Intel Wireless Display

The Web offers more entertainment than cable, but who cares when it’s all stuck on tiny laptop screens? Now, Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) makes the Internet watchable by streaming whatever is on your PC—from House on Hulu to live games on NFL.com—to your big, beautiful TV, no programming or wires required. The key is how Intel’s latest Core iSeries processors, currently found in more than 50 laptops, talk to an included receiver box, which connects to your TV with a one-time setup. When you activate the WiDi (by pressing a dedicated button on the laptop keyboard), the chip creates a data stream out of the display information. Then it borrows some bandwidth from your Wi-Fi card to beam a smooth live image of your screen to the receiver. For now, WiDi is limited to 720p video, but a future upgrade will work with full 1080p high-def. And upcoming WiDi-ready TVs will cut out the receiver-box middleman.