Wednesday, December 18, 2013

NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000 (Black)

NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000This basically worked as advertised for me right out of the box. I have a Toshiba R705 laptop that has the Intel Wireless Display capability built in.

I connected the adapter to TV and power using provided connectors. Then I fired up the Intel Wireless Display software, typed in the 4 digit code displayed on the TV and then the connection was rock solid.

Pros -

Connection never failed

Audio and Video were extremely good.

Streaming movies from netflix was excellent, no different than streaming from my LG blu-ray player

Youtube etc etc etc, everything was excellent.

Google Web albums looks great

Cons

If you fail to break the wireless connection between the adapter and laptop before closing the laptop, the laptop basically has to be "hard" rebooted. (i.e.disconnect from power and remove battery) since the LCD screen refuses to function after waking up.

The screen has a little bit of space (half an inch all around) around the edges where the wireless display doesn't put anything (even when you set the laptop resolution to match the TV resolution). My TV has a adjustment using which I can fill it up, but other TV's may not have such adjustments and it is a little bit of a pain.

UPDATE: Found a adjustment in the Intel software that lets me increase the size to fill the screen. Extremely happy with the product now!

Overall, I am happy I bought this product. I'm able to do a lot of stuff like stream foriegn TV channels etc etc that I could not do before. It's a bit pricey for 99 bucks, but doubtless there will be price drops.

I bought this item as part of the bundle Amazon offered on the Asus Bamboo laptop. It was relatively easy to setup, but I have encountered nothing but problems since attempting to actually make it work.

I have updated the firmware and the drivers as specified by Netgear. However, everytime I connect the laptop to my television the WiDi application automatically resizes the display on my laptop. Annoying, but whatever. After that, the application goes on to lockup my laptop to the point of requiring a hard boot.

Netgear support has succeeded in repeating everything I say to them back twice to me, but that is it so far.

Conclusion: Product does not do what it is supposed to. From the looks of it (what with a firmware upgrade and "critical" driver updates right out of the box) this appears to be a half-baked, buggy offering. Wish I would have known before hand.

Update 7-23-12:

I gave this away a year ago to a friend who had no issues setting it up. However, he experienced the same random video pixellation, lag and infuriating laptop lockups. We trashed talked it over a few beers and both agreed an old desktop computer with an HDMI cable, being used as a media machine is a much better solution. He didn't think it was garage sale material so we played roller hockey with it. The surface on both sides slides very well and the weight is well balanced for wrist shots. I still have to keep my review at 2 stars however, because when we started with the slapshots the durability just wasn't up to snuff.

Buy NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000 (Black) Now

I know technology and I know if this product was released in 2003 it would have been huge, however in 2010 I ask myself, why would anyone sell this?

Basically this is nothing more than Intel sharing your computers wifi connection and using it to send a display signal to a set top box (this unit).

First -Yes it works..

Second -Yes it's laggy to the point of making it unasable for anything related to video

Third -it's target audience should be businesses, not home consumers who might want to use it for more than a power point presentation.

This product is simpily a huge disappointment. You get the performance as if you were doing a remote PC session into someone elses machine -meaning the same type of lap and copyiness.

Overall 2 stars because it does work.

Read Best Reviews of NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000 (Black) Here

People need to be aware of the following severe limitations before decide to purchase:

These Push2TV adapters can only be paired with (work with) select WiDi compliant laptops. You can not just buy Intel Wireless Display Adapter install/add it into one of the slots on your beefy desktop with all your media collection.

Wireless Display Adapter is Intel Proprietary device. Driver source is not made available to other OEMs like HP, DELL, Lenovo etc. So even if you buy HP WiDi laptop. You are at the mercy of Intel support for any issues/bugs/functional enhancements related to WiDi.

WiDi uses 2.4 GHz frequency to communicate between laptop Intel Wireless Display adapter and Netgear Push2TV receiver adapter. This may interfere with cordless phones using the same frequency. There is no provision to scan for the free available frequency in the spectrum and dynamically change to that.

The wireless range is MERE 12 FEET. So you can not have your WiDi laptop in your computer room/home office and display it on TV in living room. Blutooth suddenly look better when 12 feet is limitation... and I would rather use HDMI cable to connect my laptop to TV if I have to live by 12 feet limitation. Why bother with special laptop hardware and Netgear Push2TV adapter??

Unlike your WiFi where multiple client computers can connect to one router at the same time, this WiDi technology only works with 1 to 1. You can not have multiple Netgear Push2TV adapters installed on each TV in your home and drive them from a single WiDi enabled laptop at the same time.

I have not verified this myself, but I hear that commercial Bluray/DVD movies titles with copyright protection would NOT work over WiDi. Only your own homemade video/movies would work.

Hope this helps

Want NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000 (Black) Discount?

You'd think something that requires two very specific hardware pieces specifically designed to talk to each other would work out of the box. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

If you happen to have one of the three or so laptops that Intel's wireless display ships with (such as my Toshiba R705) this Netgear box sounds awesome -plug into your TV and play videos wirelessly.

However,

1. This is a pain to setup. Right out of the box, your laptop will need a driver update to work with this. Once you install that and connect to the netgear box, the netgear box will need a firmware update.

2. Once you go through all those hoops, and get the laptop to connect to this device, you realize that there is a half second lag between what you do on your monitor and when that change shows up on your TV. This makes this device useless for things such as typing an email while looking at the TV -the lag is too long.

3. The lag shouldn't be such a big deal for watching videos streamed from your laptop to your TV -ideally the core scenario this device was made for. Unfortunately, here my TV was too choppy. Every minute or so, the video (and audio) would freeze and then skip a second making it annoying enough that I think I am going to return this product and just buy a long HDMI cable. I tried all the steps on the troubleshooting and help documents, but no avail. There is no reason to spend $100 on a wireless replacement of an HDMI cable when the replacement can't even play videos right.

Save 69% Off

No comments:

Post a Comment