Pay More Attention to WiDi Technology

Almost everyone has heard of the "Home Theater PC" (HTPC) and people are rapidly becoming familiar with media center extenders that can play music, pictures and video on your TV. But there is one segment that isn't getting as much attention, and in my opinion is the best of them all. Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology has been out for over a year, and is now in its second generation. With WiDi, you don't need a second computer attached to your TV, you don't need a server streaming to a third party media center extender, all you need is your laptop. WiDi is hardware accelerated wireless streaming of your computer's display and sound to the TV.

WiDi is mainly intended for laptop users as it enables them to sit on the couch and use their TV as their laptop screen. Various ways of doing this have been around for years, and have usually involved either plugging your laptop in to the TV or streaming through a media center extender box. Plugging your laptop in is a pain, and requires a long cable. Media streamers and media center extenders are usually slow, expensive, require another computer to act as a server, and can only do limited things. There are also a few third party solutions for streaming video to the TV, but they typically involve SW transcoding which is CPU intensive. This limits the capabilities of the video stream as well as bogging down the laptop in the process.

What's great about WiDi is that all you have to do is push a button on the laptop and the display is automatically transmitted to the TV. It's fast and easy. Since this is accomplished mainly in hardware, without software processing, the CPU is still largely free to do with as you please. So you can surf the web, watch movies, read a document, or whatever else you do on the computer from your couch using the TV and home entertainment system. WiDi 2.0 will soon support full Dolby 5.1 Surround as well, something many media center extenders lack. The downside is that a separate receiver box is necessary on the TV side to receive the signal, and they usually go for around $100. This is still less money than a media streamer and offers much more flexibility. There is also a small amount of lag between the movements on the laptop screen and the movements on the TV. This makes it difficult to play certain computer games. If WiDi technology gains popularity, there will be ample incentive for Intel to address the lag issue in future versions.

In my opinion WiDi technology is superior to media streamers and HTPC (unless you are recording tv with the latter). It is simpler and more versatile than a media streamer, and far cheaper and more efficient than a HTPC. Use it to play your ripped DVDs on the TV, amongst other things.

UPDATE:

So I was all ready to publish this article on how great WiDi technology is, and then along comes WHDI. WHDI corrects the shortcomings of WiDi and adds a huge key advantage. The basic premise is the same, wireless transmission of your laptop's screen to the TV along with audio. While WiDi offers a nice integrated solution using the existing wireless chip in the laptop, the lag due to hardware compression of the video stream makes playing games on the TV from the computer virtually impossible. WHDI instead offers an uncompressed, lag free video stream from an external device that attaches to both the USB and HDMI ports of the laptop. No special laptop hardware is required, and it doesn't even really need to be a laptop at all. Anything with a USB and HDMI connection will work, Tablets, cell phones, anything. Since there is virtually no lag, anything is now possible, even games. As much as I wanted to love WiDi, there is just no getting around the fact that WHDI offers a better solution

WHDI products are just now starting to hit the stores, along with WIDI 2.0 products in the near future. It will be interesting to see how WIDI 2.0 based hardware competes with WHDI. Current WHDI offerings from HP and Asus are large and bulky and would be a pain to use with the laptop on the couch. But there are a bunch of products launching in the near future that pack everything into a simple stick that plugs into the side of the computer, rivaling the convenience of WIDI's integrated solution.

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