Taking another stab at home networking over power lines

The advent of WiFi was a boon to home computer users, but the consumer electronics industry keeps searching for a more idiot-proof and higher-performing home-network solution -- something that can transmit multiple HDTV streams throughout a home, yet doesn't require anyone to read an owner's manual. Technologies that use a home's power lines to carry Internet traffic have seemed promising in the past -- after all, every electronic device in the home has to be near an outlet -- but the public never really embraced them. They simply didn't work well enough in too many homes with complex internal wiring or (electronically) noisy appliances. So chip makers and telecommunications companies went back to the drawing board, coming up with yet another standard for power-line networking: G.hn. Sigma Designs announced what it says is the first chipset for G.hn products, which boast top connection speeds of more than 1 gigabit per second. The chips will be available early next year, with products based on those chips coming by the end of 2011.