.

AMIMON's WHDI technology is based on a unique video modem approach. WHDI supports delivery of uncompressed 1080p (with equivalent video rates of up to 3 Gbps) in a 40MHz channel in the 5GHz unlicensed band, in compliance with FCC regulations. Uncompressed 720p, 1080i and 1080p 24/30p (with equivalent video rates of up to 1.5 Gbps) can be delivered in a 20MHz channel, conforming to worldwide 5GHz regulations. Range is beyond 100 feet through walls (entire home), and latency is less than 1 millisecond.

More than just a wire replacement, AMIMON's WHDI enables a connectivity matrix of multipoint-to-multipoint connections, allowing consumers to eliminate all the A/V wires and cables in the entire home.

AMIMON's WHDI chipsets and reference designs are available now. Companies, engineers and developers interested in additional information on WHDI chipsets should contact AMIMON at info@amimon.com.

For further technical details of AMIMON's WDHI technology, please visit: www.amimon.com/technology.shtml.

About AMIMON
AMIMON is a fabless semiconductor company pioneering wireless uncompressed high-definition video for universal connectivity among CE video devices. AMIMON's uncompressed Wireless High-definition Interface (WHDI™) allows flat-panel televisions and multimedia projectors to wirelessly interface to all HDTV video sources at a quality equivalent to that achieved with wired interfaces such as component video, DVI and HDMI™.

The company is headquartered in Herzlia, Israel, with offices in Santa Clara, Calif., USA, and Tokyo, Japan. More information is available at www.AMIMON.com.

WHDI is a trademark of AMIMON, Ltd. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are those of their respective holders.