Imagine you’ve just come home from a busy day at work. You’re beat and all you want to do is watch TV. But it’s also a beautiful day and you’d like to be outside. You’re thinking, “Wow, if only I could watch TV on my laptop out on the deck.” Your laptop has wireless capabilities … but what about your home network?

While most home entertainment networks still do not offer wireless service as a standard feature, the day is rapidly approaching when practically all of them will. As such, Daewoo Electronics and Metalink have teamed up to create a set-top-box (STB) which delivers wireless service over 802.11n throughout a user’s home.

By integrating Metalink’s WLANPlus chipset into Daewoo’s next-generation STB, the two companies claim they have created an STB which can deliver multiple high-definition video streams wirelessly to any device in any room. This gives users the freedom and flexibility to watch TV anywhere in the house … whether it is in the kitchen, up in the attic, even out in the front yard!

The new STB will be unveiled for the first time at IFA, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows, to be held September 1-6, 2006, in Berlin.

Metalink’s WLANPlus technology enables high-definition video streaming via a wide range of hardware, including residential gateways, DTVs, HDTVs, set-top boxes, media adaptors and digital video recorders.

“We are always looking for emerging technologies that can be used to offer new and more efficient services to our customers,” said Song Ki Min, director, Digital Media Research Center, at Daewoo Electronics, in a press release. “We believe that 802.11n-based products will be broadly used to provide multiple high definition video throughout the home, and as a result, selected Metalink’s WLANPlus chip-set as the enabling technology for our next-generation, high-end set top boxes, because it is the industry’s first 802.11n-draft compliant silicon able to support such demanding applications.”

Metalink claims its WLANPlus technology allows for throughput which is five to 10 times faster than what is currently available through wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g technologies. Its WLANPlus technology is already being widely used by major consumer electronics semiconductor companies, and has also been designed into advanced products by worldwide leading manufacturers.

For more information about Metalink, visit http://www.metalinkbb.com.

For more information about Daewoo Electronics, visit http://www.dwe.co.kr.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

TMCnet’s Manuel Lirio contributed to this article.