USB 3.0 makes itself right at home

USB 2.0 first entered homes on computers and then on televisions. Similarly, USB 3.0 entered homes on ultrabooks and laptops, and is now permeating consumers’ digital homes through TVs, BluRay players, and WiFi routers.

Consumers are benefiting from the lower power consumption and higher data rates that USB 3.0 offers in many ways, such as connecting smart phones to TVs to share pictures with the family and adding a USB 3.0 hard drive to a WiFi router to make a family “cloud” for shared storage. There is a wide variety of digital home applications that will likely take off in 2013, and USB 3.0 systems on chip (SoCs) will be used in many of them.

First, a look back—CES 2011 was saturated with webcams running with TVs, both with the webcams mounted outside of the TV and connected via USB 2.0 ports. As shown in Figure 1, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony and other TV manufacturers showed off their products’ integration with these external devices.




Figure 1d shows the Chinese company Hisense’s four (four!) USB 2.0 ports integrated in a TV. With these ports, consumers can conveniently connect digital cameras and USB flash drives directly to the TV to share pictures and videos.  And, of course, connect a web cam to the TV for video conferencing and even gesture control.