WiSA Board Member Hoping to Jump-Start CE Vendor Interest at CEDIA Expo
Original device manufacturer Hansong Technology announced Wednesday availability of two WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio) product designs that it will demo next week at CEDIA Expo in Denver. The HDMI adapter transmits HD surround-sound audio via a TV’s HDMI port to WiSA-compliant speakers, and an audio hub transmits HD audio wirelessly from sources including Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, game consoles and mobile devices, it said. The adapter includes Bluetooth connectivity for wireless streaming and setup, Hansong said, and the wireless audio hub offers decoding via HDMI, S/PDIF, DLNA and Bluetooth connections. Consumers can stream content from a smartphone or tablet via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the company said.
Dan Crupi, vice president-business development for Hansong North America, told Consumer Electronics Daily that the platforms the company is demonstrating at CEDIA Expo won’t be CE-branded. The boxes will have Hansong’s name, he said. As for an expected delivery date for branded products, Crupi said timing depends on brand customers’ schedules, marketing plans and packaging needs. The platforms are “ready for final development and certification and could easily be in stores by 2Q 2014,” he told us by email.
Crupi said Hansong will have pricing estimates for marketable products by the time of the show. “We are optimizing the bill of materials now and will have pricing estimates to discuss with the brand companies there,” he said. Crupi said there are no current plans for customers to show Hansong-based products at CES. Hansong is in discussions with several customers about the technology, but the only demonstration will be at the Hansong booth, he said. Hansong is an advisory board member of the WiSA Association.
The Hansong adapter product is designed to be a simple, “cost-effective” solution for the legacy TV market, the company said. Speaker brands can include the adapter with their products, which would give consumers the choice of buying a 2.1-channel speaker system today and then scaling up to 7.1 surround-sound speakers in the future, it said.
Hansong said its “ready-to-brand” hardware solution can go into production immediately or be modified according to customer requirements. The products are based on the U-Nii frequency band and meet the compliance requirement of the WiSA association’s test specification which ensures interoperability between speakers and CE devices that carry the WiSA compliance logo, it said.
"Consumers are clamoring for a cost-effective solution that addresses the need for a high quality wireless surround-sound audio experience that matches the enhanced quality of the video display,” said Jim Venable, president of the WiSA Association, in a statement. Specifically, WiSA members have asked for a simple adapter and an enhanced audio hub reference design to speed up product introductions and save on engineering costs, Venable said.