Product snapshot: Netgear Push2TV wireless display adapter
- — 18 February, 2013 13:00
Every modern household has a plethora of screens. We carry some with us, from the miniature sub-5-inch screens of most smartphones, to 7-to-10-inch portable tablets, and the 11-to-17-inch screens of Ultrabooks and notebooks.
TV screens are much bigger, though — they’re designed so that several people can watch them at once, from a distance. It’s rare to find a TV that’s much smaller than 32 inches, and sizes are only getting bigger — a third of TVs sold these days are larger than 55 inches.
Given that you do a lot more on your tablet, smartphone or notebook than you do on your TV — they’re much more versatile, easier to control and are always with you — there’s a lot that you see on your phone, like a YouTube video linked from Facebook or Twitter, that would be better viewed on your TV.
This is where the Netgear Push2TV comes in. The latest model, the PTV3000, can connect to any Intel notebook with WiDi 2.0, which is built into any Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 processor from the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge series — from around mid-2011 onwards.
It can also connect to any Android smartphone that has Miracast, which is a WiDi-like standard for wireless display on smartphones and tablets. At the moment, only a select range of smartphones have Miracast built in — one of these is the Google Nexus 4 — but it’s starting to become more and more popular.
If you’ve got a TV with HDMI and a USB port, you can use the Push2TV PTV3000. The TV’s USB port provides power to the PTV3000, so you don’t need an extra power plug and wall socket. HDMI works for both video and audio, so you only need the one cable to get everything working.
Once you’ve got the Netgear Push2TV set up, a little button on the side switches between WiDi — laptop mode — and Miracast — smartphone mode. Find the appropriate setting on your notebook or smartphone, make the connection, and voila, whatever is shown on your notebook or smartphone is mirrored on your TV screen.
If you find yourself sharing a lot of videos with people huddled around your phone, or if you watch movies and TV shows on your notebook on your couch, the Netgear Push2TV is a pretty nifty device that can put your big-screen TV to good use.
