Asus WiCast: Wireless 1080p to your TV
by Dustin Sklavos on November 1, 2010 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: Lots of Wires for "Wireless"
If we take practicality out of the equation, we're left with a solution that is more or less directly superior to Intel's WiDi. That's not too outlandish to consider; WiDi uses a notebook's internal wireless connection, which means it has a peak throughput of 300Mbps. Compare that to the ASUS WiCast's advertised 3Gbps connection and it's obvious why the WiCast is capable of handling 1080p video, multichannel audio, and doing all of that with near-invisible latency. Even better, WiCast works with anything with an HDMI port, while WiDi is limited to Intel HD graphics and Intel wireless hardware.
The problem is we can't take practicality out of the equation, not really. WiDi's big advantage is that it doesn't require an extra box on the notebook side, but the trade-offs are horrendous. In the meantime, WiCast requires you to connect three cables (two USB and an HDMI) to your notebook (or an AC adapter in place of the USB) and a receiver box to your television. The receiver isn't the issue, but the box and cables on the notebook can turn into a mess in a hurry. You're making an awful lot of sacrifices just to transmit 1080p video wirelessly to your television, and given the number of connections that need to be made, that "wireless" part almost feels like a bit of a misnomer.
Range and interference are a concern as well. Five feet isn't an unreasonable request to make for a wireless home theatre or presentation technology, but the WiCast sometimes had problems with interference even at that distance. There weren't any signal drops, but the lines of artifacting that appeared in the picture during Iron Man 2 weren't exactly easy to ignore.
This all circles back to the essential problem with wireless display technologies, at least at the present time: it's a hell of a lot of work just to get rid of one cable connection. For WiDi, I have to hunt down a notebook with the specific configuration needed to use it, and then drop $99 on the receiver box for the television. For the ASUS WiCast, I have to pay $199, but at least it'll work with whatever I need it to work with. Or I can just order a fifteen foot HDMI cable off of NewEgg for under ten bucks and not have to worry about latency or interference.
So that in mind, I will say this: as far as wireless display goes, the WiCast is in my opinion a superior solution to Intel's WiDi. If this is something you have a need or a use for, then it's an easy sell. But for everyone else, this technology is a tough sell from any vendor. It's just too cumbersome and asks too many trade-offs just to replace one of the cheapest wired connections in a home theater. Yes, you can use it with desktops and even PS3/Xbox 360 if you'd like, but as long as you're still running an AC adapter and range is realistically less than 10 feet, we can't really see this as anything but a niche product. Some will love it, and it's much cheaper than previous 1080p wireless solutions, but $200 is still a fair amount to spend unless this fills a specific need.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
entu - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 - link
only reason to use this, i can imagine, would be a beamer in home-entertainmentSoCalBoomer - Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - link
I was thinking this would be sweet to connect my desktop (opposite the TV) to the entertainment center so I could play videos . . . much better than running a cable across the room. . .Definitely not a be-all or end-all. . .
frenzon - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
As a projector owner, I love anything that can reduce my dependence on cables, especially since I'm renting and don't want to rewire the place.Currently, if I have my computers at the back of the room, then I have to figure out how to get sound and the PS3 Eye to the front of the room. If I have them at the front, then I have to figure out how to get video to the back of the room. All of this is a much bigger pain in the ass than you'd think (the best no-latency+good-quality wireless audio solution I've found does terrible things to wifi), so any development in wireless video is welcome.
bah12 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
Actually it should be a 1 cable solution. Given that you should have a A/V receiver, and most of them today have HDMI switching/scaling. You should end up with only 1 HDMI to the projector. That is the setup I use, and long HDMI cables are not too pricey if you look online. I use this setup with a 25' run, and it works perfectly. It does not matter the source (SVID, Composite, Component, HDMI), it all gets scaled up by my receiver and sent over the HDMI.Granted you still have to run one wire, but this should be the least intrusive setup.
MGSsancho - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
I did the same as this guy. got a good receiver and just hook it all up there. tehre are longer hdmi cables but their massive. you could always run hdmi over dual cat6/5e or fiber. that would get you longer distance, you can control the cable color, more flexible. and you wont have to worry about a 20lb cable than more than 1cm thickKibbles - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
It would be nice to have something like this for the floating no wire TV look. Somethings that would be good on a future version:Multiple inputs on the transmitter side. That way you can have all your hidden boxes hooked up to the TV.
Power splitter on the receiver. Just about all LCD TVs I've seen have the same power cable as the average PC PSU. It would be nifty if they gave you a T line for the TV power port and the cable, so you can have one less wire showing.
I don't know how you can do it, but a way to switch the source without having to add another remote would be nice. Merely signal auto sourcing doesn't always work because you might want to leave your DVR on but play a game or something like that.
Obvious no signal loss every time someone breathes into the signal would be nice too.
dnd728 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
Google-> "WiCast utilizes Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) technology to wirelessly transmit high definition video and audio signals..."So, as I understand it shares this standard with other TVs, video cards, dongles, etc. from various manufacturers.
therealnickdanger - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
From WHDI's own website:"WHDI-enabled products maintain a robust link with *virtually* no loss of visual quality."
It would seem that even the WHDI consortium realizes that wireless 1080p is not perfect. They list several examples as to how the technology might be implemented and "home theater" is not one of them. :)
teddyg007 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
I was just thinking it would have been sweet for ASUS to get with TV/DVD manufacturers and have this technology embeded into devices. Heck they could even embed it into their top of the line laptops to cut down wires and whatnot obviously turning the circuit off when not in use to keep the battery life in check.chui101 - Monday, November 1, 2010 - link
Can we get an actual figure of how much lag there is, and in different conditions? You could set the HDMI output to clone the laptop display and use the input lag test at http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/response_time.php."Near-invisible latency" might not cut it for Rockband! :)