BusinessWeek's Technology & You

We had the chance to talk with Steve Wildstrom from BusinessWeek a few days ago regarding his column entitled Juicing Up Home Networks.  The focus of the piece was on two powerline networking products and his tests of their effectiveness for distributing video content around the home. 

Steve made a number of good points in his column and in the discussion.  He differentiated between the marketing claims of maximum throughput for powerline -- which were purported to be 200 megabits per second (Mbps) -- and the average throughput which proved to be dramatically less, somewhere in the range of 12 to 20 Mbps.  He talked about the different types of video, both standard definition or broadcast TV quality, and high definition, and the demands these two classes of content put on a network. High-definition video, according to Steve "choked" the powerline products he tested.   

So if powerline isn't the solution to distributing high-definition video around the home, what is? Obviously, we believe that UWB will play a significant role in this application across a range of devices -- both wireless and wired.  Steve expects to write more about this topic in the future.

By the way, if you haven't listened to Steve's Technology & You podcast , definitely give it a try.