Intersil and Sharp Push Wireless TVs

If you have a satellite dish for your TV reception or even a DVD player, it would be nice if you could beam the video signal all over your home from a single box. Well, that's what Intersil and Sharp have been working on. Sharp is putting Intersil's PRISM WLAN chipsets in its new AN-SS700 audio/visual digital transmission system, which allows wireless television viewing throughout the home as long as an electrical outlet is available. PRISM chipsets deliver wireless Ethernet networking in compliance with the Wi-Fi (IEEE's 802.11b) standard (11 Mbps). AN-SS700 is a completely digital wireless system that operates in the 2.4 GHz band and lets Sharp's AV distribute television reception even to rooms that are blocked by walls or out of the line-of-sight of the unit. The AN-SS700 includes a transmitter and receiver each measuring approximately 5.83" (width) by 3.11" (height) by 1.54" (depth). Using PRISM WLAN technology, Sharp's MAC technology and an MPEG2 encoder/decoder to handle compressed audio and video, and the AN-SS700 transmitter can be connected to a VCR, DVD player or satellite tuner by composite video signal. The video pictures received by the AN-SS700 are wirelessly transmitted as digital signals so that they can be viewed remotely on LCD TVs connected to the receiver unit. A wireless remote control lets you to operate the transmitter and typical AV equipment attached to the transmitter. The downfall of course, you have to have a digital TV to use the system, and it looks like it's only compatible with Sharp LCD TVs. Or at least that's the way the companies make it sound.