So, I accidentally found out that my new XPS laptop had this feature called, “Intel WiDi.” I had no idea what it was but after doing some research, I was pretty excited that I have it. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to run an HDMI cable from my bed to my TV. Total cost of materials for that project is about $35. For WiDi to work you need a Netgear adapter that costs $72 from Amazon. Considering the time saved from having to punch holes in the dry wall and running wires thru the basement, I think that’s fairly reasonable. After a quick decision, I ordered the Widi and it arrived today. It took me literaly 2-3min to get it set up and running. Of course, it’s not perfect like a hard line connection, but it’s pretty impressive how well it works. You will see the cursor lag if you jerk the mouse around really quick, but that’s an edge use case, no one really moves their mouse that way. Playing HD content is great if you are playing it directly from the laptop. I’ve tested high bitrate 12GB 1080p h.264 video files and the FPS is 95% smooth. However, if you have a WiFi network setup and want to play media files from your WiFi network and stream it to your TV, then YMMV depending on how heavy the bitrate is of the media file you wanna play. I heard that this system runs on 802.11g protocol, they really should’ve used 802.11n. What Intel failed to consider is what if I want to stream video from my HTPC to my laptop to my TV? WiFi-G just doesn’t cut it, believe me, I’ve …
