The market for merged audio-and-video transport over physical wiring remains to some degree fragmented. The dueling DisplayPort and HDMI (high-definition-multimedia-interface) camps, for example, continue to make their cases to their system-design customers and end users (Reference 1). And both legacy and upstart alternative-cabling approaches remain relevant to a debatable degree (see sidebar "HDBaseT strives for ascendancy")- The technology treadmill rolls on, however. An increasing amount of industry attention now focuses on cutting the cord by employing wireless transport from source to destination. The approach has notable merits, including enabling the portability of both the multimedia source and the destination locations and dispensing with unsightly and cumbersome wires. The display's power cable must remain for now, however (see sidebar "Wireless power: the hype of the hour"). The wireless approach also potentially extends the source-to-destination span beyond wires' attenuation-defined limitations, including, in some cases, routing signals not only intraroom but also inter-room, again without the need for unaesthetic, difficult-to-install, and costly wall-spanning cable-routing topologies.
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