Is there WiDi (which stands for Intel Wireless Display) in Apple’s future along with Wi-Fi? Actually, WiDi uses Wi-Fi to wirelessly move anything on a computer screen to an HDTV if the computer is running one of Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors.
Your TV set will have to have WiDi support — either built-in or by adding an WiDi adapter. “Network World” (http://macte.ch/it4nh) says WiDi makes streaming any computer content to your big screen is easy: you basically simply run Intel’s software on the laptop. No additional wiring is required, and the technology is by all accounts extremely low latency, meaning that the lag between content appearing on the notebook screen and on the set is minimal.
As “Network World” notes, the biggest drawback is that the technology is proprietary: if your notebook doesn’t have a current Intel CPU, you’re out of luck. The good news is that the Wi-Fi Alliance is working on a technology standard that will match WiDi’s capabilities, and that the Alliance will be able to certify for interoperability between products from different vendors. But that’s a couple of years off.
— Dennis Sellers
dsellers@applecentral.com