USB and Kleer aim at digital TVs

The USB Implementer's Forum will roll out in 2008 a variant of wired USB designed to move compressed high def video between displays and mobile devices. The group claims the technology will be complementary to HDMI which typically carries uncompressed video.

A spokesman for the USB group said developers could layer HDMI's HDCP encryption on top of the new USB variant. No other details were available about the effort.

In the wireless world, Kleer Corp. (Cupertino, Calif.) said it is ready to demonstrate SD video at rates up to 1.5 Mbits/s on its proprietary short-range wireless technology. The company's chip, primarily geared for audio, emerged at CES this year enabling wireless ear buds for an MP3 player from Thomson.

The company aims to enable video transfers between portable media players or to wired adapters that link to TVs. It hopes to gather more than a dozen backers of its proprietary protocol at an event at CES next month where it may show the video capabilities.

However, Kleer does not expect customers to show at CES any design wins for video streaming. "The big message at CES will be [protocol] interoperability," said Ron Glibbery, vice president of marketing at Kleer.

Even Kleer's next generation module, due by mid 2008, will focus on audio. It will add sampling rates above the current 44.1 KHz, cut power consumption to 20mW average and double the current 2.37 Mbits/s peak data rate.