ASUS WiCast EW2000 Wireless HD Video Transmitter and Receiver Review
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?
Well, to be really fair to Asus — it does take care of all the technical problems that WiDi has. It does not depend on line of sight, so you can place it anywhere that is within the range (up to 33 feet) and get a goof signal. It is compatible with anything that outputs via HDMI, so you are no longer stuck looking for a laptop that has WiDi. The price is pretty effective at around $200 on Amazon. You do not have to invest in a separate piece of hardware after you have bought one piece. With WiDi it is always one laptop and then the receiver part from Netgear. The latency is imperceptible to human beings and there is no compression either. The fully uncompressed HD signal is put through. That is why you got your whole HD set up in the first place — you need to have quality. And best of all, it is basically plug and play. No set up involved. No drivers or anything for your computer.
But that is where the good bits end. The Asus WiCast EW2000 is not that practical or wireless after all. HDMI does not have bus power, so you have the power the transmitter separately from not one but two USB ports. If you are using something that is not a computer, you will have to plug in the power adapter to supply the power to it. And even though it promises good quality, there have been reports of artifacting even within small distance. Also, wall penetration is not that great and most users have a problem with it.
Thus over all, it depends on what you want from it to know whether it will work for you.
Date: December 1, 2010
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