The recently ratified Bluetooth 3.0 specification not only ups the wireless interface’s speed to 25 Mbits per second, but also defines a new function called Unicast Connectionless Data (UCD), putting it in direct competition with the RF4CE (FAQ), the wireless remote control specification that merged last month with the Zigbee Alliance (IEEE 802.15.4) efforts to replace infrared remote controls, says EE Times.
TV makers will have to choose between them.
Bluetooth was considered too power hungry and its latency too high for remote controls, burning through a set of batteries in three months and delaying a second or more before registering a button push. However, the new UCD functionality in the 3.0 spec extends battery life to about four years and lowers Bluetooth’s latency to milliseconds.UCD “allows you to keep Bluetooth in sleep mode most of the time, to conserve battery life.
Using Bluetooth 3.0 also enables additional capabilities for high-end TVs not possible with RF4CE, proponents claims, such as hi-fi audio transmissions, network access to download TV schedules for display on the remote, push-picture for automatically uploading digital camera pictures to a TV and integration with Wi-Fi for transmitting high-bandwidth audio and video using a peer-to-peer connection controlled by Bluetooth commands.
Bluetooth 3.0 also allows cellphones with music players to be virtually docked to TVs so that media played on a handheld device streams to TV speakers.
RF4CE chip makers like Freescale Semiconductor claim that Bluetooth is overkill for command-and-control applications traditionally handled by IR remotes.
Zigbee’s RF4CE spec increases the remote control range to over 1,000 feet compared to about 50 feet for IR and Bluetooth. But with more than 2 billion Bluetooth enabled devices shipped, including more than 50% of mobile phones sold worldwide, Bluetooth is becoming the solution of choice for connecting consumer devices.
