Check This Out!

[healimonster]

Ok so we all hate those pop up ads from X10.com for those wireless spy cameras. Except for the one with the cute brunette girl sitting on the floor with some weird loose but yet skin tight blue dress. Any who. The good people at x10 have a couple of products I am interested in.

My computer is in my kitchen and that is not where I like to kick back for 2 hours and watch a movie. Nor do I want to run cables to my living room. You see where I am going with this thing.

Wireless PC to TV. I know that I can use a wireless router to play XBOX Live over the internet on my tv using my PCs connection. But that is something completely different from having your PC's audio and video get to your TV.

How is this traditional done, or is there no traditional way to have a wireless connection from your pc to your tv?

Enter these two products.

Entertainment Anywhere
http://www.x10.com/products/x10_vk57a.htm


Certainly seems like it could work, but the website is very vague on how it works. When I read the frequently asked questions with regards to this product it seemed to have some limitations. Only being able to playback movies from Windows Mediaplayer or their so called "Boom" software. If this product works the way I am envisioning it, it should not require any software and would show whatever is coming out of your video and audio cards. Enter the reason for this post. Has anyone used this or a similar product. It certainly seems to have the feel of those tv-input cards when they first came out. A great idea, watch cable tv on your computer! But they never worked the way they were advertised.

Now on to what appears to be a new twist on an old idea.
Product #2

Video Sender
http://www.x10.com/products/x10_vk30a.htm

Remember those old pieces of crap tv transmitters that you could buy at radio shack 15 years ago. It would take your tv signal (somehow) and broadcast it like a low power mini TV tower to some chanel (2 or 3 perhaps) and your tv in your bed room tuned to chanel 2 or 3 could now watch the movie that you were playing from your 1 precious beta player in your living room. Like the early tv cards for your computer these sucked too because their signal was never strong enough to make it enjoyable viewing. I am hoping that this new product video sender doesn't just "broadcast" the signal to a certain channel. I hope it has a receiver that converts it to a usable RCA red yellow white AV cable outputs. But X10's product descriptions are so ambiguous I cant tell if it is using microwave technology or morse code.

Well we are dealing with PC to TV not TV to TV so why am I talking about this product? Since my computer has a TV out video card, couldn't I just use some cable converters from radio shack and accomplish the same thing?

I have never used the tv-out thing on my video card and to be honest I didn't even know I have one until a few hours ago. To my eyes it looks like there are 2 different out puts on my video card. 1: male female thing for the monitor and 2: a S-video output. Being that radio shack has every kind of converter known to man kind couldn't I just get a s-video to traditional RCA video cable converter?

Being a newbie to this TV out video card thing, theres no sound coming out of that thing is there? So You would have to get sound from your sound card. Which yours and mine output is already being used by your speaker set up. So its back to radio shack to get some sort of splitter? Is that how this normally works? Splitters usually make both signals sound like crap? Then take the one side your split and use a converter to make it into an RCA type audio video type cable? Now I am beginning to realize why this technique has not been popularized. There is probably so much signal loss going on here that the final product on your TV probably doesn't look much different then the experience I alluded to with the old sony beta deck above.

Sorry for the long post. To recap:

How do people traditionally get their PC audio and video signals to their TVs?
What wireless products are out there that can accomplish this other than these?
Do they work and are they cheap?

It should be noted that the Entertainment Anywhere is just 69 dollars with free shipping. If it works like I hope it would, which I am sure it doesn't, thats a steal.

Healimonster

[healimonster]

After doing a little digging the 69 dollar "Entertainment Anywhere" connects to your DVD-rom card.

http://www.x10.com/instructions/in35a.htm

Being that I don't have a dvd drive that would be a problem. Or is it? It is simply taking the RCA video output signal, so I could use the any RCA video out put signal right?

Well the only video out put signal other then my monitor would be my s-video tv out slot on my video card.

So I would need to convert that.

Radio Shack RCA to S-Video Converter web page

The only thing I could find at the Shack was this RCA to S-video converter. Assuming that this converter has a male s-video end to it. Thats all I would need to wireless-ly send my audio and video over 2.4mghz transmitter and receiver? Right?

There is on caveat on their web page

**For DVD use; Entertainment Anywhere
requires a standard RCA Video Out from
your PC Video Card, computer or DVD player

as long as a converter can take care of this problem I see no reason not to get this product.

Edit: unless of course the audio and video quality suck.