Monster's Worst Nightmare

If you are one of the millions of people that own monitor capable of High Definition (HD) (or bought one last weekend in time for the Super Bowl!) then you have probably been exposed to the unbelievably expensive and lucrative DVI and HDMI video cable market. And if you bought from Best Buy or Circuit City, then they probably did their best to convince you to buy from Monster Cable. Even at Walmart, a six foot HDMI Monster cable sells for $80. You can buy an upscaling DVD player for less than this - but it won't work without an HDMI cable. Monster Cable is undoubtedly receiving huge profits from the HD craze.

However, thanks to IBM engineers, this market could soon be suffering a crash. IBM is developing a new Wireless chip technology known as silicon germanium. This could mean that one day - your DVD can stream a flawless, 1080p signal direct to your monitor at several gb/second. Due to the price of today's digital cables, if the pricing of this new technology can remain reasonable-the possibilities are endless. Wireless speakers, receivers, cable systems, etc. Imagine a single wireless DVD player that can stream a signal to any room and multiple monitors. Hopefully, we'll see adapters that can convert existing systems over to this new standard, but most likely - it'll mean buying new integrated components. Especially if Sony gets involved in it!