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Posts Tagged ‘co:Ruckus’

amimon.bmpSilicon Valley chip company Amimon has released what it says is the first ever chip that serves high-definition uncompressed video wirelessly across the whole home.

That’s a bold claim, but could be true. The young Santa Clara, Calif. company’s chips stream HD video up to 150 feet, at an effective 250 to 800 megabits per second, which matches the capacity of the best of the numerous competing chip makers, many of them using Ultrawideband technology. (Amimon actually boasts that its chips offer video at 3 gigabits per second, but it is forced to strip out some of the video quality — see pdf — to operate within the regulated confines of the 5 gigahertz band, which is the same Wifi, thereby reducing that capacity significantly.)

amimon-chip.bmpThe chip should spur on the HDTV revolution, allowing consumers to more easily equip their flat-panel TVs with wireless technology. The company’s founder Noam Geri writes about the constraints of the industry until now, and why uncompressed wireless video streaming is important

Many other young chip companies offering wireless video transmission are using UltrawideBand technology, which can transmit a robust 500 megabits of data a second — roughly 10 times today’s WiFi speeds.

Last year, Amimon raised $14 million in a second round of funding, and got another round from Motorola earlier this year.

It follows a series of investments into other wireless broadband chip companies such as SiBeam, Artimi, TZero, Airgo and Ruckus.

SiBeam says it can transmit at 4 gigabits per seconds, using the 60GHz technology using standard (super fast). However, it doesn’t extend 150 feet. It reaches 10 meters, and says it has limited its range to that because Hollywood content owners fear that anything greater could subject it to hacking or access by others.

ruckus.jpgRuckus, which provides college students free unlimited PC and laptop download access to more than two million songs, has raised $10 million in a second round of financing.

The service is apparently making headway on competitor Napster, which offers a similar service. Earlier this month, Penn State dropped a partnership with Napster, in favor of Ruckus — because Ruckus did not charge it for the contract.

However, there’s no sign the company is making headway on revenue. Students are unlikely to upgrade to its paid premium service, because students are frugal — and because it competes with Apples’ iTunes. The company isn’t saying anything about revenue.

Indeed, the new money will be used to find ways to push advertising to support the basic free access, it said. It has signed contracts with 40 new schools over the past school year, for a total of 120 schools in its network nationwide. The site is also pushing social network features. Any student owning a .edu address can access the service — even those from schools without a contract. The music includes songs from all the major labels and various independent labels. It has added access to full-length films to its offerings, too.

The company charges $19.95 a semester to students wanting to download music to portable devices, and $14.95 a semester to download movies, but concedes that revenue from this is “nominal.”

Investors are Anschutz Investment Company and Columbia Capital. Existing investors include Battery Ventures, Eastward Capital, Pinnacle Ventures and Shelter Capital, although Pinnacle did not invest in this round. The Herndon, Va. company has now raised more than $33 million.

Ruckus’ parent company is Ruckus Network.

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