THX Roomcaster promises wireless home cinema audio for audiophiles

Posted by Al Warmington on Wed 14 Jan 2009

This could mark the beginning of the end for HDMI and AV cables in general

Face it, cables are the bane of home entertainment system. We all want a 7.1 surround system with a subwoofer the size of a chest freezer but foot upon tangled foot of speaker cables, interconnectors and power chords make a mockery of your home décor and turn your living room into a deadly obstacle course faster than you can say “I’d take off those high heels if I were you”.

In an ideal world, everything would be wireless: a wireless connector for your TV so it can be wall mounted and not trail cables all down the clean, bare walls; a wireless connector for your system components so you don’t have to spend ages scrabbling around in the back of the TV cabinet, trying to work why the left channel is coming out of next-door’s bathroom; and wireless connectors for the speakers, so that you don’t have to tear up the living room carpet just to get a decent surround setup.

Well, we’re very happy to report that we’re a step closer to that utopian future now that THX has announced an official partnership with Radiient Technologies. Radiient was founded by Jano Banks, who was previously responsible for co-inventing the HDMI standard, now present in every single decent HDTV. Banks obviously wasn’t very happy with his earlier work though because he now seems to be on a mission to destroy it, using a far more convenient wireless alternative, called THX Roomcaster.

THX Roomcaster boasts that it is the only wireless audio technology that operates on ultra-wideband, 3-10 GHz range. This is ideal for sending very high levels of data over a short distance, giving Roomcaster the unique ability to transmit completely uncompressed, 24-bit, eight-channel audio at distances of up to 30 feet, without any drop in quality or messing up the lip-sync. Furthermore, it’s completely protected from interference from other transmitting devices such as cordless phones and microwaves and it even has the capacity to carry video, on top of everything else, if anyone should feel the need.

“Everything else has gone wireless, so why haven’t the speakers?” asks Banks. “Existing wireless technologies suffer from problems with compression and falling out of sync” he explains, but points out their practicality, convenience and ease of use. THX Roomcaster reckons it can achieve the best of both these worlds, which should be music to the ears of serious audiophiles and home theatre enthusiasts.

And it’s scalable, so in time it could start to show up inside any receiver or component boasting the Radiient XWAV module and meeting THX’s exacting standards. That could be anything from a Blu-ray player to a pair of headphones and you can add more speakers anywhere, simply by pairing them up and plugging them into a power socket. You’ve always wanted four separate subs at the same time, right?

We’ll be keeping a close eye out for more THX Roomcaster devices over the coming year. But if you just can’t wait that long, then you can look at the appropriately named Radiient Early Adapter Kit, which gives you the THX Roomcaster transmitter and six speaker “backpack” adapters. It’ll cost you a cool $1999 when you order it from the Radiient website.

Link: THX and Radiient

Buy from here: THX