WiDi

[TonyH]

Hi,
Any one using WiDi all the time? Wife is bugging me to get rid of HDMI cable connected to HT AV receiver. Thinking about plugging a WiDi adaper into AV receiver to eliminate HDMI cable. Any one tried it and thought? Thinking about getting a Netgear PTV3000 running on 5GHz. I have one laptop which is WiDi ready.

 

[thiggins]

HDMI cable connected to AV receiver from what device?

I tried it briefly to mirror Netflix to my bigscreen. Bad idea.

There isn't enough bandwidth for the laptop to receive then retransmit. If content is played from the laptop itself, it might work.

 

[azazel1024]

It really depends on your environment. I personally wouldn't do it, because you are compromising things. That is a compressed video stream going over wireless (you HAVE to. The raw bit rate of uncompressed 1080p24 is ~1Gbps).

Since most source video isn't going to be uncompressed, you are talking an already compressed medium (TV, Netflix, what have you, which is almost all h.264) and then running it through an algorithm that decompresses and then recompresses it to the quality settings necessary for streaming to a Widi receiver.

That means it is lossly compression on top of lossy compression.

I will grant, I've seen good results with Widi, but it is NOT something I would use to replace a wired setup, it is something I would use for convenience sake when convenience was required. Just like I'd never rely on wireless for all of my networking needs, only the part of my network that CANNOT be wired.

 

[TonyH]

HDMI cable connected to AV receiver from what device?

I tried it briefly to mirror Netflix to my bigscreen. Bad idea.

There isn't enough bandwidth for the laptop to receive then retransmit. If content is played from the laptop itself, it might work.

She real time stream old country soap opera every day with her laptop.
No problem at all. Just want to get rid of the HDMI cable. She uses MSI GX60
THX certified audio, FHD display connected to router via 5GHz, my AV receiver upscales upto 4K. Our ISP gives 50/3 speed.

 

[TonyH]

Hmmm,
Any how, long week end is coming, got hold of freebie PTV3000 I am picking up tomorrow, I have to try and show
better half, let her try few days and decide I guess and report back. I don't even sit along when she watches her stuffs, LOL!

 

[Adamm]

Hmmm,
Any how, long week end is coming, got hold of freebie PTV3000 I am picking up tomorrow, I have to try and show
better half, let her try few days and decide I guess and report back. I don't even sit along when she watches her stuffs, LOL!

I have had some bad experience with Widi to the point I had to sign an NDA from Intel and they offered me a full refund on my PTV and Laptop so I wouldn't go public with my findings

Lets just say I don't think the standard will be around for much longer, Intel dev's do not care at all to the point updates to Widi drivers lowered the refresh rate and overall quality dramatically, they also have MAJOR issues with detecting and setting the correct aspect ratio etc.

Overall it was a nightmare but in the process I scored a full refund on a 2 year old laptop and upgraded last month to a G750JM

Hopefully this year chromecast/Airplay will get more serious about mirroring at bareable quality so we can say goodbye to Widi forever

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
My impression is AMD is cooking up some thing to match WiDi. WiDi BTW seems working OK even with W8 now. But I am trying it with W7. Let's see whether it got improved or still "good to have, no good to use thing" I am just trying it out in my environment with what I got. No extra $$ spent. Just my time. And show wife, "see, it does not work". then I am off the hook, LOL.

 

[azazel1024]

I guess could be up to your network setup and wifi environment. I don't personally use it, but I have tried it and it worked flawlessly even streaming netflix from my laptop to my TV (via friend's PTV3000 that I borrowed to try to decide if I was going to get one or not). Granted, I have a very clean wifi environment and I wasn't really using the WLAN otherwise. It might have completely broken down if my wifi network was in moderate use otherwise.

Its just not something I'd want to use except on a temporary ad hoc basis instead of a wire because of both quality issues (it looked great I'll be honest), but more so because it is an extra and LARGE load on your WLAN. Wireless spectrum is crowded enough. I don't need to be putting things on wireless that can be wired.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
I tried it after making every wired, wireless devices on the router active. Then whole network slows down slower than snail's pace. When I just set up router-laptop(WiFi)-PTV3000- AV receiver-HDTV it does all kinda things. Most interesting was, it starts out OK then it slows down to a point of nothing moves. Looks like it backfed some thing into router and it is all messed up, only way out was rebooting router. I tried on either 2.4GHz & 5GHz band
So HDMI cable stays. Don't feel like digging into it. So only
when it is simple connection between laptop & HDTV or to AV receiver to HDTV it works OK. One good use for this may be giving presentation from laptop onto BIG screen projector
or whatever.

 

[azazel1024]

Hi,
I tried it after making every wired, wireless devices on the router active. Then whole network slows down slower than snail's pace. When I just set up router-laptop(WiFi)-PTV3000- AV receiver-HDTV it does all kinda things. Most interesting was, it starts out OK then it slows down to a point of nothing moves. Looks like it backfed some thing into router and it is all messed up, only way out was rebooting router. I tried on either 2.4GHz & 5GHz band
So HDMI cable stays. Don't feel like digging into it. So only
when it is simple connection between laptop & HDTV or to AV receiver to HDTV it works OK. One good use for this may be giving presentation from laptop onto BIG screen projector
or whatever.

Pretty much the only reason I see to use it. I can see an instance of something like streaming from my tablet to a TV for a movie or something with a locally stored movie while on the road...but generally the wifi environment isn't that friendly and it isn't really that onerous to carry a short micro HDMI to HDMI cable with me in my tablet bag.