back to article Bluetooth goes 3D with Apple

Apple has joined the board of the Bluetooth SIG, signing up for a standard that's looking away from high speed networking to exploit 3D TV and the Wellness industry instead. Along with Apple comes Nordic Semiconductor, bringing ultra-low-power experience to the board of the Special Interest Group, but it's Apple's membership …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Bilgepipe

    Patents

    Apple have been quietly patenting a lot of ideas which might relate to this, like an iPod which links to your fitness machine at the gym to record your workouts, etc. It did take them years before the iMac would pair with stereo bluetooth headphones though.

  2. Synonymous Howard

    3D Wellness?

    3D Illness Shirley?

    Beep beep .. incoming bluetooth connection .. heart monitor says you have just died .. either that or the sensor cable fell off.

    I read "Wellness" as "Wellbeing" .. ahh give us a hug and a light a smelly candle and we will all be okay.

    Oh well(ness), back to the high stress IT stuff; sitting in a sunny garden makes working on a crappy T61 laptop slightly easier to bear .. [note to self: where's my Pimms? Wimbledon's on soon 8-]

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apple is slow on Bluetooth adoption...

    but moving forward.

    A2DP (stereo bluetooth streaming) has been supported in the iPod since iOS 4.0 (released over an year ago) unlike the article implies.

    iOS 5 brings more to the table, including AVRCP 1.3 for currently playing track metadata. They've also added AAC as a non-mandatory codec option - which should offer much better quality than the standard SBC codec. In the headset side they've added a Wide Band speech codec.

    They've also now have a proper document clearly stating what they support and have started an official bluetooth discussion mailing list for their operating systems.

    I was a bit surprised by all these developments as I half expected Apple to even drop Bluetooth in the near future, given AirPlay and AirDrop are all Wifi based, but it's not looking like that at all.

    1. Mad Hacker

      Eh? You're wrong.

      You say: A2DP (stereo bluetooth streaming) has been supported in the iPod since iOS 4.0 (released over an year ago) unlike the article implies.

      Hmmm really? I just purchased a brand new top of the line $250 iPod with 160GB of storage and I can assure you it does not support Bluetooth. I can also see that the Shuffle and the Nano don't support Bluetooth either. Only one model of iPod line (the touch) supports Bluetooth.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    At last!

    Bluetooth remote controls for teh telly would be fantastic. Between random stuff on the living room floor interrupting LOS to the DVD and Virgin box (underneath the telly), and the knickknacks the wife insists on keeping on the tellystand next to the telly's IR reciever, I end up contorting myself into weird postures to try and control the damn things. Compare to the Xbox controller, where I can just slouch back comfortably and not care about any of it. Wireless is the way forwards here.

    1. Tom Sparrow
      Thumb Up

      Re: At last! - Absolutely

      I've been wondering for years why remote controls are still IR.

      Anyone who thinks otherwise has obviously never had a child sit directly in front of the DVD player and demand to know why Little Red Tractor isn't playing yet.

      1. CmdrX3

        Bluetooth my ass

        Personally I think Microsoft are missing a trick here. They should be trying to license out the Kinect tech to TV & Monitor manufacturers for a remote control with motion and as a by-product integrated Xbox support as well as the possibilities it could bring to the PC through having it monitor integrated.

      2. User McUser
        Holmes

        Why remote controls still use IR

        Bluetooth Controller Chip - $7

        InfraRed LED - 28¢

        Hmmm...

  5. Swarthy
    Thumb Up

    Finally!

    A good use for NFC!

    Screw electronic wallets, an easy, more secure bluetooth pairing mechanism is exactly what NFC would be good for.

  6. Daniel Simeone
    Alert

    HCI drives = HCI drivers

    See title.

  7. T.a.f.T.

    LOS for a TV!

    > arguments about line of sight have never cut much ice with users who can generally see the television they want to control

    I have plenty of TV related bumph that I would love to hide in a cupboard (well the other 1/2 would love me to hide it) that I don't need to see. DVD player, BlueRay, Hi-Fi/Surround sound system, 2 set-top boxes... The only thing I need to see is the screen but I need to fire a remote at a billion things!

    One great thing about MythTV is that I can use my phone to do the remote and I would think that making it so that your phone, fondel slab or similar can control all your AV kit would be an obvious choice. Most manufactures don't sell their kit based on how great their remote is after all so getting them to play nice and not each fork out more money making a remote I will loose down the sofa* should be easy right?

    Black Hawk beacse it always looks a bit like a laser hitting a skull to me and we should not have lasers in our remotes.

    *I still have not found the Virgin set top box remote after I moved house 4 months ago... the buttons on the box work well enough on the odd times I need to watch free virgin over Freeview.

  8. The BigYin
    WTF?

    "Wellness industry"

    WTF is that?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    brain cancer

    bluetooth for 3D headsets?.. 2.4GHz right next to my head for hours every evening? sign me up!

    1. Eddy Ito

      Oh yeah

      3D is way better than the simple mono headsets I see growing out of the ears of so many obviously important people. I do hope they turn up the power so we don't have to wait so long before they kick.

    2. The BigYin

      Would the RF...

      ...ionising enough to damage the cells? I wouldn't have thought so (being below light), but what do I know.

  10. ian 22
    Pint

    As a wrinkly, I want to know...

    Will this let me down more wine?

    Long in the tooth don't ye know.

  11. Urgetosplurge
    Trollface

    A bit of bite

    Nice to see an article tweaking the tail of the industry more than we've seen from the Reg of late. Wouldn't want the satire dumbed down to placate unhappy vendors now....

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like