The newest computer craze, Wi-Fi — short for wireless fidelity — delivers broadband Web access without any need to physically connect your computer to a network (click to read “What Is Wi-Fi?” for details). Better yet, for A/V fans, you can now use the same technology to send music and video to far-flung rooms without having to run cables through the walls. That capability puts us on the brink of a new, unwired era in entertainment, one in which A/V gear can be integrated into your home elegantly and almost transparently.
Whole-house audio/video isn’t new. For years now it’s been possible to hire a custom installer to wire your home with an advanced distribution and control system that lets you access CDs from any room or tune in CNN on DirecTV in the kitchen as you sip your morning coffee. But installations like these remain very expensive. There are a number of low-cost wireless kits that use radio frequencies (RF) to send audio and video between rooms, but their functionality is limited and their signals are prone to interference from cordless phones and some other appliances.
Compared with wired installations, a Wi-Fi-based A/V network can be relatively inexpensive. Running cables in a house that wasn’t originally wired for audio, video, and data is time consuming and difficult, and the electronic components required to control A/V gear from remote locations don’t come cheap. But you need to add only a few pieces of basic equipment to your computer setup to install a Wi-Fi network.
The easiest way to create a Wi-Fi-based home-entertainment system is to use an existing wireless computer network to send signals to various TVs and audio equipment in your home (click to read “Leveraging Your Network”). But if you don’t already have a home network, there are other Wi-Fi-based options to consider, some of which we’ll explore here. In one case, you don’t even need a computer! The following solutions to the problem of shuttling signals around the house give a preview of where things are going in the rapidly expanding world of wireless home entertainment.
Yamaha MusicCAST
Although Yamaha’s MusicCAST depends on Wi-Fi to do its job, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the all-in-one system. No PC or Internet connection is required, and you don’t need to buy any additional gear. The $2,800 system consists of the MCX-1000, an 80-gigabyte (GB) server that holds up to 1,000 CDs using MP3 compression, and an MPX-1 client — essentially a mini stereo system with a built-in Wi-Fi receiver. Audio is shared between the server and client using 802.11b wireless technology. Up to five wireless MPX-1s can independently tap into the server at any one time, which means that the MusicCAST can accommodate the diverse music needs of an entire family. (For more details, see Ken Pohlmann’s test report.)
You load up the server with your CD collection by inserting discs in the tray and ripping them to its hard disk — a built-in Gracenote CDDB database automatically tags the files with artist names and album/song titles. You can use the remote control and either the server’s LCD window or its onscreen display on a TV set to search through your music library and sort songs into playlists. The server also lets you burn CDs from lists of songs stored on its hard drive.
With no wires connecting the MPX-1 to the server, the compact client is like an island of audio floating around your home. It has a 20-watt amp and can be hooked up to either Yamaha’s optional set of speakers or a pair of your own choosing. There are also audio and video line outputs if you want to use it as a source in a separate A/V system. But the MPX-1’s most useful feature is probably the LCD window and credit-card-size remote control you use to select songs from the server, which can be almost 200 feet away.
The MusicCAST isn’t designed to handle video, and you can’t transfer music files to it from your computer. But if you’re seeking a simple, cutting-edge way to move music from one room to another, its appeal is undeniable.
www.yamaha.com/musiccastSony Vaio PC Plus RoomLink
If a PC-centric approach to Wi-Fi entertainment is more your style, Sony offers a solution. With personal video recording and audio jukebox features, the Vaio PCV-RZ36G ($2,099) is about as A/V-friendly as a PC can get. Combine it with Sony’s wireless PCWA-A500 router ($349), wireless PCWA-DE50 Ethernet converter ($199), and RoomLink Network Media Receiver ($199), and you’ll have everything you need to wirelessly distribute both audio and video in your home.
The Vaio is a decked-out desktop PC with a 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor, 160-GB hard disk, and a recordable DVD drive that supports the erasable DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats as well as the write-once DVD-R format. Its software bundle includes SonicStage for MP3 encoding, creating music playlists, and burning CDs as well as Giga Pocket PVR for recording cable, satellite, or broadcast TV in TiVo-like fashion. It also has FireWire and USB 2.0 ports for connecting a digital camcorder and Adobe Premiere LE software for editing your home movies.
To send audio and video stored on the PC to other rooms, you connect the Vaio to the wireless router, which broadcasts data using the 802.11a Wi-Fi standard — a version five times faster than the more common 802.11b, making it better for sending video. The signals are picked up at the remote location by the Ethernet converter connected to the Ethernet port on the RoomLink receiver, which feeds video to your A/V system or TV through composite- or S-video outputs and audio through stereo analog or optical digital outputs. Range varies, but it is said to average around 30 to 50 feet.
You need some computer know-how to get Sony’s Wi-Fi solution up and running, but it offers a considerable reward for your efforts: wire-free access to audio and video. You operate the RoomLink receiver just like a normal component. It comes with a remote control so you can use your TV to browse lists of photos, songs, or video recordings stored on the PC, and your selections are streamed instantly from the hard drive. And with both the computer and the necessary peripherals coming from one company, the odds are good that all of it will work together smoothly.
www.sonystyle.com Omnifi Wireless StreamerIf Wi-Fi can extend your computer’s reach to the farthest nooks of your home, there’s no reason it shouldn’t venture out into the garage, too. The Omnifi Wireless Digital Media Transfer System, to give it its full name, lets you access music files stored either on your computer or on the Internet and download them to your home theater or car on a prescheduled basis. So if a car commute is part of your daily grind, the Omnifi system lets you roll out of the driveway each morning freshly loaded with new tunes and other types of programming.
The full system includes the DMS1 Home Digital Media Streamer ($299, see “The Cutting Edge,” for a more detailed report), the DMP1 Mobile Digital Media Player ($599) — each of which can be used separately — and SimpleCenter software. You use the software to convert CDs to MP3 or Windows Media Audio (WMA) format on your PC, tag the files with artist, album, and song title information via the Gracenote CDDB online database, and then organize it all into playlists. You can also use it to schedule a daily download of the Wall Street Journal’s Web audio service (at $50 a year for an online subscription) and a sampler of new music from online sites like pressplay. Once you decide what you want and when you want it, SimpleCenter will fetch it for you.
To get up and running, you hook up the system’s home and car components to a wireless LAN adapter ($70) via their USB ports. This allows them to wirelessly link up to your PC via a Wi-Fi router and download music and other audio programs streamed off its hard disk. The DMS1, which connects to your A/V system via composite/S-video and stereo audio jacks, has a front-panel jog wheel and LED screen for browsing content stored on your PC. But you’ll be better off hooking it up to your TV and using its remote to navigate onscreen menus. Once you’re done, you can kick back and listen to music stored on your PC as easily as you would with any other component in your rack. (Fosgate Audionics, another brand owned by Omnifimedia’s parent company, Rockford, also has a video-capable media streamer slated to reach store shelves in spring 2004.)
The DMP1, which consists of a dashboard-mounted controller and 20-GB removable hard-disk cartridge, has both RF and stereo RCA jacks to connect to your car’s head unit plus a USB port for the wireless adapter. A jog dial and graphics display on the controller’s front panel lets you scan files stored on the resident hard disk, selecting the album, song, playlist, or other type of program to listen to. As with the Omnifi home receiver, the DMP1’s wireless adapter enables it to make a wire-free link with your PC, loading you up with enough music and news for your daily ride. You just pull up in the garage, hit a button, and in a few minutes you’re ready to roll with a new batch of tunes freshly loaded into the DMP1’s mini hard drive. How cool is that? And if you’re going on a long trip and require more storage, you can easily swap out the hard-disk cartridge for a second one filled with more tunes, news programs, audio books, and so on.
If you’re one of those people who spend almost as much time in their cars as they do at home, the Omnifi system is worth checking out as a way to keep both entertained and in touch with world events no matter where you are. The wireless connection to your PC means that both the home and car receivers never have to be removed, and with the customizable SimpleCenter software controlling the flow of data, you’ll be in the driver’s seat.
www.omnifimedia.comPhilips iPronto Remote Control
All Wi-Fi A/V systems and standalone media receivers come with a remote control so you can call up songs or TV shows without having to get up from the couch. But wouldn’t it be great if the remote was Wi-Fi-enabled too? That’s the idea behind the Philips iPronto, a fully programmable universal remote that also lets you browse the Web and send e-mail via its 6 1/2-inch color LCD touchscreen (see “The Cutting Edge,” June 2003, for details). With so many features onboard, the iPronto is definitely the mother of all remote controls, but its technological sophistication comes at a steep price: $1,700.
The iPronto communicates with your wireless network via its 802.11b card. If you have a broadband Internet connection, the remote automatically updates its electronic program guide (EPG), giving you comprehensive channel listings on its touchscreen along with program details for channels you select while watching TV. But the iPronto’s Internet features make it more than just a glorified TV guide. During commercial breaks, you can check your e-mail or surf over to the CNN Web site to take in the latest headlines.
The iPronto comes preprogrammed to control more than 500 devices, and its wireless link to your PC makes it easy to create a custom interface to control your entire home theater system. The iPronto Edit PC software lets you design buttons and labels that correspond to the ones found on your various remote controls. And you can edit the onscreen display to suit your needs, customizing keypad layouts and omitting unused buttons.
With its big touchscreen and Wi-Fi connection, the Philips iPronto enters territory where no remote control has dared go before. It might cost as much as an entire entry-level home theater system, but the degree of customization and control it provides — not to mention the prospect of Web surfing from your couch — makes it unique.
Wire has served us well since Edison’s day, but with technologies like Wi-Fi providing a cheap, easy way to move data through nothing more than thin air, it might be time to cut the cord. A/V manufacturers are already hard at work channeling Wi-Fi into elegant whole-house solutions. And as the number of houses with wireless networks increases, the demand for Wi-Fi products is sure to rise. The way things are going, the time may soon come when your own house is unwired for entertainment.
Leveraging Your Home Network
Wi-Fi started out as an invisible way for notebook computers to get on the Internet. But now there’s another use for it. If you have a conventional A/V system or TV set in one or more rooms and already have a wireless router, you can leverage the network for distributing music, video, and photos throughout your home without spending a lot of money. A number of manufacturers have released media receivers with built-in 802.11b Wi-Fi connections. When hooked up to an A/V system or TV, these let you view or listen to content stored on a networked PC via a wireless access point or router that can be up to 300 feet away.
The benefit of linking A/V equipment to a Wi-Fi network is being able to use a computer you already own to rip and store CDs, download music, and archive home videos and photos. Your computer then becomes a multimedia jukebox whose content is accessible in any room with a media receiver. So even if the computer is in your home office, you can watch video you’ve recorded and music you’ve downloaded in the comfort of your home theater or bedroom.
With Wi-Fi, there’s no need to break through floors or walls or to run the Cat-5 wire that an earlier generation of convergence devices, like the Dell/Rio Digital Audio Receiver and the Voyetra Turtle Beach Audiotron, required. Today, the wireless offspring of those products take things to the next level, delivering digital photographs and video, too. There’s also a new class of hybrid components that merge a media receiver with a DVD player or video hard-disk recorder.
The good news for home dwellers is that with so many flavors of Wi-Fi-enabled devices to choose from, you’re bound to find the right set of features to exploit the power of your desktop computer where it counts — away from the home office and in other rooms of the house where work takes a back seat to entertainment! All of these products come with remote controls as well as software you install on one or more of your computers. As long as a computer is running in the other room, the only lifting you’ll have to do from bed or sofa is picking up the remote.
Following is a sampling of products that let you wirelessly tap into the music, video, and digital photo files stored on your PC.
— Michael Antonoff
Just Music
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Wireless Music receiver ($249). Includes a six-line backlit LCD on a radio-frequency (RF) remote for navigating through your MP3 and WMA titles. www.creativelabs.com
cd3o C300 Extended-Range Network MP3 player ($249). Song titles are announced via speech synthesis from tags in the music files. www.cd3o.com
Philips Streamium MC-i250 microsystem ($500). Accesses online radio stations and MP3s stored on a PC. Includes CD player, AM/FM radio, and speakers. www.consumer.philips.com
Slide Shows
ReplayTV Model 5040 hard-disk recorder ($450, including lifetime subscription, plus your own wireless bridge, about $79). All ReplayTV Series 4000 and 5000 models contain an Ethernet port for home networking. You can copy photographs to a ReplayTV from a networked computer and watch TV shows recorded on another ReplayTV. www.replaytv.com
Music and Photos
Hewlett-Packard ew5000 digital media receiver ($300). MP3 and WMA music can be played with your slide shows, and you can print digital photos on a networked printer. www.hp.com
Linksys WMA11B Media Adapter ($200). Handles MP3 and WMA music as well as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP graphics. You can play music while browsing images. www.linksys.com
TiVo Series2 hard-disk recorder with Home Media Option ($249 for 40-hour model, $99 for Home Media Option, $12.95 a month for service, and about $39 for wireless USB adapter). Retrieves MP3 and WMA music files and JPEG images from a computer and selected music and images from the Internet. You can also copy and display recorded video from another TiVo but not from a computer. (See test teport in the July/August issue, available on our Web site in the Equipment Reports Archive.) www.tivo.com
Music, Photos, and Video
Amoisonic NDP9200 Net DVD Player ($299 including wireless card). Also plays discs with MP3 files and digital photos. www.amoisonic-usa.com
Gateway Connected DVD Player ($250 including Wi-Fi card). Also plays discs with MP3 files and digital photos. www.gateway.com
Go-Video D2730 Networked DVD Player ($299). Supplied Ethernet card can be swapped out for your own Wi-Fi card (about $50). Also plays discs with MP3 files and digital photos. (See test report, September, available on our Web site in the Equipment Reports Archive.) www.govideo.com
Hauppauge Computer Works MediaMVP receiver Has a PC Card slot for your own wireless adapter ($129, available in late November) or an 802.11g card ($169, in early 2004). Supports MP3 but not WMA or WAV music. www.hauppauge.com
Prismiq MediaPlayer receiver ($250 plus the cost of a wireless PC Card). Also lets you browse the Web. www.prismiq.com
What Is Wi-Fi?
Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) is a technical standard that was developed to send data wirelessly over computer local area networks. There are three main versions of Wi-Fi, with a fourth — 802.11e — in the works that will provide both service enhancements and compatibility with previous versions.
802.11b The first version of Wi-Fi to appear, it’s also the slowest, topping out at 11 Megabits-per-second (Mbps). But that’s enough speed to Web surf and to shuttle most types of data between devices. 802.11b systems have a rated operating range of up to 300 feet, but since they operate in the same 2.4 gigaHertz (GHz) band used by some types of home appliances, there’s a chance that turning on your microwave oven could cause your Web connection to stall.
802.11a With a data-transfer speed of up to 54 Mbps, this version is best suited for moving large amounts of data, as when streaming high-definition video between devices. Since 802.11a systems work in the relatively empty 5-GHz frequency range, they’re not prone to interference. Shortcomings include a limited transmission distance, incompatibility with the many existing 802.11b products, and limited support from computer manufacturers.
802.11g The newest version of Wi-Fi can also achieve 54-Mbps speeds but, unlike 802.11a, it is compatible with 802.11b gear. Because 802.11g operates in the same 2.4-GHz range, it’s also susceptible to interference from certain kinds of appliances. — A.G.
What's Next for Wireless
Four years after Apple chairman Steve Jobs rocked the world by introducing an iBook laptop computer that communicated without wires, wireless networks are everywhere. Today, Wi-Fi technology is as ubiquitous as Starbucks, found in homes, airports, parks, and even Starbucks itself. To paraphrase hippie guru Timothy Leary, today’s PC users are wirelessly turning on and tuning in, without experiencing many dropouts.
But wireless isn’t just for PCs anymore. The technology’s next big move — and perhaps its biggest challenge — is home entertainment. In 2003, manufacturers introduced home-network media receivers — devices that let you transfer music and still images from a PC to your TV and A/V system, without wires. “This is the killer app that home-networking stakeholders have been waiting for,” according to Ryan Jones, a senior analyst for the Yankee Group. “This will drive the use of home networks.”
A number of products are already available that allow you to wirelessly connect your PC to an A/V system and TV for playing back audio files, still images, and computer games. And users of Microsoft’s Xbox can now buy a $139 adapter to wirelessly connect their console to a PC for access to high-speed multiplayer games.
Early next year, Philips will introduce the Streamium MX6000i (shown below), a six-piece home theater system featuring wireless Internet and PC access that will cost about $1,000. Like a traditional home theater in a box, the Streamium will play DVDs through its five-disc progressive-scan changer, but it will also receive streaming Internet radio services. And you’ll be able to wirelessly transmit MP3 files as well as still images from your PC for playback and display through an A/V system.
The availability of wireless audio products is expanding, but the number of devices that can transmit video without using wires can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
That’s certainly not for lack of interest. Many of the top consumer-electronics companies are anxious to perfect the ability to transmit digital video wirelessly, and some have already demonstrated an ability to do so. But a lack of sufficient bandwidth and interference from home appliances like microwave ovens and wireless phones can cause both standard- and high-definition digital pictures to break up. Those problems, plus the added cost of incorporating wireless technology, have slowed the rollout of a wireless TV in the U.S.
At the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show last January, Toshiba showed several LCD sets receiving wireless transmissions of digital signals. Attendees loved them, according to Scott Ramirez, a marketing VP for Toshiba America. But the picture quality was occasionally and unpredictably degraded by competing transmissions. And in this case, the price wasn’t right. “People told us they were willing to pay $300 to $500 over the price of a regular TV, but that’s less than wireless currently costs,” Ramirez said.
In Japan, both Sony and Toshiba sell wireless TVs. With Toshiba’s, you can place the receiver in one room and the display in another, and control both by remote. Sony offers a Wega model HDTV that lets the viewer wirelessly send an image to the set’s remote control, which is equipped with a small video screen so it doubles as a mini TV. Walk to another room, and you can take the TV show with you.
Neither company has short-term plans to sell those models, or any other wireless TV, in the U.S. “Broadband infrastructure and wireless standards are much more advanced in Japan,” said Rick Clancy, a Sony Electronics senior vice president. “Wireless has to grow much more here before we can offer such devices.”
Sharp Electronics says it has solved the quality problem, at least for standard-definition TVs. In early 2004 it plans to introduce a wireless version of its 15-inch Aquos LCD TV, the LC-15L1U-S ($1,799), that can receive audio and video. Plug a set-top box or DVD player into its “transmission center,” and you’ll be able to retrieve images from as far away as 300 feet via an 802.11b Wi-Fi link. Company officials say they’ve seen no radio interference from other appliances, but just in case, three different transmission frequencies are available.
Unlike other video manufacturers, Sharp is confident that it will soon be selling a Wi-Fi solution for distributing high-def signals in the home. At the recent CEDIA show in Indianapolis, Michael Amkreutz, director of marketing and product planning for Sharp’s display devices, said that the company has a proprietary 802.11e system in the works that will let viewers send HDTV to its Aquos flat-panel TVs. An exact date isn’t available, but Amkreutz suggested that it could arrive as early as next summer.
Some manufacturers are concentrating their efforts on creating wireless versions of digital TVs. Just this past September in Berlin, RCA parent Thomson demonstrated wireless transmission of HDTV images and will do so again at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show. But it hasn’t determined when it will ship a product with those capabilities.
Pioneer Electronics has developed a device that can wirelessly send audio and video files to a digital TV, but it won’t make it available for sale right away.
“Our tests show that it’s not ready,” said Matt Dever, the company’s vice president of product planning. “The audio drops out. Even if it works fine 90% of the time, that’s not good enough. Still, we’re very excited about wireless because eventually that’s the way customers will integrate all of their home-entertainment components.”
That day may not be far off. While Toshiba won’t introduce any wireless TVs this year, “we’re definitely looking at it for next year,” Scott Ramirez said. “We could conceivably market a wireless version of a digital media server. In the not-so-distant future, you’ll see a digital HDTV set-top box that sends its signals wirelessly to a TV in another room. And you could see that product from Toshiba.”
You’ll just need to be patient and hold onto your Cat-5, coaxial, and component cables for a little while longer. — Eric Taub