Broadcom looks to replace HDMI with Ethernet

Wireless streaming of high-definition video must still be very far off.

While it does exist in various forms today, one of the premier members of the Wireless HD Consortium, Broadcom, is proposing a new streaming video interface standard which focuses on HD over Ethernet.

Called BroadSync HD, the standard is Broadcom's own custom implementation of the 802.1 Audio-Video Bridging (AVB) standard for streaming and syncing video over standard Cat 5 cables with RJ45 connections (a.k.a., Ethernet). Broadcom said today it has assembled an end-to-end solution for A/V transmission combining Ethernet switches, end-point devices, physical layer devices and software, and is currently working to bring the technology to market.

The end goal for this standard may be no less than to replace all dedicated audio and video cabling such as component, S-Video, SCART, DVI, and HDMI with Ethernet cables. Broadcom said today that AVB will establish the Ethernet connection as "the common underlying technology for high quality network-based streaming that will eventually replace most other types of connectivity presently used in A/V equipment."

Typical high definition televisions and set-top boxes suffer from interface clutter, as this picture illustrates; and that clutter is invariably turned into a tangle of converted, sometimes spliced wires in the user's physical space. Even worse for the consumer is that high definition cabling also carries a steep price.

Broadcom's advocacy of AVB as a standard is similar to the widespread adoption of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in notebooks and phones, but works instead on the principle of using what's available. By devising a standard for utilizing cheap and readily available parts to deliver HD content, manufacturing costs of HD equipment can go down, and the consumer can breathe more easily.