A group of middle-aged engineers popping champagne corks and taking photos in the New Jersey suburb of Piscataway might not sound like 'hold the front page' headline news.

But bubbly and snapshots are a ritual undertaken by boardmembers at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to celebrate the finalisation of a new standard. Earlier this week, they delivered news both PC and consumer electronics manufacturers had been hankering for. After two years of discussions, a new wireless standard, 802.11g, has finally been ratified.

Until recently the dominant wireless standard was 802.11b. Businesses, and indeed an increasing number of consumers, bought equipment that used the standard to create a wireless system in which they could share a broadband Internet connection, and data and entertainment files between several computers.

But despite its popularity, the 802.11b standard has one fairly significant flaw. Its transfer rate is quoted as a maximum of just 11mbp/sec, and its real world data transfer figures are nowhere near that figure. While 802.11b has proved ideal for web surfing and streaming MP3/Windows Media Audio music files, it isn't fast enough to cope with high quality video files. Systems can stream compressed video (using standards like MPEG4) from one PC to another, but the quality was far short of what consumers had come to expect from DVD.

The buzz surrounding 802.11g is because many in the computing industry believe the format will be the vehicle by which the cable-free home of the future becomes a reality.

Everyone from Microsoft to Sony is currently working to a roadmap that is centred around the concept of the wireless home. They believe a server (powerful PC with a high storage capacity hard disk), will stream content such as audio, data (the Internet, e-mail and video) to a number of screens and devices in the home.

802.11g uses the same frequency as its predecessor - 2.4Ghz - and is backward compatible with it. So you could, for example, have a laptop with 802,11b cards running off an 802.11g system. But where the new standard really scores is that it offers significantly faster data transfer speeds. The format's maximum speed is 54mbp/sec, and though its true speed is likely to be 20mbp/sec or even less, that should still be enough to deliver higher quality video. Some manufacturers such as US Robotics have already applied their own systems to the format, upping the speeds to figures of more like 100mbp/sec.

In reality, 802.11g systems that adhered to a draft version of the format have been available since the end of last year. Apple's Airport Extreme uses the system, while companies like Linksys and Belkin have been very successful with their 802.11g wireless access points and cards. Owners of these 802.11g products will need to add firmware upgrades to their equipment to ensure it is compatible with the ratified version of the format.

The ratification means the ball is now very much in the court of the consumer electronics manufacturers. Almost all the key players, including Sony, Philips, Panasonic and Toshiba, have displayed prototypes of video streaming equipment. Yet they have held back from launching, apparently until the standards issue was resolved.

At a press conference in Holland this week, Philips paraded the latest version of its Streamium - essentially a hi-fi micro system that connects via a cable to a PC so that MP3 tracks and internet radio stations can be heard in another room. Only this time, the Streamium MX-i6000 has wireless functionality built in, and is capable of video streaming, either via the web or from a PC's hard disk. Those videos can be displayed on any TV, not just Plasma or LCD screens.

Designed to be sited next to a TV, Plasma or LCD screen, the unit also sports a DVD player and Dolby Digital surround sound. In Holland Philips displayed compressed MPEG1 quality video running over 802.11b, but at the IFA show in Berlin in August it will show MPEG2 standard (DVD quality) video streamed via 802.11g. The new Streamium is likely to be on sale in January 2004.

Philips also unveiled the SL300i Streamium Linx - a video and audio streaming device without the MX-i6000's additional home cinema type facilities. The unit is upgradeable and when it goes on sale in November will work with either 802.11b or 802.11g systems.

So the wireless confusion is finally over. Or is it? After polishing off their champagne, the IEEE board got back to the next item of their agenda - 802.11n, which promises data transfer speeds of up to 300mbp/sec. Given the snail-like progress of 802.11g though, don't expect it to arrive for at least a couple of years.