My million dollar idea please steal it hardware mfrs | The Coffeehouse

foreachdev
Twitter: @foreachdev

Why not sell a pair of wireless transcievers with DVI, HDMI and/or VGA interfaces on them. Have Drivers for the OS that once your monitor meets the transceiver in your laptop they out synch when they are both turned on within 30 feet of each other or so.

One less cord to plug in. You could build the transcievers into displays and laptops after a few generations.

Why hasn't this been done?

Docking stations the next generation:)

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

Well, start building and selling them, but maybe you better go with USB display-link wifi transceivers first to see how well, they're going.

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

They already have something close for AV:
http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/07_10_08FlyWire.html

The downsides I see for your idea are:

It's expensive, based on the price of that item above (assume they aren't just trying to gouge people, this is Belkin after all). It only goes up to 1080P. I don't know if this is technology/bandwidth limitation, or one of target market.

Note that the transmitter is the big part. Where are you going to fit that in a laptop? What kind of drain on the battery will that be? And if you're going to plug it into a base unit for power and access to a transmitter, why not just use a traditional docking station at that point?

foreachdev
Twitter: @foreachdev

In reply to DCMonkey

#Feb 25th @ 3:08 PM

Some counter thoughts:
If a cell phone can transmit to cell tower why can't a laptop reach a transciever 30 feet away power efficiently.

Everything is cost prohibitive for the first couple generations.

Its a bigger software issue than hardware issue. I am sure today through blue tooth or wireless we can send the signals. Making it so the whole experience is seemless to the user and just works takes a while. (Remember plug and pray back in 95/98 days?)

One of the keys software scenarios is making sure all USB devices connected to the monitor talk through this technology too. (an example of where the current technology is lacking.)

This of course is coming looking at some of the Surface demo. I just don't think they have been thinking of it in the general use case. (with existing displays)

I think this is more important than the multi touch technology to get right.

Docking stations are proprietary. New laptop new docking station unless you somehow luck out. I am talking about a standard like USB that everyone uses and is supported by Windows as a feature like Plug and play was. Think about the media center extensibility here. You TV could be aware of the laptop and vice versia and you could say hey look at this guys type UX.

Think of it as your personal area network.

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In reply to foreachdev

#Feb 25th @ 3:21 PM

Part of the problem with transmitting high-resolution video wirelessly is that it requires so much bandwidth-- an HDMI connection runs at up to 10.2 Gbit/s and DisplayPort runs at up to 8.6 Gbit/s. A dual-link DVI connection requires even more bandwidth. No current wireless standard can transmit at anywhere near those rates (these rates approach the top-end of even Fibre Channel's line rates, and are only really feasible because of the short cable lengths involved), so any wireless solution using current technology would require heavy compression and/or your resolution choices would be very limited. For comparison, a Wifi (802.11n) link transmits at a maximum of 600 Mbit/s and Bluetooth transmits at 3 Mbit/s... even the new Wireless USB standard (which some are considering using as a wireless video solution) has a maximum data rate of 480 Mbit/s at 3 meters.

You also have to consider the issue of signal strength-- in most countries, there are very strict limits as to how much radio frequency energy a device can radiate without requiring a license to operate. This limits your range significantly, especially if you're trying to achieve very high data rates (because, as distance increases, you're going to start losing data if you're transmitting too fast).

That said, there was a pretty neat article on Ars Technica a couple weeks ago about this topic (although the technologies described in the article are geared more towards home entertainment and HD video transmissions, so they're not as flexible as a general solution for computers would need to be). It's worth reading if you're interested in the topic.

AndyC

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Feb 25th @ 3:51 PM

True, but HDMI and Display Port aren't using any hardware compression because they don't need to. It should certainly be possible to significantly reduce the amount of bandwidth required if the data was compressed before transmission, indeed Dell sell rack-mounted workstations with hardware to do this already. Whether it would make it feasible for wireless use is another matter, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

Of course, that sort of solution isn't going to be cheap, which is probably a more pressing concern for most use cases.

eddwo
Wheres my head at?

Good video compression takes a lot of time/processing power. You need to do multiple passes over the data, calculate motion vectors etc.

You can do realtime compression, but you won't get close to the same compression ratios so you will need more bandwidth.

Even 'realtime' compression takes time so would probably introduce an unacceptable delay between the computer and the screen which is very disorienting even if it is only a few tens of milliseconds as the mouse pointer no longer feels responsive.

RDP/VNC compensate for this somewhat by suppressing the drawing of the pointer on the remote screen and drawing the local one over the top instead.

This would not be an option for a wireless screen.

It would also cause AV sync issues when watching video.

Realtime compression of an HD signal would require a lot of processing power, which would mean your tranceivers would need to be mains powered and fan cooled.

If any wireless technology is going to 'fry your brains' it would be one that attempts to reliably transfer 10GBPS over 30 feet using UWB or something.

In short it probably isn't worth attempting to do this until it can be done via quantum entanglement or subspace, that is to say many years into the future. Except by then we will have Mega High Definition screens which will require even more bandwidth.

figuerres
???

In reply to eddwo

#Feb 26th @ 6:07 AM

"If any wireless technology is going to 'fry your brains' it would be one that attempts to reliably transfer 10GBPS over 30 feet using UWB or something."

Oh my .... I am now having a flash of the tv comercials for the video thing... uhou or whatever it's called.... where they joke about the alien plot to soften our brains and eat them.... Smiley

Hulu.com that's it...

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In reply to AndyC

#Feb 26th @ 3:33 AM

I never said it's completely infeasible (as the Ars Technica article indicates, there are several technologies that do just this that will be coming to market soon). I was just trying to highlight the technical difficulties in doing so-- it's not as trivial as foreachdev wishes that it were.

spivonious

In reply to figuerres

#Feb 26th @ 6:44 AM

What do you mean joke? My dad used to tell me TV was turning my brain into jello all the time when I was growing up.