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Belkin CableFree USB hub uses Ultra-Wideband

belkin cablefree usb hub

Belkin has been knocking out some of my favorite products lately. First the Flip for Mac mini, and this week they were showing off the CableFree USB Hub at Macworld, which they first introduced at CES last week.

The The CableFree USB Hub - the industry's first, according to Belkin - enables wireless connectivity from your computer to all of your USB devices, including printers, scanners, hard drives and iPods using Freescale's Ultra-Wideband technology. Like the Flip, it ties into my quest to eradicate cable clutter from my workspaces as much as possible.

Expected to ship this spring (and let's hope their estimate isn't as far off as the Flip ETA was!), it's a 4-port USB 2.0 hub that needs no drivers and is compatible with virtually every USB device available today. But wireless printing and file sharing is nothing new to most of us, so why should we care about it? Because Ultra-Wideband (UWB) gives us high rate, high quality wireless transfers - 100 times faster than Bluetooth - of video, including HDTV streams in real time... and that is a reason to rejoice. The movie they were playing on the monitor that was demoing the Flip was being wirelessly streamed from an external hard drive that was sitting on the floor behind the desk. And it looked damned good.

No word yet on price, but this is another Belkin product I'll be keeping a close eye on. More details when I have them.