I bought one of the Philips SWW1890/27 Wireless HD Net Connect when they were on woot before. So, a couple of things…
First, this is currently $166.49 on Amazon, so $99 on woot is an awesome deal.
Second, and more importantly, this thing works great. It has a dongle that is a little bit bigger than a USB stick – that plugs into an HDMI port on your laptop, and then there is a short USB cable that is necessary for power that goes into a USB power on your computer and plugs into the dongle too.
Then there is a box that plugs into power near your TV and has an HDMI out that you plug a cable between it and your TV.
Once you do the above – poof, things just work. No software is needed other than your laptop’s existing video card software which already has the ability to either mirror your laptop’s display to its HDMI out OR to extend your desktop onto an external display hooked up to your HDMI out. (Well, that is, this all assumes that your laptop has an HDMI out…if it doesn’t, you are SOL.)
So, you can throw whatever you are watching on your laptop’s screen onto your big flatscreen TV. Sweet! Or, if your laptop is powerful enough to drive a second display, you can sit there hitting F5 in your browser refreshing woot during a woot-off on your laptop’s screen while you’re displaying something else in your extended desktop on your big flatscreen TV.
Moreover, this thing can be hooked up to more than a laptop. At work we plugged it into HDMI out using an adapter on an iPad and plugged a USB charging cable into the Philips dongle for power – presto, we were wirelessly transmitting our iPad’s screen to a large display across the room.
Both sound and video are transmitted across the HDMI connection.
So far I haven’t seen any negatives with this, and I’m debating buying a second one just because I’m sure I can come up with some other good use for it.