Intel Launches Wi-Di 172
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.'"
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
transmit TV signals!
Brilliant!
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't put your PS3 in your attic?
will the cable/ satellite industry fight this? (Score:5, 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
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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
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Wi-Di (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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I prefer the pronunciation "widdy"
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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.
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What a great joke! You're so Wi-Di...
Like the Wii? And the Kindle? (Score:2)
Devices with those silly names will never sell.
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"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.
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Or perhaps it was meant to conjure images of Nazis burning books in Germany [historyplace.com]??? Muhahaha... :/
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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.
Re:Wi-Di (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
Re:Wi-Di (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Prior to that, When Shugart worked for IBM, it was called the "IBM Data Channel Interface" or something. (I'll Google it later)
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Well it worked didnt it. Your gonna remember it for awhile.
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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.
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Just wait for Microsoft to integrate it into Windows LIVE. ;)
And then wait for the worst pun-filled advertisement EVER.
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Yes, but so is everything else!
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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...)
Encryption on by default (Score:2)
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Pronunciation? (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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Wi-Di? (Score:2)
You gotta go sometime...
At least this one makes sense, unlike Wi-Fi. Kind of morbid name, though.
Something else I'll probably never need (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet another kind of connection from PC to TV?
Why not just watch on the monitor of the PC, or use a projector?
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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)
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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.
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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.
Why Die? (Score:2)
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.
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Does this work with real video cards / chips? (Score:2)
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?
whats the chance... (Score:2)
that intel came up with light peak after getting called on their attempt to keep usb 3.0 host controller specs proprietary?
Light Peak started at Apple (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/26/exclusive-apple-dictated-light-peak-creation-to-intel-could-be/
I have my doubts (Score:2)
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
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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.
The real killer app (Score:2)
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Those do exist. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=813 [zdnet.com]
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.
Intel CPUs? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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Televisions will require a special adapter.... (Score:3, 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.)
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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 [google.com].
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Thanks, I needed that!
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Forget the vowel transposition, and give the gp a break. Mine is a modifier for desktop not retail.
Should use ATSC (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't television use better compression? (Score:2)
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 pre
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I know a lot of fan boys love h264 and believe that HD can
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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.
So many questions... (Score:3, 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.
Bandwidth? (Score:2, 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.
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I'm sure you're right. I just wish they wouldn't use blatantly misleading phrases like HD when describing this tech then.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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Nah... I doubt they'll ever ReViiV that one.
How about something really useful, like OOB mgmt? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Why wouldn't... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 scre
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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 ne
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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
Re:How much cat6 would $100.00 buy? (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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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All TVs have standardized wireless video receivers integrated into them, ever since they became a consumer product.
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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.
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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 p
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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...
Oblig XKCD (Score:2)
Headshot! [xkcd.com]
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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.
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That's the problem. I would pay $100 to do away with the room-spanning cable(s).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 i
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buy a fishtape and run the cable in the wall, under the floor or through the ceiling.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Poorly shielded HDCP-free HDMI is cheaper than well-shielded analog.
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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!
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Monster Air, designed to resist oxidation in the air. Sure, you'll suffocate, but it will sound awesome.