Have you heard of Intel Wireless Display? This technology would be interesting if you hate wires across the living room. In short WiDi, offers the possibility of transmitting picture and sound from a laptop on a wireless LCD TV. Obviously, applications can be extended to monitors or projectors.
Image Credit – Belkin
WiDi implementation follows two directions: laptops need to be equipped with a module that emits, and LCD TVs must have a module that receives the radio signal. If laptops with Intel Wireless Display began to enter the market, LCD TVs compatible with WiDi are harder to find. And what do you do if you already have a large and expensive TV which is not compatible? Here enters Belkin ScreenCasts, one of the few WiDi adapters on the market. If you are interested in ScreenCasts that means you already have an LCD TV with HDMI inputs available. The adapter works with an old TV, but experts don’t recommend using the composite video output. The WiDi module within a laptop is optional and the manufacturer can implement it or not. Its cost is quite low, but some manufacturers do not offer it as standard, yet, because of the small number of televisions and compatible adapters on the market.
Image Credit – Belkin
For a next generation laptop, Windows 7 operating system is standard, so this requirement is somewhat unnecessary. I didn’t check, but I think there aren’t Intel Wireless Display drivers for XP. On the other hand, who installs XP on a next generation laptop? Although it uses the theoretical frequencies standards 802.11b/g/n, in Belkin’s manual states that the adapter must have a direct wave between the laptop and they must be at a distance of less than 10m. Also, the more wireless signals in the house, the more chances of quality problems when transferring data between the laptop and adapter. I can say that the location behind TV’s is not a solution, even if the laptop is not more than 3 m away.
Image Credit – Amazon
When you connect a laptop to a LCD TV via HDMI cable you expect maximum image quality, limited only by the TV panel. Not the same thing happens with Intel WiDi, despite the fact that we are using a HDMI cable. The bandwidth used by the standard HDMI simply can’t be transmitted via WiFi. HDMI1.0 provides images with a bandwidth of about 4 Gbps, without considering the sound. Now we are at version 1.4. The maximum effective bandwidth of an 802.11n is measured in hundreds of Mbsps. In conclusion, the image on the laptop comes compressed on TV.
If you are used to with standard definition television, you may not notice the difference if you are more than 2 m away from the TV. If the sound and image get at the same from the laptop onto the TV, the combination of the two has a slight delay. This is why WiDi isn’t on the list of technologies that would get along with games. You can’t play a FPS or a free car simulator to see how your commands are not synchronized with the image. Note that Intel WiDi supports 5.1 channel sounds, which means that the audio will not be very affected.
