Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good idea badly executed., November 11, 2004
You would think this would be a good thing. Hook up a box to go between your computer and monitor/speakers, and it wirelessly sends the signal to a receiver hooked up to your computer. But it's not that simple. The glowing reviews you see here were either written by employees of Grandtec, or by people with better luck than me.
First of all, there is a nice passthrough cable for your monitor. One end hooks up to the transmitter, and the other end hooks up to your video card, but you can also hook up your monitor to it, hence the term passthrough. However, having this installed makes your screen blurry, even when the transmitter is off. Second, there is no passthrough for your speakers. You have to reroute your sound to the unit; you cannot hook speakers up. I have an amp hooked up to my soundcard, so I merely hooked the GWB-4000 up through the headphone jack of my amp, so I got the passthrough anyway.
So I got it hooked up on both ends. The first problem I ran into was I got no video. The booklet says it supports 1280x1024. This is a lie. So I went down to 1024x768. I only saw the upper/left 75% of the screen, and that's in zoom-out mode. I had to go down to 800x600 to get it to display right. I can't work in 800x600 with everything blurry! And it worked, but only just barely. There were squiggly vertical lines dancing around the screen, as if the transmission wasn't clear. The transmitter and receiver were 50 feet away, around a corner. The unit operates on 2.4GHz. So does my cordless phone, and the range is much greater than that. I have no doubt the signal was fine. I blame the unit for the errors, possibly for the same reason my screen was blurry.
Testing it, I first started the first Deus Ex game. The intro movie has forced subtitles, which did not display, telling me that I was only looking at the top. It sort of stretched it, and pushed the bottom down. When the game started, the tool belt (bottom of the screen) was gone. I loaded a Divx movie with Ac3 audio, and the sound was terribly quiet. The video resolution was fine, but the aforementioned squiggly lines made the movie unwatchable.
I do not mean to accuse the other reviewers of dishonesty, but this device is no good. I can only guess at why theirs worked. Perhaps a Mac does video differently, or maybe they used a PC with an ATI graphics card. I have a PC with an nVidia graphics card. But I don't think what the computer is running is at issue, I believe the GWB-4000 unit itself is faulty.
As always, Amazon is a brilliant place to shop, they had it here very quickly although I selected the free shipping, and the return process has so far been painless. UPS is picking it up tomorrow or the next day. This has not affected my solid faith in Amazon, only in this product. Potential buyers should note that Best Buy and CompUSA will not stock this item. I originally saw this item on CompUSA's web site. I should have been warned when I learned they would not stock it in their retail stores, only the web site. I am, however, glad I purchased it from Amazon.com and not CompUSA.com.
Bottom line: Avoid it like the plague.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Idea, and Hardware, bad cables..., December 27, 2002
I bought this piece of hardware because it was the only wireless solution that I could find. Basically I purchased it so that I could watch AVI files that I downloaded to my computer without having to convert them to a VCD. For this application the device went off without a hitch. The video quality is phenomenal on the TV end as is the audio. The range of the device is also phenomenal and much better than I expected. However, be sure to lower the resoultion on your monitor display to 800X600 so that you can view the entire screen (the instruction manual says 1024x768 but I found this to be untrue).With any piece of hardware there is always something you wish they had done better, and for this product it is the way it connects up to your system. The product comes with a pass through connector to attach to a standard SVGA port. While the cable works and the video that displays on the tv is perfect, it blurs and distorts the monitor end a little. If you expect your display to be perfect on your monitor you'll have to look for an alternate options of connecting up the device. Lucky for me my video card has a DVI and a VIVO port so I had no problems connecting the receiver to the RCA jack. Also be warned that if you wish to connect a RGB jack, SVIDEO jack, etc. to the reciver it will not be able to transmit this signal wirelessely so you'll have to connect them the old fashioned way. Except for the issues stated above this is a great product and I highly reccomend it, I just wish they included a bit better cable.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Nice idea... bad product., May 6, 2006
This product does not work very well. I installed it in two different houses, on three different computers, tried all the fine tuning options, chanels, and troubleshooting tips in the manual. And it never looked even close to good.
This device adds a good bit of static and interference to the video and audio. (yes, i unplugged my wireless router and cordless phones....) It even makes your monitor look fuzzy. At the advice of one of the other reviews I saw here, I even tried a different vga cable. The vga Y cable they include seems to increase the issues. With a different cable, its slightly better but not quite usable. If you plan to use your computer on the television (or just read documents), forget it. Text is so bulry its very hard to read.
If all you want to do is stream a movie to your tv... And you don't mind some static... then this might work for you.
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