HDTV, or High Definition Television, is the big technology in home entertainment today. Television stations are beginning to broadcast in HDTV, and people are beginning to replace their old televisions with new ones capable of receiving HDTV signals. That is opening the door for some very interesting new concepts.

In October 2004 at the IEEE Broadcast Symposium, CRC first demonstrated a new possibility by transmitting HDTV over wireless local networks, also known as WiFi. By sending HDTV signals between two laptops using a WiFi network, CRC was the first to demonstrate that this concept would be possible. A second demonstration at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference in Las Vegas in April 2005 further demonstrated to the industry the possibilities of this application for HDTV.

The challenge lay in the fact that HDTV, while providing five times the resolution and better image quality than regular television, also requires much greater bandwidth for transmission. CRC was able to show that a WiFi network connection could carry an HDTV signal to one remote television connected to the network. This would allow a person to roam within a home, or elsewhere within range of the network, continuing to receive their HDTV signal.

Down the road, this breakthrough could allow HDTV reception on portable televisions within a house without the need to run cables everywhere. The technology could also have possible benefits in areas like health and education, where the ability to view high resolution HDTV from elsewhere on the network could translate into new innovations in the way we are treated or the way we learn.