Sony, Samsung, Hitachi, Motorola, and Sharp have gotten them in a new format battle by releasing the Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) standard. They will battle with Intel, LG, Matsushita, NEC, Toshiba (together in WirelessHD - WiHD) to become the standard for wireless HD, but what's interesting, Sony and Samsung also support this format.
Now we just got rid of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle, we'll have another one to follow. However Sony and Samsung have a different view on this. Sony supports WHDI as it wants to have 'wider options' and Samsung supports WHDI as a technology to support until WirelessHD takes over, which according to the company has better picture quality.
WHDI claims to have a range of up to 30.5m, uses the 5GHz band to transmit uncompressed HD video and audio and control signals around the home from multiple sources to multiple receivers. All this data is transferred at rates up to 3Gb/s. WHDI can go through walls and has a latency of less than a millisecond.
WiHD on the other hand operates in the 60GHz band and provides 5Gb/s of bandwidth for uncompressed HD video. But it requires a line of sight between transmitter and receiver.
Let's have the fun all over again, who is going to win? If you predicted the winner of the blue laser format war correctly, you'll get an extra bonus point...
Since Sony is siding with both, I predict this will not be very interesting for the usual commenters on this site... 
It makes no difference what the speed of the interface is, as long as it's above 30 Mb/sec it will be fine. The bigger issues will be what has the least problems with interferance. They can make it as fast as they want, it won't matter. A 1Gb link is far more than is needed. But if they're claiming 3-5 Gb, actual delivered speeds will probably be much lower.
The whole point of wireless would be to transmit to mmutiple rooms throughout the house, so Samsungs WirelessHD format would lose due to needing line of sight for a connection. I predict Sony wins again. 
Well, Samsung already gives a hint on what might happen (that is, WHDI be only a temporary solution), but as noted above, WiHD has one major drawback -- the requirement for a direct line of sight... Except the significantly rich and picky (in terms of home decoration), most people wouldn't mind running some cables for a quality connection, when you already HAVE a line of sight to the receiver.
Oh, and WHDI's ~ 375 MB/s should suffice for a while -- especially if you add *some* compression to the video.
The electromagnetic spectrum has enough polution as it is - why add to it ?
Since the media freaks will adopt this first, the Sony option woulod actually be better if it goes thru walls. The bandwidth between both is less important. 3Gb/s is enough to go for years and it is a benefit to not have receiver in line of sight of the the transmitter...
I'm with WHDI on this one regardless of who's behind it. The same reason i'm against Blu-ray without caring who's behind it. Look at the latest Samsung offer and you'll have one more reason to understand why... 799 for rubbish outdated BD 1.0 player with some cheapish 5.1 set...
One problem, everyone buying a TV today (HD) will not adapt to a new TV just to have this on board... so it might go very slowly...
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