Customer Reviews

NETGEAR Push2TV TV Adapter for Intel Wireless Display PTV1000 (Black)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I know technology and I know if this product was released in 2003 it would have been huge, however in 2010 I ask myself, why would anyone sell this?

Basically this is nothing more than Intel sharing your computers wifi connection and using it to send a display signal to a set top box (this unit).

First -- Yes it works..
Second -- Yes it's laggy to the point of making it unasable for anything related to video
Third -- it's target audience should be businesses, not home consumers who might want to use it for more than a power point presentation.

This product is simpily a huge disappointment. You get the performance as if you were doing a remote PC session into someone elses machine -- meaning the same type of lap and copyiness.

Overall 2 stars because it does work.

I bought this item as part of the bundle Amazon offered on the Asus Bamboo laptop. It was relatively easy to setup, but I have encountered nothing but problems since attempting to actually make it work.

I have updated the firmware and the drivers as specified by Netgear. However, everytime I connect the laptop to my television the WiDi application automatically resizes the display on my laptop. Annoying, but whatever. After that, the application goes on to lockup my laptop to the point of requiring a hard boot.

Netgear support has succeeded in repeating everything I say to them back twice to me, but that is it so far.

Conclusion: Product does not do what it is supposed to. From the looks of it (what with a firmware upgrade and "critical" driver updates right out of the box) this appears to be a half-baked, buggy offering. Wish I would have known before hand.

This basically worked as advertised for me right out of the box. I have a Toshiba R705 laptop that has the Intel Wireless Display capability built in.

I connected the adapter to TV and power using provided connectors. Then I fired up the Intel Wireless Display software, typed in the 4 digit code displayed on the TV and then the connection was rock solid.

Pros -

Connection never failed
Audio and Video were extremely good.
Streaming movies from netflix was excellent, no different than streaming from my LG blu-ray player
Youtube etc etc etc, everything was excellent.
Google Web albums looks great

Cons

If you fail to break the wireless connection between the adapter and laptop before closing the laptop, the laptop basically has to be "hard" rebooted. (i.e.disconnect from power and remove battery) since the LCD screen refuses to function after waking up.

The screen has a little bit of space (half an inch all around) around the edges where the wireless display doesn't put anything (even when you set the laptop resolution to match the TV resolution). My TV has a adjustment using which I can fill it up, but other TV's may not have such adjustments and it is a little bit of a pain.

UPDATE: Found a adjustment in the Intel software that lets me increase the size to fill the screen. Extremely happy with the product now!


Overall, I am happy I bought this product. I'm able to do a lot of stuff like stream foriegn TV channels etc etc that I could not do before. It's a bit pricey for 99 bucks, but doubtless there will be price drops.

People need to be aware of the following severe limitations before decide to purchase:

- These Push2TV adapters can only be paired with (work with) select WiDi compliant laptops. You can not just buy Intel Wireless Display Adapter install/add it into one of the slots on your beefy desktop with all your media collection.

- Wireless Display Adapter is Intel Proprietary device. Driver source is not made available to other OEMs like HP, DELL, Lenovo etc. So even if you buy HP WiDi laptop. You are at the mercy of Intel support for any issues/bugs/functional enhancements related to WiDi.

- WiDi uses 2.4 GHz frequency to communicate between laptop Intel Wireless Display adapter and Netgear Push2TV receiver adapter. This may interfere with cordless phones using the same frequency. There is no provision to scan for the free available frequency in the spectrum and dynamically change to that.

- The wireless range is MERE 12 FEET. So you can not have your WiDi laptop in your computer room/home office and display it on TV in living room. Blutooth suddenly look better when 12 feet is limitation... and I would rather use HDMI cable to connect my laptop to TV if I have to live by 12 feet limitation. Why bother with special laptop hardware and Netgear Push2TV adapter??

- Unlike your WiFi where multiple client computers can connect to one router at the same time, this WiDi technology only works with 1 to 1. You can not have multiple Netgear Push2TV adapters installed on each TV in your home and drive them from a single WiDi enabled laptop at the same time.

- I have not verified this myself, but I hear that commercial Bluray/DVD movies titles with copyright protection would NOT work over WiDi. Only your own homemade video/movies would work.

Hope this helps

I tried the NETGEAR Push2TV with the ASUS U43JC laptop, and the quality is terrible on my LG 32" HDTV.

For some of you who might have did some study on this Intel WIDI technology would know that there are about 1~2 second delay on the TV display from your laptop. My initial thought was to just use this for video instead of gaming, but even video has terrible lag and artifact. I have tried to use it from 1 foot away as well as 10 feet away, the quality of the video did not change, and it still produces choppy video.

My final thought is that this product works if you just want to show some photos and maybe powerpoint presentation; however, to play simple videos or games will not be adequate. Do yourself a favor and get a $5 10-feet HDMI cable instead of this $100 adapter.

You'd think something that requires two very specific hardware pieces specifically designed to talk to each other would work out of the box. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

If you happen to have one of the three or so laptops that Intel's wireless display ships with (such as my Toshiba R705) this Netgear box sounds awesome -- plug into your TV and play videos wirelessly.

However,
1. This is a pain to setup. Right out of the box, your laptop will need a driver update to work with this. Once you install that and connect to the netgear box, the netgear box will need a firmware update.

2. Once you go through all those hoops, and get the laptop to connect to this device, you realize that there is a half second lag between what you do on your monitor and when that change shows up on your TV. This makes this device useless for things such as typing an email while looking at the TV -- the lag is too long.

3. The lag shouldn't be such a big deal for watching videos streamed from your laptop to your TV -- ideally the core scenario this device was made for. Unfortunately, here my TV was too choppy. Every minute or so, the video (and audio) would freeze and then skip a second making it annoying enough that I think I am going to return this product and just buy a long HDMI cable. I tried all the steps on the troubleshooting and help documents, but no avail. There is no reason to spend $100 on a wireless replacement of an HDMI cable when the replacement can't even play videos right.

I am not too interested in writing a review unless I am severly impressed or feel screwed by a product that should have never been sold.

This product does not work properly at all. Your laptop has to be right in front of the adapter and within 3ft or connection will break. On top of that it is very choppy and with delayed display.

So forget about browsing your laptop from your cough unless your TV is mounted to you cough and you can deal with delayed display.

I wanted to use this just for movies so delayed display was no issue, but having to put my laptop on the same level, right in front and within 3 feet of the adapter just makes no sense.

I ordered a 12ft HDMI cable instead.

I love Amazon and thats why I siggest them to discontine selling it and Netgear/Intel to stop bringing out a "solution" they know doesn't meet 2011 technology standards as this ruins Netgear's reputation for me.

For all you potential buyers out there.... a warned person counts for two. I should have read the reviews better myself, but lesson learned.
Cheers,
Eric

Like many others, I received this product for free as a promotion with the ASUS U43JC-X1 Bamboo Laptop. Had I paid for it, I would be furious.

The product is very easy to connect. However, it almost certainly will not work (in any true sense of the word) without updating the firmware and drivers. I do not consider this a big issue. Unfortunately, the updates only solve some the issues some of the time. The below issues are still present after the updates.

Issues include (but are not limited to):
-Audio/video discontinuity. Most of the time audio and video are off by a few seconds. Very occasionally, they are not. I consider these few moments the only enjoyable ones with the product.
-Audio transfer. Audio successfully transmitting is intermittent. Often I end up with audio playing on both my laptop and through my wireless display. Luckily for me, they are off by a moment or two, which makes the experience abysmal. I've found a work around to this, but it's annoying that it is even an issue.
-Video lag. The video lag makes this product unusable for gaming, or even casual web browsing. At best, it could acceptably be used for a presentation (without any video or audio) or a slide show.

I would recommend against this product even if it is available for free. I've spent more time attempting to get it to work then it would take me to occasionally plug in an HDMI cable for a year. Not to mention the frustration.

-Thomas

I can tell you when I first plugged this product in and ran the widi app from my hp laptop with a second gen intel i3 2.22ghz i was dissapointed, all the reviews were right it was laggy to the point of being unusable audio/video was out of sync was very disappointing.

HOWEVER! i updated the device, and since then it is one of the best peices of tech i have used, im 25 ft from the unit im streaming 1080p from my laptop set into duel screens, im watching rambo on bluray as im typing this to you full 5.1 surround sound and i have barely seen any lag, i was even able to play with my live-on account without a large lag.

so for those of you hating on this product
1. make sure you have 4gig min ram
2. make sure you UPDATE THE DEVICE
3. again make sure you update!
4. update the widi utility from the intel website

This product is well worth its 5 stars

This is an amazing invention for which we waited really a long time. Perfect in quality. Easy to install. Plug and play.TV indentifies Instantly. Picture on My 55"Samsung,LED,3D,240Hz,1:8million DCR TV, is great. Initially it's kind of fogy when it starts but as the streaming get continuous in about 4 or 5 sec it get clear and vivid. The picture quality On my 55" is great,satisfactory to me( good for Professional viewing too I guess ) Once connected and installed, it's a One button connection when you want to get connected. Great adapter to have .NOTE :- YOUR LAPTOP OR DESKTOP MUST HAVE WIDI HARD WARE AND SOFTWARE PREINSTALLED AND ACTIVATED.A GREAT FEATURE WE ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.I AM HAPPY WITH THIS.IT WAS A CHRISTMAS GIFT TO MYSELF BY MYSELF.WORKS ON HDMI AND 3PIN CABLE TOO.( I DID NOT TRY 3D I WILL UPDATE WHEN I TRY IT ).