LAS VEGAS—What if you could connect your laptop to an HDTV or business display, without the hassle of fumbling around with HDMI cables or having your range be limited by the length of one. AT CES 2010, Intel allowed exactly that with its Wireless Display technology (or WiDi), and this could very well be the hottest sleeper technology of the year.
Wireless display is nothing new, though. Wisair, a company that offers an array of wireless USB products, is already shipping devices that can wirelessly extend your laptop to an external display. It uses Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology in a receiver (with HDMI and VGA), connected to an HDTV to make this all possible. The problem was, though, another flash drive-looking dongle has to stick out from one of your laptop's USB ports.
With Intel's WiDi, the technology is built in to the laptop, so that it's one less thing to carry, but you still need a receiver: In this case, Netgear is the only provider of a receiver box solution that will enable WiDi to work with your laptop. Its application is straightforward: You hook up the Netgear Push2TV PVT1000 to an HDTV via HDMI or RCA (Red, Yellow, White) jacks in the back of the receiver. The laptop would then have to pair with the receiver by launching Intel's WiDi software, which is already pre-installed in your laptop. Both the Toshiba Satellite E205 and the Sony VAIO S Series—laptops that have this technology—have a quick-launch key next to the keyboard that instantly brings up the WiDi software. Hit the connect button, and the desktop environment is ported over to your HDTV, wirelessly. The technology is far from ideal, though: Video looked choppy at times and there was some lag in certain applications. Of course, this was a CES WiFi show floor connection, so I can easily chalk that up to a throughput issue as well.
The technology behind WiDi is very interesting. Instead of Wireless USB, which Wisair uses in its products, Intel took an Advanced-N 6200 Wireless card (802.11n)—a WiFi chip that works in all Intel laptops with Core technology—and programmed some extra software on top of it. This WiFi connection is based on Intel's My WiFi, which creates a Personal Area Connection (PAN) between the Intel Integrated Graphics chipset and wireless chip, similar to how Bluetooth technology works (Before the laptop environment can be ported over, you have to pair your TV with a 4-digit code, similar to a Bluetooth headset).
There are plenty of limitations as well. You won't be able to use WiDi to port over copy protected content to your HDTV. For instance, a DVD movie or your iTunes library will not work as they are tied to some form of Digital Rights Management (DRM)—unless, however, you managed to "back them up" and strip them of the DRM, which would then work with WiDi.
Interestingly enough, only three laptops were announced with WiDi technology built in. Two of them—the Toshiba E205 and Sony VAIOS — are sold exclusively at Best Buy under the Blue Label program. (Best Buy has a 6-month exclusive on this technology, which makes absolutely no sense to me.) Each laptop will be bundled with the Netgear box, so you have all the technology in place, for one seemingly low price.
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