WHDI Reviews – Wireless HDTV News

The ASUS U53JC-A1 15.6-Inch Thin and Light Bamboo Laptop comes with a dual-core Intel Core i5-450M processors with the Turbo Boost overclock feature to push it up to 2.66GHz. It also features Nvidia G310M graphics with 1 GB of dedicated VRAM and Optimus Technology for intelligent graphics switching to save battery life. It has 4GB of DDR3 1066 MHz RAM — arranged in 2 slots of 2 GB each. The hard drive has a capacity of 640 GB with an RPM speed of 5400. It comes with a super multi optical drive and Windows 7 Home Premium pre-installed. On the connectivity front, it has Windows wireless 802.11b/g/n and also WiDi (Wireless Display) — Intel’s wireless HD streaming feature. There’s also Bluetooth.

This is a laptop geared towards entertainment, a point driven home by the specs and the 15.6 inch HD LED display. There are HDMI and USB 3.0 ports and an 8 cell 5600 mAh battery with a rated battery life of 10 hours. In reality, you can expect a around 6-7 hours with average usage including surfing, some video and music playing.

The U53JC-A1 is a good laptop to have if you are looking for something that is going to be good for entertainment on the go. With 1GB of dedicate graphics and 4GB memory, gaming is quite good on this Intel Core-i5 machine. And since this is a WiDi enabled model, you can easily stream that game to the larger display if your HDTV of HD projector. WiDi requires that you have the Netgear Push2TV (sold separately) for receiving the WiDi signals from your laptop. But even though you have to invest separately for Push2Tv, having the transmission device onboard makes things much cleaner around your laptop. WiDi uses the same Intel wireless architecture, so it is not an additional drain on your system either.

Overall, as a mobile entertainment system, the ASUS U53JC-A1 15.6-Inch Thin and Light Bamboo Laptop is a pretty good option to have around.

The HP Wireless TV Connect is a simple wireless HD content transmission kit meant to be used for connecting TV’s and PC’s wirelessly. It is a simple plug and play solution but both the transmitter and the receiver need to be powered. The transmitter is powered through USB, so you have to have a free USB port along with HDMI to make the set up work. Which is a bit of a snag when it comes to laptops but it is okay for desktops.

One special feature that the TV Connect seems to have is support for a multitude of audio standards, which includes S/PDIF DTS HD, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus and AC-3 (5.1 channel) HCDP 1.0. One the video front it supports up to 1080p@60Hz HD. It has a wireless range of 5 meters (30feet) and the best part is that it does not require a clear line of sight. So the TV connect gives you more flexibility than some of the other wireless kits which require a clear line of sight to transmit to a receiver 30 feet away.

Even though it is marketed mainly for use with computers, the TV Connect can also be used with other HD equipment that have HDMI out. When doing this, the transmitter is powered through an external power source. The TV connector also needs to be plugged in to its power sources at all times for it to work.

For those who do not have an HDMI port, the TV Connect also works via a VGA to HDMI converter. The kit does not mention which band it is using but there’s been no reported interference issues even with other electronic devices running in close proximity to the transmitter.

The HP Wireless TV Connect is selling online for about $150, which for its features is a fairly decent price.

The Brite-View HDelight (BV-1222) Wireless Stream Uncompressed FULL 1080P HD Beam-to-HDTV In-Room Transmission Kit is a simple wireless HD transceiver kit that connects to any device that outputs to HDMI. It is an upgrade on the previous HDelight products from Brite-View and so far their products have delivered what they promise. They are not very heavy on features but HDelight line gets the job done simply and effectively without any setup hassles.

The BV-1222 is a plug and play solution like most transceivers of its kind. The transmitter unit is hooked up to the HDMI source via HDMI cable. There’s one catch however — the transmitter will suck a lot of power from your USB port unless you plug in the AC adapter that it comes with. Also, the transmitter has to have a line of sight to the receiver. The receiver has to be connected to the output device. Usually a HDTV or a projector. It supports streaming of 1080p@60Hz at a latency of below 1ms according to Brite-View. Whilst a latency of below 1ms is hard to achieve all the time, the BV-1222 is quite well suited to watching movies from local and online sources. It can also be used to play games but that does depend on whether you have a clear line of sight to ensure a steady stream. It has a range of 30ft.

The transmitter and the receiver connect to each other automatically, so it is completely plug and play. As for the sources, you can have almost anything that has an HDMI out and that now includes an iPad when you are using the special A/V connector that Apple recently introduced with the iPad2.

The BV-1222 uses Amimon’s WHDI chip for the Wireless HD transmission and that is why it can push the quality up to 1080p@60Hz and have a really low latency. It has an omnidirectional antennae which can broadcast in all directions but for longer distances, line of sight is necessary. The Brite-View HDelight (BV-1222) Wireless Stream Uncompressed FULL 1080P HD Beam-to-HDTV In-Room Transmission Kit is selling online for about $140, which is quite the bargain when compared to some of the other brands.

The D-Link DSM-750 Wireless HD Dualband Draft 802.11n Media Center Extender is an extender that enables you to wireless stream your media content from a PC running Windows Vista Premium or Ultimate. It can connect to both HDTV and standard definition TV’s and is essentially an extender for your media center PC and has an inbuilt navigation menu for browsing through your media collection including photos, videos and music on your PC.

The DSM-750 uses the draft 802.11n standard to stream content wirelessly over your home’s private network. However, due to this feature, networks working on older routers might not be supported by the DSM-750 because it requires the bandwidth provided by the 802.11n standard to stream HD content seamlessly. One good thing about this device is that is uses the 5GHz band instead of using the commonly used 2.4Ghz band to make sure that there is minimal interference.

It supports full 1080p HD resolution. However, it has a limited format support which extends to Windows Media Video 9 and MPEG-2/4. It has two different user modes though — one is its primary function of acting as a Windows Media Center extender and the other mode is called Medialounge.

The Medialounger mode is essentially meant to access media from everywhere else. Such as other PC’s that have shared files on the network, NAS drives (Network Attached Storage) and also USB drives. It has one USB port in front to attached storage drives to. In addition to all this, it also allows you to watch and record live TV, essentially acting as a TiVo (without of course using the name).

One feature that I really like about the DSM-750 is the number of different outputs that it has — HDMI, Component, Co-axial, S-Video, Composite Video and digital audio out. The D-Link DSM-750 Wireless HD Dualband Draft 802.11n Media Center Extender is selling online for about $250, which is a fairly good deal for its functionalities.