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Intel Launches Wi-Di

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the clear-streams dept.

Barence writes "Intel has launched a new display technology called Wi-Di at CES. Intel Wireless Display uses Wi-Fi to wirelessly transmit video from PCs running Intel's latest generation of Core processors to HD television sets. Televisions will require a special adapter made by companies such as Netgear — which will cost around $100 — to receive the wireless video signals. Intel also revealed its optical interconnect technology, Light Peak, will be in PCs 'in about a year.'"

172 comments

  1. Why wouldn't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why wouldn't it work with an older Core processor, or hell even an AMD processor?

    1. Re:Why wouldn't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because it doesn't have the optimized components

    2. Re:Why wouldn't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      more likely, because it doesn't have the TPM features that can prevent you from intercepting the encrypted signal..

    3. Re:Why wouldn't... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It was specifically mentioned that this "Wi-Di" link does not support HDCP(and thus won't count as a "protected link" for the purposes of playing back blu-ray disks, won't Joe consumer be confused and angered by that one?) so I suspect that that isn't the reason.

      I'd chalk it up to a mixture of "don't want the hassle of having to test and tweak and validate on large numbers of old components not designed with it in mind" and the desire to drive the sale of more laptoops with new intel silicon in them.

    4. Re:Why wouldn't... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They're going for a "Centrino" part 2. I'm still scratching my head of Centrino. Are people really that stupid? So, if all my parts are made by Intel, and it's a wireless PC, I suddenly have a magical thing called "Centrino." Don't know what it does for me, but my friends and neighbors will be jealous.

    5. Re:Why wouldn't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So how's the pay at the FTC these days?

    6. Re:Why wouldn't... by jc42 · · Score: 1

      It was specifically mentioned that this "Wi-Di" link does not support HDCP(and thus won't count as a "protected link" for the purposes of playing back blu-ray disks, won't Joe consumer be confused and angered by that one?) ... chalk it up to a mixture of "don't want the hassle of having to test and tweak and validate on large numbers of old components not designed with it in mind" and the desire to drive the sale of more laptoops with new intel silicon in them.

      Heh. I found it nicely ironic that, on my screen, the next slashdot article after (i.e., before ;-) this one is the latest mocking of predictions that "OMG, we're gonna run out of IP addresses real soon now". The discussion there seems to be mostly about how people keep predicting the end if IPv4 in N years, and N years later, we still haven't exhausted the 32-bit IP address space.

      As you point out, this article is about developments that will replace a lot of wires with wireless connections. The first commercial wireless stuff has generally used proprietary protocols. But this limits the connectivity to only the devices that support the proprietary protocol, and that usually means "from the same manufacturer". Pretty quickly, if any new sort of connectivity is to succeed, it has to run IP, because that's the only protocol we have that works between arbitrary gadgets from different manufacturers. Wireless screens will eventually all have IP addresses, using up yet more of the IP address space. The growing dominance of laptops (and maybe tablets soon) will require still more IP addresses. For your entertainment center to talk over the internet will require IP addresses. And so on.

      Yes, we can kludge things up with non-routable addresses hidden behind a NAT wall. For now we can. But this is true kludgery, and pretty much blocks connections between two gadgets that are each behind a NAT wall, except for the true IP wizards who can sometimes make it work.

      And "smart phones", i.e., tiny pocket-size computers with multiple comm capabilities, are starting to sell very well. These all need IP addresses for much of their software to be usable. Currently, many such "phones" get a different IP address for every connection they make, but this is a fatal error to some kinds of networked software. As people move to these gadgets as their permanent electronic companion that connects them to the world, they'll need a real IP address that can be reached by software on other phones.

      Maybe I should make a copy of this post, and toss it into the discussion for that other article. As a network developer, I find that the growing kludgery needed to deal with the deficiencies of IPv4 is a major time sink and limit to how well a lot of web stuff can be made to work. It's only a matter of time before these limits start to trickle through to Joe Consumer.

      I've already had to try to explain these limits to a number of friends who don't understand the black magic going on inside their networked devices. It's only a matter of time (though I wouldn't want to make a public guess as to how much time) before public pressure starts growing to fix these problems. I have gotten across to a few non-techie friends the idea that we have had solutions to these problems for some time; we just can't get the commercial world to implement the solutions, because they view the IP limits as Someone Else's Problem. Meanwhile, the push for increasing sales of truly networked devices continues, while the sellers show no desire to push a solution to the IP-address wall that is slowly becoming visible in the distance.

      People do have a way of ignoring growing problems until there's a disaster.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    7. Re:Why wouldn't... by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      More like ViiVv2 Though, I think they need more V's and i's in there.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    8. Re:Why wouldn't... by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      ViiVvII

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    9. Re:Why wouldn't... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Nah... I doubt they'll ever ReViiV that one.

    10. Re:Why wouldn't... by thrawn_aj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Speaking purely about networked appliances (NOT notebooks or phones), why on earth would you ever need unique IP addresses (in the global sense?). One unique IP address for a home (the one that comes with the connection you usually pay for is fine), a nice router, DHCP and all the port numbers you could wish for. I'm not an IT person but I could easily wire up my lab/office using cheap commercial components so that I can remotely control/view data acquisition boxes. This is no different in principle from home appliances. If this is what you were talking about (I don't get IT jargon any more than you'll get physics jargon), why is this a kludge? There's no good reason why a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world - raises more problems than it solves.

      In fact, if all you need is your appliances to talk to each other and maybe your laptop but NOT the outside world, you don't even need a firewall for that internal network. Eliminating a firewall would remove most (if not all) the minor annoyances of setting this stuff up. Hell, even a caveman could do it (TM).

    11. Re:Why wouldn't... by Anpheus · · Score: 2, Informative

      The only reason we have to rely on either third party clouds or port forwarding, VPNs, and all this other mess is because IPv4 wasn't adequate in size or security.

      With IPv6, everyone will have globally routable IPs with IPSEC as a standard feature. We will see a wave of new devices and software to take advantage of this. Want to sync your phone with your laptop, and your laptop with your desktop? Easy. Even home users will be able to do it if the software exists, and it won't require a third party. You'd need to have your phone, desktop, and LAN in your local, "trusted" network at home, or manually copy enough info to set up the IPSEC, and then done. You take your laptop and phone on vacation, it gets its MIPv6 address, it then sets up a connection with your home IPv6 address. Your desktop doesn't need a VPN, it has strong certificates you transferred at home to do IPSEC. Your desktop doesn't need port forwarding, you set up your stateful firewall to allow IPSEC and existing connections in, but block all unsolicited, insecure connections. Your desktop doesn't even need DynDNS because the address space is large enough that you will almost certainly get a large, very large range of static IPs, and MIPv6 will even let your phone and laptop carry their IPs with them on supporting carriers. If that fails, you can set up DynDNS or something like that on your desktop, and never have to worry about it again.

      The reason we need globally unique IP addresses is because:

      1. NAT isn't security.
      2. NAT is just as much propping up the network security industry as Congress is propping up .

      Proper IPv6 will eliminate most of the need for VPNs, result in increased network resiliency and create new business opportunities. It's like going up a step on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yeah, we had fun scrounging around on the first couple layers, but making globally routable IPs standard gets you one step closer to self-actualization ;)

      And you're right, there is no reason a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world. That's why no one is recommending you remove stateful firewalls, no one is recommending you set your devices to promiscuously accept connections. Existing firewall technology, plus globally routable IPs, plus IPSEC equals win.

    12. Re:Why wouldn't... by jc42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Speaking purely about networked appliances (NOT notebooks or phones), why on earth would you ever need unique IP addresses (in the global sense?).

      Well, I can give you one fairly good example. I'm typing this on a laptop, a Macbook Pro. It came with a web server, which I enabled, and I routinely use it to test assorted web stuff locally. However, I can't use it as a "real" web server, because I can't get a fixed IP address for it.

      I use it for its major function, a portable computer. Under the current IP regime, this means that when I carry it around, its IP address either doesn't exist, or is constantly changing. This means that even when it's exposed on the Net, not behind a firewall, it still can't be found, because the DNS system has no way of tracking a host with a rapidly changing IP address. Imagine that you had a cell phone whose phone number changed as you drove around, always having a number that belonged to the "local" exchange that you were driving through. Do you think that anyone could call you on such a phone? The same problem exists with portable computers of any sort. They can call you, but you can't call them. Two phones of this nature couldn't call each other at all. Similarly, two moving laptops with browsers can't find each others' web servers with the current IP setup.

      Actually, I have a G1 "google" phone, and it has the same problem. Since it's running a linux OS, it could easily support a web server, and could "serve" things like pictures that I've just taken. Software on my home machine could automatically download files from the phone as they're created, using "HTTP GET" or scp or rsync or whatever. But this can't be made to work, because the phone's IP address changes rapidly. I've verified that, even sitting here at home, a web server's log shows successive HTTP requests from the phone as coming from different IP addresses. So, even if I did run a server on it, my home machine (or your smart phone) couldn't get to it, because there's no way you could ask the DNS system for its instantaneous IP address. Even if you could, by the time you did a connect(), it's address could have changed. The same sort of thing happens with my wife's iPhone.

      If you don't see how this kills a lot of very useful network apps, you don't have much imagination. Maybe it would help to consider: You and a friend both have laptops. Fire up web servers on both of them. Then try to get a browser on each to connect to the web server on the other. Try this while carrying them around. Do you know a way to make this work? Do you understand why it would be useful?

      Until we can give every net-enabled gadget its own IP address, there are a lot of things that simply can't be made to work right. IPv4 was designed with the idea that every "host" would have at least one fixed IP address. The NAT stuff is a huge kludge to get around the fact that this isn't possible (and even when it was possible, it wasn't allowed by the ISPs ;-). I've seen a number of claims that there are already many more than 2^32 IP-enabled gadgets in existence, most of them with no access to the public Internet. As long as this state remains, there are a lot of useful things that those gadgets can't do.

      An interesting one that I worked on a few years ago is IP-enabled medical monitors and implants. A major problem that arose is that, in practice, putting even one of these on or in the body of all existing patients would require more IP addresses than were available then. We did talk about a design of a single wireless device per patient with NAT used to hide the other devices. We had no problems finding objections to this. One was that it would make it difficult for software back at the hospital to connect to a specific device on/in the patient; the device would have to connect to the hospital. This could be fixed by the usual "polling" technique, but the polling messages would quickly overload the low-bitrate channels available to wireless devices. Also, it

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    13. Re:Why wouldn't... by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      The only reason we have to rely on either third party clouds or port forwarding, VPNs, and all this other mess is because IPv4 wasn't adequate in size or security.

      With IPv6, everyone will have globally routable IPs with IPSEC as a standard feature. We will see a wave of new devices and software to take advantage of this. Want to sync your phone with your laptop, and your laptop with your desktop? Easy. Even home users will be able to do it if the software exists, and it won't require a third party. You'd need to have your phone, desktop, and LAN in your local, "trusted" network at home, or manually copy enough info to set up the IPSEC, and then done. You take your laptop and phone on vacation, it gets its MIPv6 address, it then sets up a connection with your home IPv6 address. Your desktop doesn't need a VPN, it has strong certificates you transferred at home to do IPSEC. Your desktop doesn't need port forwarding, you set up your stateful firewall to allow IPSEC and existing connections in, but block all unsolicited, insecure connections. Your desktop doesn't even need DynDNS because the address space is large enough that you will almost certainly get a large, very large range of static IPs, and MIPv6 will even let your phone and laptop carry their IPs with them on supporting carriers. If that fails, you can set up DynDNS or something like that on your desktop, and never have to worry about it again.

      The reason we need globally unique IP addresses is because:

      1. NAT isn't security. 2. NAT is just as much propping up the network security industry as Congress is propping up .

      Proper IPv6 will eliminate most of the need for VPNs, result in increased network resiliency and create new business opportunities. It's like going up a step on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yeah, we had fun scrounging around on the first couple layers, but making globally routable IPs standard gets you one step closer to self-actualization ;)

      And you're right, there is no reason a wireless screen has to talk to the outside world. That's why no one is recommending you remove stateful firewalls, no one is recommending you set your devices to promiscuously accept connections. Existing firewall technology, plus globally routable IPs, plus IPSEC equals win.

      Thanks! Wonderfully lucid answer :). I'm filing this one away. And yes, it does make sense now.

    14. Re:Why wouldn't... by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      As I explicitly wrote (and as you quoted above), I was asking ONLY about appliances (not notebooks or phones), yet your main example was about a laptop. I am of course, quite cognizant of the need for globally unique addresses for the latter. The medical device application was quite interesting and more in line with what I was talking about.

      However, both were quite instructive for which I thank you :). I also found Anpheus' explanation quite useful and I recommend it to you.

      In fact, it frequently amazes me how many identifiers a computing device uses today. For instance, given a chance to start from scratch, wouldn't it make sense to "prenatally" register a device's machine id as its global ip address? Maintaining such registries ought not to be too expensive. A consortium of top hardware manufacturers could easily take care of the cost, even keeping the existing agencies (IANA and the regional arms) at great benefit to them mind you - imagine being able to advertise a TRULY network-ready device. Charge non-contributing manufacturers a registry fee which they pretty much have to pay or suffer the ire of their customers who will then have to pay it post-purchase. I'm hardly a businessman but it really doesn't seem all that difficult considering the things they've shown themselves capable of. And before the cynicism shows up ;-) I truly don't see who this DOESN'T profit.

    15. Re:Why wouldn't... by Stile+65 · · Score: 1

      A device's MAC address is ostensibly globally unique... until we start running out of 48-bit MAC addresses, anyway. There's a registry for NIC manufacturers and each manufacturer has one or more 24-bit ranges, at least as I understand it.

      The way IPv6 addressing works is that usually the last 64 bits of the address are actually a "stretched" version of the MAC address of the device. See here for a good explanation.

      The problem with having a permanent global IP for a device is that routing becomes impossible. You need hierarchical organization of IPs based on location, otherwise your routing tables are made up of untold numbers of /128s (or billions of /32s in the case of IPv4 addresses).

      --
      I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
    16. Re:Why wouldn't... by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I didn't know any of this. Thanks for the info.

  2. I can do that with a netbook by linzeal · · Score: 1

    Why would I want to buy something else?

    --
    An Education is the Font of All Liberty
  3. Great! by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why didn't I think of that? First, kill off all TV signals and force people to use cable companies, then invent a system to ...
    transmit TV signals!
    Brilliant!

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who's killing off the what now?

    2. Re:Great! by happy_place · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even better, now that it's wireless and just like my wireless internet, I'll get free TV, maybe even get to watch what they watch from the neighbor's houses!

      --
      http://www.beanleafpress.com
    3. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone remember the "fictional" disease in the (crap-tastic) Sci-Fi thiller Johnny Mnemonic?

      NAS, or the "black shakes", won't be so fictional if we keep doing stupid stuff like this...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic_%28film%29

    4. Re:Great! by timeOday · · Score: 1

      I actually do think this is great. For those of us with HTPCs, game consoles, cable boxes, and usual rat's nest of wiring we don't really want sitting right next to the TV, it beats trying to run 40 feet of DVI cable through the ceiling.

    5. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention projectors where the cabling can be really ugly and long (roof, other side of the room).

    6. Re:Great! by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Don't put your PS3 in your attic?

    7. Re:Great! by vaporland · · Score: 1

      It takes a whole lotta wireless bandwidth to transmit HD - so don't stand between the receiver/transmitter and the TV, or you'll get a RFI/WiFi "suntan"...

      --
      Ask Me About... The 80's!
  4. will the cable/ satellite industry fight this? by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Interesting

    if you can broadcast a signal to every set in your house, or even your entire apartment floor, then there goes a bunch of lucrative descrambler box fees. then again, they can all only show one channel at a time. however, media companies seem to all be losing income nowadays, and have all taken a hostile attitude towards new technology. they seem to need very little reason, however slim and irrational, to pick a fight with new technology

    of course, the future is all streaming media over the internet, mostly on demand and mostly free, so they're all fucked

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:will the cable/ satellite industry fight this? by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      Perhaps, cable companies have brains to go with standard technologies like H264 (it is lossy, remember) and add some kind of _standard_ DRM layer on it.

      In fact, IPTV guys are doing it for years without 10000s of Intel CPUs. All they need is to put the encoder/encryption chip to the set top box and "air" over standard TCP/IP with gigabit cable or wireless.

      The issue with Intel in that case is, $10 chip will do far better job than Intel Core i7 rolls royce processor since it is designed for it :)

      I don't follow electronics/chips too much these days but I bet someone already has a working, cheap, low power solution and Intel came up with this thing to get attention away.

    2. Re:will the cable/ satellite industry fight this? by nine-times · · Score: 1

      That's progress. Some business models stop making money and become obsolete. New business opportunities become available.

  5. All this wireless is Class 'C' ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So, if you live next to an Air Force Base, Airport, I don't know - all of your home entertainment gadgets won't work? And if you have a Kindle, you better have a shit load of books stored on the machine, because you won't be able to download any.

    'Luddite' may not be a derogatory term in the near future.

  6. Wi-Di by hcpxvi · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... when you could LIVE?
    bada-bing-TISH! Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week.
    Seriously, though, did their advertising people not spot what a silly name Wi-Di is?

    1. Re:Wi-Di by Spad · · Score: 1

      I prefer the pronunciation "widdy"

    2. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Right, that stopped the Wii...

    3. Re:Wi-Di by stupid_is · · Score: 3, Funny

      In Newcastle, UK, Wii is pronounced "Why-aye"

      --
      -- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
    4. Re:Wi-Di by dmayle · · Score: 2, Funny

      What a great joke! You're so Wi-Di...

    5. Re:Wi-Di by JeffSpudrinski · · Score: 5, Funny

      Discussion of how to pronounce it reminds me of the little-known trivia about how the inventor of SCSI wanted it to be pronounced as the "Sexy Interface" rather than the "Scuzzy Interface".

      -JJS

    6. Re:Wi-Di by XavidX · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well it worked didnt it. Your gonna remember it for awhile.

    7. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a half-wid, you insensitive clod!

    8. Re:Wi-Di by AP31R0N · · Score: 1

      i've always despised the term Wi-Fi. Fidelity isn't the issue! Stop trying to steal recognition from a totally different type of product!

      And get off my lawn.

      --
      Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
    9. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From TFA, it's short for "Wireless Display", meaning it should be pronounced "WHY - DEE". Sounds a little racists, but hey that's just me ;)

    10. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, do you also prefer "wiffy" ???

      One or the other pronunciation... Come on...

    11. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there is no such thing as negative marketing

    12. Re:Wi-Di by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

      Discussion of how to pronounce it reminds me of the little-known trivia about how the inventor of SCSI wanted it to be pronounced as the "Sexy Interface" rather than the "Scuzzy Interface".

      The inventor of SCSI was Larry Boucher at Shugart Associates (and later Adaptec). They've always pronounced it 'scuzzy'. Apple was the player that wanted it to be pronounced 'sexy' because they were (at the time) pushing SCSI as a technology that made their machines superior to IBM and the clone makers, who were generally not including SCSI interfaces. Apple used SCSI for HDDs, FDDs, and CD-ROMs, and the inclusion of SCSI on the Mac was the biggest reason why early scanners always used a SCSI interface, Other players in the early days of SCSI (around 1986 or so) included Commodore, who included in the Amiga, and Sun Microsystems, who included it in their Unix workstations and servers.

      --
      My blog
    13. Re:Wi-Di by artemis67 · · Score: 1

      I'm just surprised that no one has started in with the Princess of Wales jokes.

    14. Re:Wi-Di by BurntNickel · · Score: 1

      While SCSI was used for hard drives and CD-ROM drives it was not used in as build Macintoshes for the floppy drive.

      --
      And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them...
    15. Re:Wi-Di by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I don't pronounce it DEEsplay. I'm not from Texas or Alabama. I would be pronounce it Dih. So that would make it sound more like Wide-ih.

    16. Re:Wi-Di by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 1

      Not for the FDD built-in to the Macintoshes, but it was used for external floppy drives for both the Mac and the IIgs.

      --
      My blog
    17. Re:Wi-Di by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Just wait for Microsoft to integrate it into Windows LIVE.
      And then wait for the worst pun-filled advertisement EVER. ;)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    18. Re:Wi-Di by gd2shoe · · Score: 1

      there is no such thing as negative marketing

      That is a fallacy. This won't go over that poorly, but there is definitely such a thing as negative marketing. (It just has to be far worse than common sense dictates...)

      --
      I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
    19. Re:Wi-Di by ArundelCastle · · Score: 1

      I prefer the pronunciation "widdy"

      I'm assuming it would have a 802.11/G-unit.

      ...and big-ass ramps everywhere take a beating.

    20. Re:Wi-Di by flahwho · · Score: 0

      Who 'choo callin Wi-di !?

    21. Re:Wi-Di by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Things with i also don't localise well. In a lot of European languages, i and e are the opposite way around to English, so when a French person says WiFi it sounds like 'weefee' or, if he says it quickly, 'whiffy'. Wi-Di will sound like 'weedy,' which is probably quite appropriate.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    22. Re:Wi-Di by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      In Newcastle, UK, Wii is pronounced "Why-aye"

      Yes, but so is everything else!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    23. Re:Wi-Di by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      I thought Shugart Associates pronounced it "SASI". It only became SCSI when it becaame a standard, rather than proprietry interface.

      Prior to that, When Shugart worked for IBM, it was called the "IBM Data Channel Interface" or something. (I'll Google it later)

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    24. Re:Wi-Di by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And of course SCSI was derived from SASI so there was always a question as to whether SASI would grow up to be sexy or scuzzy.

    25. Re:Wi-Di by j_166 · · Score: 1

      Like Wi-Fi, It's short for "Wigh-Digh". Idiot.

  7. Buy a specialised chip for God's sake by Ilgaz · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Intel pulls the usual trick since people figured their $30 GPU can indeed decode h264 on itself even with Adobe's Flash. There is another chip (Broadcom Crystal HD) which even media player developers started blogging about in amazement.

    So, how to make people upgrade their CPU to do something it was never designed for? Come up with crap like this.

    They should spend way more money to make use of multiple cores, easy conversion tools for older code, better GNU compiler collection support etc. That kind of "wireless HD" job is done way better with a $10 specialized chip with 1% of power/heat.

    1. Re:Buy a specialised chip for God's sake by TheKidWho · · Score: 1

      What are you ranting about? You don't even know how the tech is working? You're just assuming. I'm sure any P4 class processor can do this since it *seems* to just be encoding a video and transmitting it via WiFi...

      Your silly rant in a previous post about the Core i7 processors is even more inane, get back to me when your $10 chip with 1% of the power/heat can do real time video editing of HD video.

    2. Re:Buy a specialised chip for God's sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know this is a dead thread but where in the hell did video editing even come into this?

    3. Re:Buy a specialised chip for God's sake by TheKidWho · · Score: 1

      The Article mentioned using an i7 for real time video editing.

      In a post slightly above this one, the OP was ranting about this Wi-Di system requiring a "Core i7 Rolls Royce Chip."

  8. Encryption on by default by slasho81 · · Score: 1

    I really hope they've got encryption on by default in this technology or we'll have this whole security fiasco that we had and still are having with the open WiFi all over again.

    1. Re:Encryption on by default by delt0r · · Score: 1

      If you care about security, you probably won't be using this in the first place. Since i have over 12 overlapping wifi networks at my apartment, I can't imagine that these things will handle interference well. And it had better be better than HDTV which at least here (Vienna, Austria) looks like total crap.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
  9. Pronunciation? by Sockatume · · Score: 1

    Homology with "wi-fi" and "hi-fi" demands that the two parts rhyme. The obvious is "why-die" but the alternatives such as "wee-dee" (weedy) and "whih-dhih" don't exactly jump off the tongue either.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    1. Re:Pronunciation? by Plunky · · Score: 1

      In french, wi-fi is pronounced as a single word as english might pronounce "whiffy", and I as a native english speaker generally say it that way too so "whiddy" is fine for me.

      In yon case, makin just as much sends as like fiddy, nuff respec, ma bro.

    2. Re:Pronunciation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because the baguette-eating, stinky-armpit, weird frechies feel they must brutally alterate every non-frech word that comes from their mouths, or else they won't be enough frenchie.

    3. Re:Pronunciation? by Stooshie · · Score: 1

      "... alterate ..." do you mean alter? Huh, burger-eating, stinky-ass, fatty americans making up new words that aren't needed.

      --
      America, Home of the Brave. ... .and the Squaw.
  10. Wi-Di? by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    You gotta go sometime...

    At least this one makes sense, unlike Wi-Fi. Kind of morbid name, though.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  11. But what does that mean for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wireless HDMI?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_HDMI

    Now that i think about it, i'm not even sure i have seen anything about Wireless HDMI...

    1. Re:But what does that mean for... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Oh no...Not another new type of HDMI cable.
       
      Before I get modded down, I KNOW that wireless means without wires. It's just a joke!

    2. Re:But what does that mean for... by Nikker · · Score: 1

      The only difference is the sales guy is going to sell you Monster Air(TM) to fill the room which is 1000% "More"(TM) so you get the true quality you deserve!

      --
      A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
    3. Re:But what does that mean for... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Monster Air, designed to resist oxidation in the air. Sure, you'll suffocate, but it will sound awesome.

  12. How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by starbugs · · Score: 1

    So this is the solution for people who don't want to run cable to a device which is moved only when it breaks.
    What other benefit is there?

    All I see is an expensive (probably proprietary) re-implementation of wi-fi which can not be used for anything but TV.
    The only appeal I see is to those who have trouble watching iptv in the traditional way - TCP/IP.

    1. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by justinlee37 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree that it doesn't make sense for a desktop PC. However you are neglecting to consider a laptop. It can be a pain to attach and detach a laptop to a television or digital projector using a VGA cable. Imagine being able to sit down in your living room with your laptop and, from the couch, use only the laptop controls to transmit your screen to your television or projector. Imagine if everyone in the house had such a laptop, and they could all take turns using the same television to display their movies, music, games, etc.

      Imagine if you could be at a business conference with a large video projector and hundreds of businesspeople all with laptops that were capable of wirelessly connecting to the projector to display their slide presentations, graphs, or videos, and if anyone in the audience could do this without even leaving their seat.

      In the old days of computer, we used to have dummy monitor terminals connected to mainframes. The cost of the computer was greater than the cost of the monitor so we set up one computer to work with many monitors at once. Today, the cost of computers is much less, and the paradigm shifted; a monitor is more expensive (or as expensive) as a computer. So we rig our computers to use multiple video monitors. We are truly entering a golden age where it is possible for everyone to have a small computer, like a PDA device, that they can use to plug into dummy monitor/keyboard terminals or projected video screens. Imagine if they could do all of this without cables.

      I'll get off your lawn now.

    2. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      So this is the solution for people who don't want to run cable to a device which is moved only when it breaks.
      What other benefit is there

      You build your over the top game crushing machine and stick it in your server closet. It does all the hard crunching and sends the preprocessed video to your Thin client like terminal. Your mouse/gamepad/keyboard controls are transmitted back via a simple low bandwidth link that requires little processing overhead.

      You effectively have a hand-held gaming device with the power of a desktop sized computer. Imagine PS3 graphics and games on a hand-held device that only uses enough power to run the display the transceiver and the buttons.

      That's just one of the options.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    3. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      I agree that it doesn't make sense for a desktop PC. However you are neglecting to consider a laptop. It can be a pain to attach and detach a laptop to a television or digital projector using a VGA cable.

      Five meter VGA cable, and five meter headphone cable, running along the bottom of the wall, that works just fine. Certainly not worth spending $100 for.

    4. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Spad · · Score: 1

      And who needs lag as an excuse for poor performance when you can have your Wi-Di connection drop totally everytime someone fires up the microwave or uses the vacuum...

    5. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by justinlee37 · · Score: 1

      I think I made some other valid points though. Of course this technology might make it a lot easier for people to snoop on what you are doing by viewing your screen remotely ...

    6. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by starbugs · · Score: 1

      Imagine being able to sit down in your living room with your laptop and, from the couch, use only the laptop controls to transmit your screen to your television or projector.

      I understand where you're coming from, but I did this back in 2004 with 802.11b an old(er) trinitron and a P4 with Ati's AIW. This is a hardware solution to a problem that can easily be solved with software. But of course, I don't think intel is a hardware company.

      Most new tv's have digital input. More or less all laptops have wireless. Your server can use the tv as a monitor and you're running software on your laptop that either controls the server and/or 'forwards' the image from your laptop to the server to be displayed on your tv. That was the whole point of X11. Network transparency.

    7. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can get crazy long HDMI cables to transmit video and [digital] audio. I bought a 25 footer to go across a room, and that's not the top end, either. This is really useless for non-mobile devices.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by slim · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Five meter VGA cable, and five meter headphone cable, running along the bottom of the wall, that works just fine. Certainly not worth spending $100 for.

      You could equally argue that a long ethernet cable means WiFi is useless. Cables are a nuisance. Fewer cables is good.

    9. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      I bought a 25 footer to go across a room

      That's the problem. I would pay $100 to do away with the room-spanning cable(s).

    10. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Everybody loves slow links with high latency, greater interference from ambient radio waves/microwaves, higher energy consumption, and a lower maximum distance.

    11. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Go around the room instead. The right place to run it is usually in the works, but in my case there's an exploitable seam 'twixt carpet and tile right about where I would have put it. Are you really trying to dump more RF into your house? I'd rather cut down. I can't wait for LED TVs to come down so I can get rid of the silly LCD stuff; it's sort of CRT-lite in a way, although I have found it to be a massive improvement.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Yamata+no+Orochi · · Score: 1

      Or you could run them through the ceiling/under the floor. For free if you're not a total lout.

    13. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      Or you could run them through the ceiling/under the floor.

      If this weren't a rental house, I would. Yes, there are myriad ways of getting a signal fom here to there. Beaming a TV signal around the house wireless is but another option. One that could come in quite handy in certain situations.
      Just like 802.11 complements wired ethernet.

    14. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by mrbcs · · Score: 1

      I have an old P4 running media portal connected to my stereo and projector. I have an 80" projector system for under $1000. My dumb LG 32 flatscreen tv cost more than that last year. Guess which one I watch the most?

      --
      I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
    15. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by koiransuklaa · · Score: 1

      Well, I have one of those 5 meter cables, and it's annoying. Always in the way, never where I need it (remember, it's a laptop, so movable).

      Another thing: I'm currently thinking of buying a projector. The 12-15 meter VGA cable I need will be butt ugly and I'll have to do a lot of work to make it not stick out. Really hiding the cable would require a competent handyman and a hefty bill. I'd pay $200 in a heartbeat for working wireless display tech.

    16. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      This is more a replacement for HDMI than for CAT6.
      Uses? Well I can think of a big one. Hooking your Notebook to your HD TV. Media PCs are not flying off the shelf right now but imagine how handy it would be to send video from your Notebook to your HD TV? Apple users I think will love it.
      And let's face it $100 isn't that much more than a good proper HDMI cable from a good manufacture like Monster! Sure it is more expensive than those cheap HDMI cables that get the bits out phase but what idiot uses them.
      All kidding aside it does make using your Notebook as a media PC a walk in the park.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    17. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Verdatum · · Score: 1

      Yes, that works just fine for my setup in my house, where I bothered to setup and tack down those cables. But going to random friend's house, and having to dig around the back of their TV to plug in a (in my case, S-Video) cable to play vids off my laptop HDD is a huge pain. It'd be wonderful to see a standardized wireless video receiver integrated into TVs someday. Costs could be driven down to the point where it is no more of a big deal than adding a 802.11 chip to a smartphone design. I've been wishing for exactly that for about 3 years now.

    18. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by KingMotley · · Score: 1

      Imagine if you could be at a business conference with a large video projector and hundreds of businesspeople all with laptops that were capable of wirelessly connecting to the projector to display their slide presentations, graphs, or videos, and if anyone in the audience could do this without even leaving their seat.

      >

      I can imagine using my laptop to temporarily over ride the presenter's when his back is turned, and displaying all kinds of nice and informative messages about the presenter. Like oh... "I like the sound of my own voice", "I have no idea what I am talking about", etc.

    19. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      You can get crazy long HDMI cables to transmit video and [digital] audio. I bought a 25 footer to go across a room, and that's not the top end, either. This is really useless for non-mobile devices.

      This is what I used to do, but wives tend to dislike cables dragging all over the place and while it might be fun to watch your child go flying across the room once or twice, eventually it gets distracting. At least with the HDMI cables when someone trips over it, they pop out of the display instead of yanking it out of my hands.

      Removing cords is a big thing for me, since I will often be in several locations in my room and hate always draping the wires behind the couch, or running it under the coffee table. I like to use my eliptical, but that damned thing is easy to get bored on. I'd love to have a lightweight thin-computer up there without worrying about the cost, or worse wires.

      I know that a lot of you are fine with your setup. But I want a wireless display that doesn't require normal computing equipment internally to run it.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    20. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by camperdave · · Score: 1

      It'd be wonderful to see a standardized wireless video receiver integrated into TVs someday.

      All TVs have standardized wireless video receivers integrated into them, ever since they became a consumer product.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    21. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      My WiFi connection adds under 1ms to my latency and for Internet access the bottleneck is my ISP's connection, not the WiFi. Being able to take my laptop from the sofa in the living room to my bed without dropping connections is worth more than the theoretical advantages of a wired connection. I actually have Cat5e in all of the rooms, but I unplugged the switch a couple of months ago because I hadn't used it for over six months.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    22. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Syberz · · Score: 1

      I'm with you on this, the technology does have it's uses:

      Being able to send video AND audio wirelessly to your tv via your laptop is pretty neat.

      I was thinking of hooking up my laptop to my tv but having one video cable hanging next to my pvr or console when not in use didn't appeal to me. Also, the thought of having to plug another cable from my headphone jack to the stereo in order to get pretty average sound wasn't terribly exciting either.

      And no, I don't have a laptop with an HDMI plug which would do both and no I don't want to buy a new laptop just for the few times when I want to plug it into the tv.

      --
      ~Syberz
    23. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Nikker · · Score: 1

      The only reason Ethernet is such a pain to route around the house is that you are doing it aftermarket. A high percentage of new houses have options to run conduit / Ethernet into the walls and outlets in each room and a central area where they all meet (basement usually). I would rather have one 54G router taking VNC / Remote applications to control each endpoint (tv set) then trying to make some retarded monstrosity of incapable WIFI type HD connections to each set. At the end of the day Intel will introduce the 1.0 spec and it won't be usable till 2.0 and won't be able to watch TV, surf and transfer files via LAN till 4.0. The interference will be nasty as well as overlap the same way as each person is sold a WIFI router and they leave it on the default channel 6 with the router manufacturer as the ESSID.

      It's all buzz, for the people who want real HD and will pay for it they will likely pay to have conduit and Cat6 installed once then deal with crappy reception and going back to the day of changing wires for ugly antennas.

      Now get off my lawn.

      --
      A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
    24. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      In most US states you have that right, in fact in many states you can make any change you like that is legal and you reverse when you move out.

    25. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      buy a fishtape and run the cable in the wall, under the floor or through the ceiling.

    26. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      buy a fishtape and run the cable in the wall, under the floor or through the ceiling.

      Everyone seems to be missing the point here.

      I want 0 wires running to this display. It doesn't help me if the wires are routed to 1000 ports all over the building. If my requirement was "No Wires" I fail to see how any possible configuration which involves wires avoids that issue.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    27. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by obarthelemy · · Score: 1

      I use my computer screen both for "computer" stuff and for video. That means I move it regularly, from my desk to my couch-potatoeing area. I'd love to have fewer or no cables snaking through my apartment. So cat6 does not solve my problem.

      Intel's stuff doesn't either though. At $100 per screen plus I presume more or less the same on the PC side, I might as well buy an old PC or console to serve as a video player.

      --
      The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
    28. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Known+Nutter · · Score: 1

      what's old is new again...

      --
      Beware of the Leopard.
    29. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Verdatum · · Score: 1

      Wow. I walked right into that. I am in awe. Whether or not it was your intention, this is without rival, the most insightful comment I've ever read on Slashdot.

    30. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by kurzweilfreak · · Score: 1

      You also don't have a laptop with this chip in it, so either way you'd be buying a new laptop. :P

      --

      kurzweil_freak

      5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student

      Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.

    31. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this will not work because of almost 1 sec latency between mouse/keyboard movement and the picture on display.

    32. Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, perhaps there'll be an adapter for laptops too eventually?

  13. Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by wiredog · · Score: 1

    Devices with those silly names will never sell.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  14. Something else I'll probably never need by Lord+Lode · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yet another kind of connection from PC to TV?

    Why not just watch on the monitor of the PC, or use a projector?

    1. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 1

      Exactly - a TV is often lower resolution and lower quality than the Monitor on your PC anyway (Monitors tend to be smaller simply because you tend to sit nearer it ...)

      And the only difference is that your TV has a built in analog receiver (which will soon be obsolete) or a built in digital decoder (which you can replace with a box)

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
    2. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Maybe someone wants to play something from their laptop?

    3. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      A "HD television set", as stated in TFS, is lower resolution than a monitor?

      My 1680x1050 TV is my monitor. But sometimes it would be handy to send a display from my laptop without fiddling with cables, and my laptop resolution is lower than my TV.

    4. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      Why not just watch on the monitor of the PC, or use a projector?

      I would use this. In my current set up, we have TV/Tivo/cable box on one side of the room, and projector/PC on the other side of the room. PC plays movies and Netflix on the projector, and Tivo/cable on either the TV or projector.
      Because there are two viewing devices on opposite sides of the room, somewhere there will be a long-ass cable involved. Currently, a 50' S-video cable from the Tivo to the projector.

    5. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by WRX+SKy · · Score: 1

      Because my office is 2 stories above my media room with comfy chairs and surround sound... and running cables isn't a viable option.

    6. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by Steauengeglase · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because people have bought expensive HD sets with VGA/S-Video/HDMI and they want to use them as big, honkin' monitors in their living room without running cable.

    7. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you sure that's the resolution? That can't even play 1080i/p without downscaling or 720i/p without upscaling or letterboxing. That doesn't make any sense for a television.

      My laptop has a higher screen resolution than your television, by the way, and can play 1080i/p without upscaling (and it's only a 15.4" screen).

    8. Re:Something else I'll probably never need by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 1

      1080p = 1920x1080 your TV/Monitor is less than this ....so is not technically an full HD Television at all?

      Bare minimum for HD is 720p this is 1280×720 and most widescreen laptops can display at least this usually more?

      --
      Puteulanus fenestra mortis
  15. Why Die? by jmyers · · Score: 1

    Sounds like something you scream at the TV when the redneck down the street starts talking on his CB and turning the screen to snow right in the middle of your favorite show.

    1. Re:Why Die? by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 1

      I pronounce it as "weedy." It reminds me of all the drugs that marketing must have done to come up with the name.

      --
      SSC
  16. Does this work with real video cards / chips? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    Does this work with real video cards / chips? and not intel GMA that is a about the same speed as 1-2 year old on board ati / nvidia chips?

    1. Re:Does this work with real video cards / chips? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd say that's closer to 3-5 year-old ATi and nVidia chips.

  17. Let me guess... by ocularsinister · · Score: 1

    Let me guess...this comes laden with DRM and associated technologies. So, thank, but no thanks - I'm quite happy with a few feet of (well shielded analogue) cable.

    1. Re:Let me guess... by asylumx · · Score: 2, Funny

      Shielded with tin foil?

    2. Re:Let me guess... by ocularsinister · · Score: 1

      Of course! :D

    3. Re:Let me guess... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eventually, all new tech will be equipped with DRM. Unless you want to be the 2030 equivalent of that guy today who has an unnetworked PDP-11 in his basement and no other computer, you will have to accept DRM or be left far, far behind.

    4. Re:Let me guess... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Poorly shielded HDCP-free HDMI is cheaper than well-shielded analog.

    5. Re:Let me guess... by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      And what exactly is the great burden that HDCP imposes on you? Can you describe it, or should it just get off your lawn? Is it preventing you from using all those great HDMI ripping tools? I admit I miss all those inexpensive mechanisms for ripping HDCP-free content from a DVI connector. Oh - wait, there was absolutely no such thing, I forgot.

  18. whats the chance... by hitmark · · Score: 1

    that intel came up with light peak after getting called on their attempt to keep usb 3.0 host controller specs proprietary?

    --
    comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
  19. Light Peak started at Apple by mbrod · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apple started the concept but ceded it to Intel to develop it.

    http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/26/exclusive-apple-dictated-light-peak-creation-to-intel-could-be/

    1. Re:Light Peak started at Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, if you wanted to be even more informative: "Engadget claims Apple started this concept but no-one else has found supporting evidence". Specifically I remember CNet claiming their insiders are dismissing the idea.

      Not that this is important as Engadget reporting is universally known to be scientific and un-biased.

  20. I have my doubts by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

    They already sell the equivalent for iPods to transmit to a radio in your car. It does work, and I use one, but the quality is hit or miss. It's not as good as a straight cable, and it's very prone to interference. I'm planning on upgrading to a new head-unit sometime this year so that I can plug right into it rather than use the radio setup.

    Wireless (anything) for me is only a temporary convenience that I can use until I properly setup a wired system. It ALWAYS has drawbacks, and I never want to use it for anything long term.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    1. Re:I have my doubts by omnichad · · Score: 1

      No, the equivalent to that would be to have a device that transmits VHF or UHF wirelessly. Your problem with audio quality is that it's a lossy, analog solution. You're dealing with heavy loss of the high and low end, and heavy range compression with FM. And your reason for hit and miss quality is other real radio stations with huge antenna's overpowering your FCC-regulated "must accept interference" device.

      I prefer wires, but you're building a straw man.

  21. The real killer app by spectrokid · · Score: 1

    The real killer app is of course the millions of projectors hanging from office ceilings worldwide. From now on you will get Death By Powerpoint without these pesky 20 meter VGA cables. When does somebody make a projector you can simply stick a USB key in?

    --

    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

    1. Re:The real killer app by karnal · · Score: 1

      Those do exist. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=813

      Saw a few of these advertised in the travel rag (can't remember the name of it for the life of me) that sits in the airplane seats. Not as common as they should be, but you can buy them.

      --
      Karnal
  22. Intel CPUs? by VincenzoRomano · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PCs running Intel's latest generation of Core processors

    I don't see the point here. How can I see from WiFi whether you use Intel, AMD, ARM or whatever else?
    Sounds more like advertisement than technology!

    --
    Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
    For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
    1. Re:Intel CPUs? by ramjambam · · Score: 0

      The latest Intel processors have built-in graphics. Of course, most AMD motherboards have built-in graphics, but that's not the processor. And then there's all the graphics cards in the world... Pure semantics.

      --
      Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity
    2. Re:Intel CPUs? by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      Wow, you mean a company came out with a product that showcases its own technologies and products?! Jeepers, creepers, there are shenanigans afoot! Quick, call the FTC!

  23. Re:Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by Tim+C · · Score: 1

    "Kindle" means "to start a fire burning by lighting paper, wood, etc"

    I assume that it was chosen to conjure images of sparking off or kindling an e-book revolution.

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  24. Televisions will require a special adapter.... by Anita+Coney · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, because we all know how completely difficult it is to connect a DVI to HDMI cable and an 1/8" cable from your computer to your TV.

    Of course someone will say, "Most people don't keep their PCs near their TVs."

    If people were willing to spend $600 on a PS3 that sits in their living room, I don't see why they can't spend a few hundred for a PC. Heck, if you subtract the $100 "special adapter" from the price of the PC, you can get one real cheap.

    Of course someone else will say, "Who wants a noisy PC in their living room?" And to that I'll say, "Have you ever been in the same room with an Xbox 360?" Mine is much more noisy than my PC by a wide margin.

    Compared to the 90s, I think retail desktop PCs are pretty quite nowadays. (Of course I built mine myself.)

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
    1. Re:Televisions will require a special adapter.... by Yamata+no+Orochi · · Score: 1

      Compared to the 90s, I think retail desktop PCs are pretty quite nowadays. (Of course I built mine myself.)

      You built your quite retail desktop PC yourself?

    2. Re:Televisions will require a special adapter.... by Anita+Coney · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I needed that!

      --
      If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
    3. Re:Televisions will require a special adapter.... by Fred+IV · · Score: 1

      If people were willing to spend $600 on a PS3 that sits in their living room, I don't see why they can't spend a few hundred for a PC. Heck, if you subtract the $100 "special adapter" from the price of the PC, you can get one real cheap.

      Meaning yet another power-hungry disposable consumer good to sit in common space now and in the landfill later. Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, if they already spent for a PS3, they can already stream video over wi-fi using PS3 Media Server.

    4. Re:Televisions will require a special adapter.... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Forget the vowel transposition, and give the gp a break. Mine is a modifier for desktop not retail.

  25. Re:Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by Known+Nutter · · Score: 1

    I assume that it was chosen to conjure images of sparking off or kindling an e-book revolution.

    Or perhaps it was meant to conjure images of Nazis burning books in Germany??? Muhahaha... :/

    --
    Beware of the Leopard.
  26. I wanna know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Wi" won't Sony "Di" ?

    1. Re:I wanna know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's this have to do with Sony? If Sony did it, it would only work between Sony Laptops and Sony TV's. At least Intel wants to make this work with any TV.

  27. Should use ATSC by gr8_phk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They should just broadcast it using ATSC. Then we don't need a receiver on the TV just the antenna.

  28. Why doesn't television use better compression? by radarsat1 · · Score: 1

    If I understand correctly, digital television signals are still using basic MPEG2 compression, like on DVDs. I'm not sure if this is still the case for HD streams (blu-ray, etc), but it seems to me like they can't fit all that much data on a disc compared to what you can download in a torrent.

    Meanwhile, I regularly stream xvid and h264 videos from my laptop to my "media" computer (a desktop PC connected to my TV running Ubuntu) using regular old 802.11G over SSH. (The ssh isn't necessary, but sshfs is pretty convenient.) Also I can fit several HD movies on a DVD.

    Why don't television standards use more advanced compression technology? It seems to me like this would be just as beneficial as developing higher-bandwidth methods of transmitting video data.

    1. Re:Why doesn't television use better compression? by delt0r · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you want really good quality (as i do) then you at the high bandwidth end of the spectrum and mpeg2 is no worse that H264 (and even the experts agree on this point). Basically you at the end where you are encoding quite a bit of noise (film grain etc). h264 shines at lower bitrates, but with massive increases in complexity and patents. Hell the spec reads like a bunch of engineers had a stack of patents that they wanted to include in the spec.

      I know a lot of fan boys love h264 and believe that HD can fit in 1Gig for a 2 hour movie, but that only works if you are blind. Really the vast majority of content out there is so compressed that there no point in 1080p cus DVD looks better anyway. There is a reason Blue Ray can fit 25Gigs on it. Currently here in Vienna HDTV looks far worse than normal tv due to the horrible artifacts... that may be a combination of using mpeg2 at low bit rates, bad reception or using h264 at even lower bit rates. Either way whats the point of 1080i/p or even 720 when most pixels are mosquito and other types of decoding noise.

      Why not just reduce bandwidth via a smaller image and rescale and be honest about what you are getting. HD does not fit in DVD bitrates. DVD does.

      Oh and HDTV does include h264.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    2. Re:Why doesn't television use better compression? by n7ytd · · Score: 1

      The Digital TV transition has been in the works for what, 10-12 years now? All that fancy-pants h.264 stuff takes processing power to decode, which means extra cost in every TV set.

  29. Re:Pronunciation? GESTAPO! by Max(10) · · Score: 1

    I pronounce HiFi as high fee (high fidelity) and WiFi as wifey (diminutive of wife). It may sound strange to some people, but to me it's logical, HiFi systems used to be very expensive (high fee) and wireless fidelity implies being faithful to one's wife when she's too far to yank one's {wire,USB {keychain,dongle}}.

    I'd probably pronounce WiDi as widey, which sounds a lot like whitey, but I'm tired of these silly acronyms, people keep pronouncing everything their own way anyway and most sales people seem to think that their pronunciation is the only correct one.

    GESTAPO (Gotta Eliminate Silly Technology, Acronyms, People and Organizations)!

  30. Re:Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by omnichad · · Score: 1

    Probably more like Fahrenheit 451. Since that would be, you know, a literary reference. Referring to how they delete copies of books from your own device.

  31. So many questions... by dr_wheel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... and none of the articles I've read about 'Wi-Di' seem to answer them.

    How about sound? Transmitting video directly to my tv sounds nice, but how does this tech account for transmitting sound to a HT receiver? Potential for audio/video de-sync? How will this be handled?

    Potential for latency issues? This could be a big one, especially for gaming.

    1. Re:So many questions... by Spykk · · Score: 1

      Video and sound are already transmitted together in over the air digital broadcasts. Why do you think this will be a problem for Intel?

  32. I'm more interested in.... by hitnrunrambler · · Score: 1

    ... A wireless portable I/O system.

    I have a laptop that I use at home just as a simple means of access for Internet and shared files throughout the house. It works fine; but what I really WANT is direct access to my desktop computer. Sort of a wireless dumb terminal, which just sends a keyboard/mouse signal and receives a "monitor signal".

    I think of it as a Hardware RDP session, except instead of relying on a local video card for rendering the device would truly just be a remote monitor. (Which would open up gaming capability). You could effectively park your case in a "server closet" and have complete access anywhere in the house.

    Wi-Di potentially provides a bit of the missing technology for such a device to be possible.

    If any of you engineer such a device please give a shout out to "some weirdo on slashdot" when celebrating your first Million.

  33. Whodunnit... by scorpivs · · Score: 1

    and Wi-Didthey?

    --
    There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
  34. spectrum congestion? by mutemutt · · Score: 1

    couldn't find which bands are being used for that, but hope that or the whole thing is a flop or that it stays away from the 2.4GHz / 5GHz bands reserved for Wi-Fi + bluetooth, ... where I live collisions/lost packets are unfortunately a reality and it's not even possible to reliably stream music via WiFi (eg. airtunes)

  35. There is a sucker born every minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is this a new technology, really? Sure it removes maybe one or two pieces of hardware from the equation, but one can pretty much do this already..."Intel Wireless Display uses Wi-Fi to wirelessly transmit video from PCs running Intel's latest generation of Core processors to HD television sets." How is an xbox with wireless hooked up to your hdtv and a computer in the other room with windows media center sending video to your tv really that much different? Or a boxee comp hooked to your tv pulling video from a comp in your house somewhere conected wirelessley...or a comp hooked up to your tv vnc'd to another comp?

  36. Bandwidth? by JustNiz · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I can't imagine that wi-fi has enough bandwidth for full HD, at least without massive compression that would obviously downgrade picture quality.
    Someone wake me up when this technology can transmit pixel-perfect full screen HD video, without the annoying dropouts existing wi-fi suffers from.

    1. Re:Bandwidth? by naturaverl · · Score: 1

      That's not what this tech is intended for. It's aimed at web streaming video, which was already heavily compressed in the first place. If I wanted to play a pixel-perfect rendering of a movie, I'd plop a disk in the BD player, which is directly connected to the TV.

    2. Re:Bandwidth? by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I'm sure you're right. I just wish they wouldn't use blatantly misleading phrases like HD when describing this tech then.

    3. Re:Bandwidth? by iammani · · Score: 1

      802.11n can, atleast according to the specs

  37. Yo Wi-Di by ArundelCastle · · Score: 1

    ^^ BTW, sorry if my joke made no Cents. I'm just a two-bit pundit.

  38. Oblig XKCD by camperdave · · Score: 1

    And who needs lag as an excuse for poor performance when you can have your Wi-Di connection drop totally everytime someone fires up the microwave or uses the vacuum...

    Headshot!

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  39. How about something really useful, like OOB mgmt? by mikehoskins · · Score: 1

    Instead of just sending a display somewhere wirelessly, why not include out-of-band management on all its desktop and laptop motherboards, wired or wireless?

    I like the idea of WiDi, but WiOOB would be more useful.

    Imagine the sea change if all desktop/laptop/server machines could be securely and remotely KVM managed over IP, if the user wishes.

  40. Re:Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by daten · · Score: 1

    I agree. It's much easier to "burn" a pile of e-books.

  41. Re:How about something really useful, like OOB mgm by wbo · · Score: 1

    Intel already does offer out of band management on some of their motherboard chipsets. Look up Intel vPro and Intel Active Management Technology.

    There is a wireless version that is supported on some laptop chipsets as well.

    I handle PC support at a local college and I have found vPro to be very handy for troubleshooting PCs located at some of our remote campuses. vPro also allows us to direct PCs to boot off of an ISO image on a server and do a OS install without ever needing to touch the PC at all.

  42. Re:How about something really useful, like OOB mgm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, that's what all CIOs want, having to build a Faraday cage around their datacentres because they aren't expensive enough yet. No admin worth their salt wants anybody with a smartphone to be able to WARDrive their datacentre server consoles.

  43. 1950's technology comes to 2010 by ksemlerK · · Score: 1

    Hasn't anybody heard of "Wireless Video" before? It's existed since the first televisions in the 1940's. You know, this wondrous invention called an "Antenna". You could either have them on the TV set, or on your roof. Generally, the higher and larger your Ariel, the better signal, and more channels you got. I was on antenna TV until 2007, and I was able to get 14 channels.

    --
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  44. Re:Like the Wii? And the Kindle? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or what they're going to have to do with all the books now that they've been replaced with ebooks.

  45. Re:I have my doubts - no cell phone huh? by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

    Hmm, I take it that you don't use a cell phone.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  46. How does it compare to DLNA over wifi ? by abies · · Score: 1

    What is a difference between this technology and DLNA over wifi (except not having to buy 100$ converter) ? Even not over wifi, as putting extra cable to TV from router is probably not an issue in most setups (and laptop can be still over wifi). With DLNA, there is a promise of truly interconnected 'multimedia home' - mobile phones, printer for photos, smart controllers etc.

    From what I understand, DLNA is for multimedia only (?) and Wi-Di for normal screen output (presentations etc) ? If this is the selling point, wouldn't it be easier to play with DLNA on software level to allow transmission of normal screen in addition to mpg?