Thursday, 22 of November of 2012
News Blog about Wireless HDTV (including WHDI, WiDi and HDelight technologies)
The Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN is the upgraded version of the earlier WD TV model. It is fundamentally the same device but with upgrades in the hardware that allow it to do things that it could not do before. One of the most important feature additions is the Netflix playback capability that everyone so greatly missed in the last version.
Date: December 18, 2010
The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex TV STAJ100 is a HD digital media player for your HDTV and it acts as the main competition for the WD TV from Western Digital. In essence it is a similar kind of solution where you can fit in a Seagate GoFlex portable storage drive into the player and access media from there. The main differences actually lie within the device and how it handles media files.
Date: December 17, 2010
The Seagate FreeAgent Theater+1080P HD Media Player STCEA201-RK is the media player only version of the device and the only difference between it and the other one is that the other one comes with a 500GB FreeAgent Go USB storage. Since most of us tend to have some kind of external storage these days anyway, just having the media player makes more sense. Seagate includes its own proprietary docking system for its FreeAgent Go line of USB storage devices, which is good news for those of us who already own one (including me).
Date: December 16, 2010
The Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN is essentially an HTPC in a box that has been designed solely for media playback with wireless networking capabilities along with an HDMI out and a remote control. The best part about this solution is that it works as an Internet TV solution in addition to streaming all your digital content from multiple sources. Downside is that it is not meant for connecting your other HD devices wireless to your HDTV.
Date: December 15, 2010
The Philips SWW1800/27 Wireless HDTV Link is a wireless HD video streaming kit that comes in the usual transmitter-receiver pair. It is yet another solution for making your HD a/v set up wireless but it sets itself apart from the rest of the crowd thanks to its surprisingly long range and reception quality. With good image quality and quick response time, it is one of the best solutions of its kind in the market right now.
Date: December 14, 2010
The ASUS O!Play Air – Wireless N TV HD Media Player has gone through a recent upgrade to become one of the most robust HDTV media players around. With its built in high speed WiFi capability and high expandability, it has become one of the best devices around for those who want to playback their digital media content on their HDTV’s.
Date: December 8, 2010
The VuNow VN1000HD kit is a computer based WirelessHD kit. It includes a USB dongle with a small receiving hub that connects with the TV. Other than the fact that it can stream all your personal media over to your TV via the PoD hub, it has another nice additional feature — internet connectivity. The hub has a proprietary Digital Media UPnP server and browser combo that is designed to serve video content over the the Internet from multiple sources such as YouTube, Amazon Video, CNBC, ESPN and also the beloved Netflix and Hulu streaming services. It also seems to feature playback from Rhapsody and Movies from CinemaNow.
The USB dongle plugs in to your PC and streams your personal content so that you can access them through the connected PoD hub with the given remote. The first major shortcoming is that it only supports Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 2) and needs Windows Media Player 10. This cuts off a large number of people who have switched to Windows 7 and/or Mac. Also, it cuts off people who have XP now but are planning to upgrade soon. Then comes the video search.
I was at first a bit impressed with the simple looking remote that has no QWERTY keyboard embedded on to it. But soon it became apparent that it supports keyword searches and has a grid of alphabets and numbers that you have to navigate using the directional buttons. The experience in a word is — tedious. Other than that, it has a standard HDMI out for connecting to any HDTV or HDMI ready device like a projector. The hub itself has two USB ports to attach NAS devices to. so other than the PC and the internet, you can also stream content from your network attached storage devices.
Overall, the VuNow VN1000HD is a device that may or may not work for you. The most important lesson I can impart is to not be swayed by the long list of features because in reality it does not amount to much.
Date: December 4, 2010
The Sony DMXWL1 BRAVIA Wireless HD Link is a branded and almost proprietary solution for Wireless HD from the company. It is supposed to be a plug and play solution for anything that outputs to HDMI and a compatible Bravia TV. That’s right, the greatest crippling factor for this wireless HD kit is that from the very beginning it is meant for Bravia TV sets only. But that says nothing it about how it performs.
Date: December 3, 2010
The Brite-View “Air SyncHD” (BV-2322) Wireless 1080p HD Video/ Audio Transmission Kit is a new and intelligent product that has just hit the market some time back and is another one to use Amimon’s WHDI technology along with some tricks of its own. It is an easy solution to a set of common problems faced by people who have multiple TV around the house. But it is still not the perfect wireless HD solution.
Date: December 2, 2010
ASUS WiCast EW2000 Wireless HD transceiver kit is one of the more well known applications of the WHDI technology from the chip makers Amimon. Once WiDi had landed in the market and frustrated everybody with its latency issues, poor quality and compatibility problems — Asus’ WiCast came in with the promise to fix all that. But does it really live up to that promise?
Date: December 1, 2010