Homeland Security: Getting Content From the PC To The TV

This blog post references my hands-on feature article ‘Homeland Security: Monitoring And Manipulating Remote Residences‘ in EDN’s November 22, 2007 edition. It’s one of a series of web addendums to the print writeup.

Many of the television and movie content sources mentioned in my previous blog post are PC-based in nature. One problem; I’m not particularly fond of watching a lot of video on a computer, unless there’s no other option available (i.e. if I’m on an airplane or train with my MacBook, for example). I’d much rather be stretched out on my sofa and ottoman, in front of my large-screen LCD TV. If my laptop’s on my…err…lap, I want to be using it to read and write email, surf the web, craft blog posts or otherwise multitask. And given the consumer survey data I’ve been monitoring over the past few years, I don’t think mine’s the minority opinion.

This predicament gave me the opportunity to (finally) test-drive a set of hardware, Belkin’s PureAV AV55000 RemoteTV, of which my cohort Matt Miller did a lengthy hands-on eval three years back. I was unable to get my MacBook’s Mini-DVI to Video adapter to work under Windows, and judging from the comments on Apple’s support discussion site, I’m not alone (the problem appears to be with Intel’s graphics drivers; ATI/AMD-based MacBook Pros reportedly work fine). But my Dell Inspiron 700m laptop, with its built-in S-Video output, worked like a charm. I could even control it over RealVNC or Windows Remote Desktop Connection from my MacBook in the livingroom.

Before proceeding with the results, I’ll describe my setup. The Inspiron 700m sits in my office, with the RemoteTV transmitter sitting right next to it. 15 feet (and two wooden walls) away is my Linksys WRT54GC router, with a tethered external antenna, to which the Inspiron 700m is wirelessly connected over 2.4 GHz 802.11g. 15 feet beyond the router is the RemoteTV receiver; the router is almost exactly in-between the two Belkin units, from both a distance and "line-of-sight" (keeping in mind the walls) standpoint. And six feet beyond the RemoteTV receiver are my MacBook (which is also 802.11g-tethered to the router) and I.

The good news; the two RemoteTV units instantly paired and began shuttling audio and video bits from the laptop’s S-Video and headphone jack outputs to the LCD TV’s S-Video and audio inputs, via the proprietary 5.8 GHz wireless RemoteTV link implemented by now-defunct Magis Networks silicon. The video quality was passable, particularly considering that the source Flash and Windows Media video content coming off the network and Netflix Watch Now websites was fairly low-resolution to begin with. I didn’t detect any frame rate degradation, nor did I hear any audio drop-outs.

The bad news (notice how there’s always at least some bad news?): look at the ping and bandwidth test results I captured on the MacBook over 802.11g, while the RemoteTV link was active:

Now compare them with the ‘control’ results I get over 802.11g with no other active 2.4 Ghz or 5.8 GHz signals:

Granted, the bandwidth degradation isn’t significant, but the ping stats make it particularly evident that some Wi-Fi-transported packets are getting delayed or lost when the RemoteTV gear is operating nearby. To that point, note that the MacBook (which, I should remind you, I upgraded to support dual-band 802.11n) isn’t even ‘in the middle’ of the RemoteTV link.

I bring this all up because the Frequently Asked Questions section of the RemoteTV manual (PDF) includes the following confidently stated verbage:

Does the PureAV RemoteTV interoperate with IEEE 802.11a?

No. Because the MAC layers are fundamentally different, the two systems do not communicate or interoperate with each other.

Does the PureAV RemoteTV interfere with IEEE 802.11a?

No, the PureAV RemoteTV has built-in DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) capabilities and avoids RF channels that are occupied by other networks.

As was the case with the Amphony 5.8 GHz wireless audio gear that I’ve tested, the wireless multimedia link seems to interfere with my MacBook’s dual-band Wi-Fi transmitter, even if the data network that the MacBook’s connected to is 2.4 GHz-based. And as was the case with the Avnera-based wireless audio gear that I’ve tested, the wireless multimedia link doesn’t seem to be doing a perfect job of detecting and staying away from wireless channels used by active data networks.

Belkin’s PureAV RemoteTV and Magis Networks, the company who created the silicon that forms the RemoteTV wireless link, may both be obsolete. But consumers’ desires to wirelessly stream audio and video bits around their homes, and silicon, software and system providers’ desires to satisfy those consumers’ desires, continue unabated. In fact, judging from the pre-CES news that’s already been released (as well as an abundance of unreleased news that I’ll be able to tell you about in the coming days), the search for the wireless multimedia Holy Grail has, if anything, greatly accelerated over the past three years…in the process, encompassing upgrades such as high-definition video and surround sound audio.

Belkin, for example, is partnering with Amimon on a Wireless HDI system, which is now HDCP-certified. Speaking of HDCP, Westinghouse will be demonstrating an UWB-supportive display that includes Pulse-Link’s Wireless HDMI transceiver. And the WirelessHD specification has hit the v1.0 level. None of these technologies is compatible with each other…we’re still at the early state of the technology ramp, when competitors are overly focused on maximizing their percentage of the total ‘pie’, at the expense of maximizing the ‘pie’s’ total size. Sigh. But I’m confident that the consumer ‘pull’ is sufficiently strong such that the situation will eventually sort itself out; one or a few de facto standards will eventually emerge, hopefully with interoperability between them to further grow the total market.

If I didn’t believe so strongly in the potential of wireless multimedia links, why would I regularly test them, after all? On that note, stay tuned for my hands-on coverage of SST’s MelodyWing SP wireless audio technology in the next day or two. And beyond that, stay tuned for my CES coverage to begin on Sunday…assuming, that is, that I’m able to dig myself out from the massive storm that’s supposedly headed this way and safely get to Reno Airport!