Intel launch super-simple PC-to-TV "WiDi" wireless 720p streaming

The trend with notebooks and laptops right now is to make them smaller and smaller, so much so that they’re nearly in danger of being dwarfed by DVD cases these days. But what if you need both the benefits of a portable machine and a larger screen? Intel may well have the solution.

Intel’s Wireless HD Display technology (or WiDi) is one of the simplest wireless laptop streaming devices we’ve ever seen. It’s virtually plug and play; after plugging the HD receiver into your TV via HDMI and performing a simple set-up wizard on your PC, a single button press can have up- or downscaled 720p video streamed straight to your flatscreen TV.

All compression is done on your PC, while the box does the decoding. Remarkably, the whole process rarely eats more than 5Mbps of your network speed when in use.

Artefacts once the video has hit your screen are kept to a minimum, and system resources only take about a 15% hit when on an average Core i5 set up.

Sony, Dell and Lenovo are already said to be looking into integrating the new technology into their machines. If you can’t wait for that, you’ll be able to pick the kit up yourself from the 17th of January from Best Buy if you’re a US reader. No word on a UK launch date yet, but we’d expect to see this hit UK shores not long afterwards.