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Wireless HDMI At 1080p, Lag-Free WHDI Tested
MojoKid writes "Wireless HDMI technologies have finally come of age. Though there are two camps currently in the market (Intel's WiDi and WHDI), the bottom line is lag-free full HD 1080p wireless HDMI video/audio transmission is now a reality. No longer does an HTPC need to be shoehorned into the confines of the entertainment center. Also, that notebook you have perched on the coffee table just got a major display upgrade. This demo of the Asus WiCast and the briteView HDelight wireless HDMI transmitter kits, shows the technology in action and its impressive actually. Both of these WHDI-based kits utilize the same family of Amimon WHDI transmitter and receiver chipsets. The technology is capable of full 1080p HD video and Dolby Digital surround sound audio transmissions, over distances of up to 30 feet with less than a millisecond of latency."
A Asus Oplay box or a roku box is still a better way to deliver content over wireless for this price.
At 30$ I'm a buyer.
Hereditary Diseased Melanoma Infection?
What the subject says. If it's WiFi, I have good reason to never trust a trouble-free uninterrupted level of operation that it claims. I want copper, and shielded. Thank you very much.
Life is not for the lazy.
Just curious, but what security is there besides 8 channels (Not that channels offer security)? What's stopping my neighbor from watching where I surf or what I watch?
...coming right up?
This reminds me of the sling box which I saw an ad for a few years back. I for one welcome the tyranny of convenience provided by our wireless overlords
I want to get this for my cell phone, so I can pretend I'm Tony Stark. "I need your displays."
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
"No longer does an HTPC need to be shoehorned into the confines of the entertainment center."
Yeah but then you have still have IR remotes an IR blasters still keeping the HTPC pretty sticky to the entertainment center. The new tech is slick yes, but expensive for now and there are other limiting factors. It is a nice step in the evolution though.
keep in mind, WiDi requires an Intel Core processor and special software on the computer doing the realtime encoding. Can anyone confirm whether Wireless Display is compatible with the existing spec called Wireless HD? Wikipedia forwards WiDi to WirelessHD, but my understanding was Intel's spec was not inter-compatible.
How does it interact with 802.11a/n(5GHz)?
I'm guessing, as poorly as 2.4GHz cordless phones and bluetooth devices interact with 802.11b/g wireless?
Morphing Software
"No longer does an HTPC need to be shoehorned into the confines of the entertainment center."
But how relevant is this now that appliances such as Xbox 360, Apple TV, Roku DVP, and Logitech Revue powered by Google TV can perform many functions that used to need an HTPC? As CronoCloud has pointed out in comments like this, only geeks have HTPCs because the general public finds appliances more approachable.
millisecond? but i want it nnnoowww
realy rolls of the thung but We Atch De Eye Sounds cool to.
Im not sure witch to chose.
Okay at 60 hhz do you really need a millisecond of latency?
Also for video "not gaming" that seems way over kill.
And how is this not just streaming? You use h.264 and wifi and you have "streaming HDMI" Okay add some cryto so only "approved" devices can show it.
Yea this is really cool but frankly this could be hacked right now with a two systems with GPU and wifi.
Frankly most computers should handle this with a software update. Microsoft and Sony could add software to the PS/3 and the XBox so they could both an adapter and or use an adapter.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Or I could just save my money and buy a longer cable. The only thing I want hi def is my netflix, and a roku or similar can handle that for less, even with the purchase of 40 feet of megadominator super shield cable.
what security is there besides 8 channels (Not that channels offer security)?
In addition to what sibling comments mention, at least one WHDI product line has HDCP security.
i would've much rather someone developed a UPnP/DLNA realtime screen encoder, and then have used something like WiGig to wirelessly shuffle that completely bog standard DLNA stream to whatever series of displays it needs to go to. i'm sure there are advantages to one off'ing a wireless protocol, but i'd rather have had a standard for generic wireless communication, and a separate standard for system to system media sharing. all that really was needed to make that possible was, as i've said, realtime encoding of the screen into a DLNA compatible stream. that would've been much more flexible: any UPnP/DLNA device could consume the stream, assuming it has enough bandwidth to read all the bits. instead, you have to go out and buy dedicated transmitter and receivers just for this. truly a gratiutous waste of wideband, and media streaming.
HDMI, WiDi, WHDI, HTPC, WiCast... what the hell are you talking about? Are these even words, or did you just make all this up?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
How easy will it be for me to access my hot neighbor's webcam feed, for um... research purposes?
~Syberz
"over distances of up to 30 feet with less than a millisecond of latency."
Speed of Light was obviously a bad idea. It slows down electronics and communications to an unacceptable level. Ever call international? Like Bill Gates much touted 640K is enough for anyone I'm sure the speed of light seemed like more than enough at the time. I'm sure Congress can agree on repealing this outdated and pointless law!
http://www.fftheuntoldstory.com/
... until one of your neighbours turns his or her microwave on .... or browses to Youtube on WiFi ... or get's a call on their cordless phone.
Then your wireless media center will just be a multi-thousand dollars pile of junk that you really, really want to trash with a sledgehammer and you will yearn back to the days when you connected your TV to your media player using a 50 cent SCART cable.
By the way, what about just using the powerline to pass the bytes around? My (outdated, 1/4 of the speed of current mainstream systems) ethernet-over-powerline home setup is perfectly good at connecting everything to everything else at my place and letting me watch video files from my PC on my TV without any interference from my neighbours (the signal won't cross over any transformers). What exactly is the attraction of using a physical transport medium that is highly prone to interference to connect multiple devices that are fixed and plugged to the wall for power anyway?
What?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Are there any wired solutions that support 1080p? I would like to use the 1080p TV at the next room as my second monitor, but I want to do it over cat6 with a switch in between. Couldn't find a solution for that, they have single cat6 ones available. I may change which PC is driving the screen later on, and therefore do not want to re cable every time.
Note that the transmission is not loseless.
“It appears that WHDI is manipulating the color-space conversion by dropping some of the pixels’ LSBs and maybe even sending some pixels as monochrome interspersed with color pixels that change from frame to frame".
http://www.hdtvsupply.com/hdmi-over-cat6.html
direct connect if the jacks go to a patch panel- right? right?
skip the switch for that circuit alone.
there is no practical way to do it with a switch
you'd have to convert the HDMI to packet data
anything that would allow that- would crap- be really painful on the pocketbook..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
what about interference? how well this work if you have a lot of people using this in the same area?
Is this really a problem? Some Mini-ITX cases are mountable right on the back of TVs, and some TVs themselves are fairly powerful computers in themselves, even if the embedded software is still kinda lame and primitive right now. If you can get the compressed video to the TV area, then at that point, I think you've pretty much won. I'm not knocking the bandwidth improvements; I think that's great, but actually using it for uncompressed HDMI seems like a waste.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Which morons decided to pull this crap again, mere months after the last debacle? I, for one will NOT buy into wireless video until one of these technologies is safely in the grave.
...a power adapter in case you want to use it without a USB port? Looking into it so far it seems like it requires USB power instead of USB power being optional (probably to force usage with PCs - although my DVD carousel has USB w/power). This product seems to conflict with their, roughly twice as expense, HDMI 'source' version (which has worse performance as well.)
The receiver has a power adapter of course. Anyone from brite-View in here? Thanks.
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One of the biggest benefits of HDMI connectivity in my book is PCM multichannel audio, I'm sure anyone with a HDMI compatible home theater system and a suitable source (read:PS3) will tell you that PCMMC blows dolby out the water, a lack of support for this would really be a step backwards as far as I'm concerned. The bandwidth requirements would be a drop in the ocean compared to the video too.
It runs in the 5GHz band. Putting that much information out in such a low band is going to use all the spectrum available. A few of these TV senders, plus more in your neighbours' houses, and none of them will work. Nor will the 5GHz (a/n) wireless networks.
So how long before snake oil vendors market overpriced airconditioning additives that tune the air to optimal permittivity/permeability?
...it will pop your microwave popcorn simply by dangling the bag 6 inches from the antennae.
Now that's power!
-S
It would have been nice if they integrated an IR receiver/transmitter into either of these kits.
If they carried USB also, then you could use this to remote your PC.
There's 20 non-overlapping channels in the 5 ghz range in the USA, so even if it's using like 5 of them there's still more left than what's available on the 2.4ghz side.
I don't read AC A human right
Hopefully its Oxygen free for optimum broadcasting performance!
You cannot transmit raw 1080p video via wireless using current consumer grade stuff. 1080p24 video itself takes about 150 megabytes per second. Which would mean gigabit wireless connection. And the delay is FAR longer than just millisecond of latency since even advanced RF chips have longer delay when they process stuff.
None of those perform all or even most of the functions.
Appliance fans claim that each common HTPC function has a substitute on an appliance. For example:
Try using hulu on anything but a PC.
Is Hulu that different from cable TV on demand? If not, then cable TV on demand is a substitute for Hulu and (to a lesser extent) for a DVR application.
And an Android phone that can work with them!
Then I can get rid of my work laptop!
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
You see it when you see it. As long as successive frames are in order and in time, does it really matter that the show started 60ms after hitting play? I mean there's a delay from when a show leaves network and outputs your screen, I hear no one complaining about what they don't know. Hell on cable there's an 8 second delay from when it leaves the station and outputs the screen.
So when can I expect to see $200 wireless HDMI monster cables? Only true audiophiles can see them -- to everyone else, they're invisible.
802.11 is near worthless in my apartment complex since everyone and their dog has a wireless router these days and the spectrum is completely saturated. I am lucky to get 5mbps out of my wireless connection (I've tried everything from 5mhz and 10mhz channels, there is no hope, and this is verified with spectrum analyzers).
They say that this will work with 1ms latency up to 30 feet away, but how far will the signal travel before it starts interfering with my TV, especially if all 8 neighbors in my building have this one 2 TVs each?
Sweet! Now I can see what me neighbour is watching.
Honestly, you will never get 1080p content from Cable, Dish or OTA. it's 720p source material and I dont care what setting you use on the box, you're watching compressed 720p material. ATSC OTA is the best you will get while Comcast/TimeWarner/Dish/DirectTV will feed you a highly compressed version. your only real source of 1080p is from BluRay discs and most of those are not created with source material that is 1080p or higher. Oh boy, the remastered Rocky Horror Picture Show on BLuRaY! I can now see film Grain! YAY! it looks better on the 10 year old DVD I have.
Also, how about multiple wireless HDMI units? What if I use this in the living room and the bedroom and the Basement? do they claim I can run 3 sets of these all within 30 -40 feet of each other and have no problems? How about people that live in tightly packed condos? I can see 5 of these being within 30 feet of each other.
Really, why not just drop the HDMI/HDCP worthless crap and let us simply stream via the ethernet to our devices? 802.11n can do 1080p at mpeg2:60mbps just fine. HDMI is not protecting anything. I rip blurays directly from the disc, and anything OTA or from a cable box can be ripped at full res from the Component outputs.. if they try to sunset component out on DTV boxes they will have a world of hurt coming in bad PR. Plus HDMI is broken, you can get DSP programs on the web to make your own realtime HDCP scrubber for less than $60.00 in parts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bandwidth. The stations are only allowed so much bandwidth, BY LAW. They couldn't serve up uncompressed 1080p if they wanted to, they just aren't allocated the bandwidth. Still, OTA network is the best signal you can get from broadcasts.
Gold-plated oxygen?
This is fabulous. Now when I'm watching a movie or switching streams, I won't have to watch the whole movie delayed by a second or more. That just kills the mood.
As an amateur filmmaker who can't afford professional prices, this is EXACTLY what I want to send video to the director's monitor.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
This article was obviously written by Amimon!
There is 3 camps not 2, and actually only 2 solutions that provide low latency
Amimon is one and SiBeam is the other
Intel's current WiDi stuff is slow and compressed using 802.11 connections and only works with their i5 and i7 systems with their GPU's and their radios
as with other things like it, when you take into account the somewhat beefy PC you need at one end, and the actuall equipment, you might as well drop £200 on an acer revo and attach it to the back of your tv.
Can the WHDI signal be interfered with in any way? What if someone in your garage starts their car or someone is operating an appliance of some kind in the house. Wouldn't that cause interference like it does with satellite TV or with old-fashioned antenna hook-ups? I remember having to install interference filters on my TV, and there were two kinds. One was attached to your TV's antenna and the other to your TV's power line. My dad used these a lot on our TV at our house in Ohio back in the late 70s and early 80s. Not sure if you can even get these any more except for satellite TV hookups.
Figure it out slowpoke.
What does slowpoke have to do with anything?
Not everything in this life will just be handed to you.
You made the claim that "Appliance fans are deluded", yet you don't want to help me find a reputable effort to promote ending this delusion. I search Google for HTPC forums, yet I find a bunch of forums with only 15 new topics in the past six years (case in point). One thing I've never been able to get Google to assess is the reputability of a given resource.
Live sports are for going to and watching at the bar with friends.
Not for fans under 21.
1. get quiet pc and place in cabinet or in another room.
I myself know how to hook a PC up to a TV: after you have the PC in the living room, it's a matter of running two cables. But convincing the public to put a PC in the living room is the hard part. Non-geeks buy an appliance so much more often than a quiet PC to put in a cabinet because they don't know they even can do the latter. I've seen a lot of people even on Slashdot who didn't know that DVI-D and HDMI are the same thing until I pointed out my explanation of HTPC cabling. By "promote HTPC use", I meant educating the public that it's even possible to use a PC for this.
Fans under 21 can still go to the games.
With these escalating ticket prices?
Some leagues do online streaming, others will eventually.
Then HTPCs will "eventually" be ready for the set-top.
They did not, they marketed.
So if education doesn't work, how can geeks market the HTPC experience to the majority?
They also made their product brainlessly easy to use. This was at the cost of functionality.
But the loss of functionality doesn't have to be forced on the end user. Look at Mac OS X: it has various simplified interfaces such as Front Row and Launchpad (formerly At Ease), but the machine's owner can turn them off and access the ordinary Finder or even a Terminal. The Wii homebrew community has done a good job of making Homebrew Channel + Homebrew Browser easy to use, but it'd be even easier if they didn't have to rely on jailbreaks.
Looks around, lots of PCs and PC games still on sale.
But in different genres. If someone wants to make and sell a video game in a genre traditionally associated with PCs, he can self-publish it on the Internet. But if someone wants to make and sell a video game in a genre traditionally associated with consoles, he has to go through a far more formal process with what appears to be ten times more overhead.
Again this sacrifices customize-ability and functionality at the alter of ease of use.
But I don't see why sacrificing functionality in media center mode necessarily has to be taken to the point that one needs the device manufacturer's cryptographic imprimatur for a particular work before he can view that work on a machine.
This just means the easy dumbed down and the grownup version are both there, you are still forced to choose.
Web users are forced to choose which web sites they view, but few people mind it. If the choice to switch between the desktop and a Front Row/XMB/XBMC style interface isn't in the way all the time, I don't see how the user will feel "forced to choose" any more than a traditional PC user in the administrator group is "forced to choose" whether to elevate to run a given program.
But in the status quo, users feel forced not to choose. For example, video gamers can have indie games or local multiplayer, not both.