HDBaseT TVs on Track for Early 2012 Delivery, Valens Semiconductor Says

Valens Semiconductor, which secured $14 million in second-round financing this week (CED July 7 p5), remains on track to ship HDBaseT chipsets to manufacturers of TVs and connecting components in time for delivery of products “early next year,” a company spokeswoman told us Friday. HDBaseT, along with DiiVA (Digital Interactive Interface for Video & Audio), is competing to be a next-gen networking technology in the home combining uncompressed and protected audio and video, Ethernet and control through one Cat5/6 cable. HDBaseT claims its technology can transmit power up to 100 watts, while DiiVA, officially specified at 5 watts, has demonstrated power transmission up to 24 watts.

Samsung and LG, founding members of the HDBaseT Alliance, along with Valens and Sony Pictures, haven’t responded to repeated queries about plans for HDBaseT-capable TVs, Blu-ray players and other connected devices. A Sony Electronics spokesman told us in May that the company is monitoring HDBaseT developments through its Sony Pictures sister company.

LG and Samsung are charter members of DiiVA, too, along with Haier, Sony, Hisense, TCL, Panda, Konka, Synerchip, Changhong, Skyworth and SVA. Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic and Nikon are among the “contributor” companies in the DiiVA Consortium. According to the DiiVA website, the contributor group provides “technical guidance and review of the DiiVA specification development process."

Both LG and Samsung announced last month that products of theirs were among the first to be certified at the DiiVA testing facility in Guangzhou, China. LG’s 42-inch 42LW6600 LCD TV was the first to receive DiiVA certification, and later in the month Samsung announced that four smart TVs had passed DiiVA testing. Neither company responded to our requests for information about product and marketing plans nor where those TVs would be sold.

The HDBaseT Alliance, meanwhile, announced the release of the HDBaseT 1.0 certification program in June along with availability of the first HDBaseT certified product, a Gefen HDMI 1.3 extender over CAT5 with Ethernet. The 1.0 certification program release includes

HDBaseT compliance test specifications, logo guidelines and the opening of the first HDBaseT-recognized test facility, located in Israel.