Wireless Monitors?

antiopus writes "I didn't think it was possible anytime soon due to bandwidth considerations, but ViewSonic has announced a wireless monitor. At only 10 inches and 800x600, I don't know if it'll be replacing my CRT anytime soon, but I can certainly foresee some interesting applications for wearable/portable computing."

Comments

This isn't a wireless monitor

[Hulver]

It's a MS tablet PC, running WinCE. Looking at the site will show you that.

Sheesh.

Re:This isn't a wireless monitor

[geojaz]

True, but they seem to finally be able to display apps remotely on another screen in Windows* so I guess that's another monitor? This is actually kinda cool, it's like a monitor you can do a little more with...

An interesting...

[PhysicsGenius]

..piece of crap.

Note from the article that the "10 inches" applies to the maximum range of the wirelessness. I guess it'll keep wire clutter off the desk. No other real use. Except maybe a sensitive Tempest monitor.

Re:What's the point?

[MouseR]

Shoot.. no:

Rechargeable 1800 mAh Lithium Ion Battery Pack

This is no monitor. it's a remote tablet for your PC.

Wireless Monitor?

[mgrochmal]

After reading the web page, it looks like it wants to be several things at once.

Wirelessly access files, applications and/or data...New Windows CE .NET operating system from Microsoft And a touch display panel.

It's not so much a wireless monitor but a PC-integrated PDA. It runs Remote Desktop via 802.11b to your PC and uses a stylus to manipulate data on the monitor. Besides, how many monitors use PCMCIA cards? Also judging from the hardware inside (206 MHz, 128 meg SDram, 2Mb video card), it gives an impression of a 13" wide iPaq. If given the choice, I would stick with a notebook. Sure it's heavier than the 2+ lbs. monitor, but more current generations of laptops can handle much more than this monitor. If you really wanted to buy this for the desktop broadcasting, add an 802.11b and run your favorite remote desktop.

Wireless Monitor? Not happening...

[jgore26785]

I work in the RF industry as a software engineer... I'm by no means an RF engineer, but I have to comment.

First of all, this is not a wireless monitor. It is a portable PC that communicates with other PCs via a network card. The video signal is NOT sent over the air.

The bandwidth requirements for a wireless monitor are impractical. It's certainly possible, but the amount of RF bandwidth and/or power required to do it would either kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer, depending on how you implement it.

Just a quick estimation (please don't criticize this, I have other work to do):

800 x 600 = 480,000 pixels
480 pixels x 16-bit = 7.68 Mb = 960 kB
960 kB x 60 Hz = 57.6 MB / s!

Given that 802.11b provides 11 Mb as a MAXIMUM (yes, that's bits, which translates to 1.4 MB / s), we'd only have about 1/50th the bandwidth necessary. And that doesn't account for automatic rate switching, interference, and other nodes on the network.

Re:wireless monitor...bah!

[Merlynnus]

Of course, there's no hacking required.

Step 1: Acquire one of Bill's "Tablet PC's"
Step 2: Download VNC from ATT for WinCE, and your *nix box
Step 3: Setup Xvnc on *nix box, vncviewer on the tablet

Voila!

A>

I WISH THE EDITORS WOULD *READ* THE ACTUAL ARTICLE

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a wireless monitor
IT's a TABLET pc with TERMINAL SERVER

Why not use something more generic (like VNC)?

[drazvan]

SIMEDA Gmbh has a VNC viewer for the new Java-enabled phones (e.g. all new models from Nokia coming out this spring) and PDAs. True, not very speedy (goes over GPRS), but more "wireless" than something that needs to be within a few meters of the desktop computer. And at least VNC is open, so you can connect to Unix, Windows, Mac, whatever. All that from your cell phone.

Re:I always find myself needed a wireless monitor

[v3rb]

Have you tried
1) Microsoft Terminal Services (now called "Remote Desktop Connection")
2) Remote Xterms
3) KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch

Any of those solutions would allow you to use one stationary monitory.

Re:Wireless Monitor? Not happening...

[jgore26785]

So, you're telling me "TV" is impractical? TV is bearly more than 640x480x24(?) but there are dozens of devices to transmit analog video around. And none of them "kill you, cook your intestines or give you a nice bout of cancer". (at least, not immediately.)

You have failed to make any distinction between the digital world of the computer and the analog world of RF radio. For example, a T3 is transmitted within 6MHz of analog space -- that's one cable TV channel, btw.

AND, you are assuming every pixel on the screen is changing 60 times per second. That's rarely true. And at any rate, it's far more efficient to send the function calls that are drawing the pixels instead of all half million pixels over and over again.

Actually, TV is more along 300 lines I think. Not to mention it's analog.. you may wonder what the difference is, but the fact is that going from analog to digital requires at least 10x more bandwidth. It's simply because analog is much more noise-tolerant... your signal may be affected, but it doesn't result in catastrophic loss as it does in digital systems.

So fine, lets do the HDTV comparison. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about HDTV to know what the exact bandwidth numbers are. But if you want to put a multi-million powerful antenna in your house and pay the monstrous power bill to be able to use a wireless monitor, more power to you. Granted, you don't need the range, but you certainly need the same amount of bandwidth as an HDTV station. Not to mention your best resoultion would be (about?) 1080 x 600.

To address the compression concerns, you can use MPEG2 compression on "lifelike" pictures with little noticeable loss in quality, especially on regular definition TVs. Don't think for a second that applies to word processing where per-pixel resolution is practically a requirement.

So fine, lets make a compression scheme that is good on static scenes. What happens then when you want to play a 3D game?