From June 3rd to the 7th of 2008, HD-PLC Alliance was an exhibitor at the IT trade show, COMPUTEX Taipei, held at the Taipei International Trade Center in Taipei, Taiwan. Green IT, WiMax, mini notebook computers were the talk of this year's show. In particular, various technologies for realizing eco-friendly Green IT were drawing everyone’s attention. At this year's show, it was clear that devices and manufacturers adopting HD-PLC were not just limited to the IT field, but also starting to spread into the home electronics field. Attendees should have felt the possibilities that HD-PLC has in changing daily living environments.

1725 companies participated at this year’s COMPUTEX Taipei

COMPUTEX Taipei is an IT-related trade show, held during the first part of June every year in Taipei. The number of attendees and exhibition booths are of the biggest scale in Asia, and is said to be the second largest the world. This is why the trade show draws a lot of attention internationally. Since Taiwan is the international supply base of IT devices such as PCs, buyers from all over the world gather in Taipei at this time of year. This year, 1,725 corporations from 25 countries participated, and 100,000 attendees from the IT industry in Taiwan and 35,000 buyers from abroad visited the trade show.

The HD-PLC Alliance set up a booth as one of the 1,725 exhibitors. The purpose of the exhibit was to show the attendees from the IT industry in Taiwan and from all around globe, how HD-PLC would change users' lives with the realization of an ubiquitous environment using power lines. The alliance wanted to show the details of what they envision for the future, as well as calling to the industry to join the alliance.

Interesting demonstrations and devices draw attention

At the exhibition booth, demonstrations included: images from a network camera was displayed on TV, images displayed on a door intercom appeared as a pop-up display on TV, allowing users' to answer the door while watching TV. Various HD-PLC compatible devices were also presented at the exhibition booth. PLC Adaptors, set top boxes to connect to TVs, multimedia devices such as media players, compact PCs and POS registers with built-in PLC, devices that connect multiple electronics to the Internet, and PLC Adaptors with built-in wireless LAN were the main devices that were displayed.

Many devices already in the market with PLC compatibility added on were also displayed. For example, I-O DATA DEVICE, INC. displayed a prototype that connects to the LAN with built-in PLC on its network hard disk. "Because the size of the PLC module decreased, we were able to build everything into one cable, allowing for a clean design” says the person in charge at the company.