Netgear has announced its 3DHD Wireless Home Theater Networking Kit, a set of high-performance 802.11n wireless adapters designed to transmit HD and 3D HD video throughout your home. The 3DHD kit, which received a CES 2011 Innovations Award, delivers multiple jitter-free 1080p high-definition video streams without additional wiring or cabling. Each 3DHD adapter can be connected to a home theater device with a network port, and features four transmitters and four receivers for 4x4 MIMO connectivity.As HD video devices spread throughout the home, home networks need more bandwidth to reliably carry the data streams. And where HD requires significant bandwidth, 3D HD requires two separate streams (one for each eye). Netgear says the 3DHD wireless kit lets you stream HD video to TVs anywhere in your home, while overcoming the inherent interference and range issues.
The Netgear 3DHD wireless adapters use the 5 GHz band, which is less crowded and has less interference than the 2.4 GHz band used by most other wireless network devices. The 3DHD adapters also use 4x4 MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) technology to support multicasting. MIMO systems use multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver to increase data rates, range, and reliability. In addition, using several antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver creates independent channels for sending multiple data streams.
The Netgear 3DHD Wirless Kit adds on to your existing Wi-Fi router or gateway, and automatically detects access point or bridge mode as needed. Installation requires powering up and connecting the adapters, and Netgear says you can start streaming immediately. Each Netgear 3DHD adapter can wirelessly connect up to four Ethernet-enabled home theater devices to your home network, such as Internet TVs, IPTV set-top boxes, Blu-Ray DVD players, TiVo HD, SlingBox, AppleTV, or gaming consoles.
The 3DHD adapters feature an integrated DSP engine to accelerate higher layer security. The units offer four 10/100 Mbps auto-sensing LAN ports, and 802.11a/n wireless capability with auto rate setting up to 300 Mbps.
Availability and pricing for the Netgear 3DHD Wireless Home Theater Networking Kit (WNHDB3004) has not yet been announced.
