Gadgetory

wireless home digital interface is still a relatively fresh technology for an average consumer and we haven't seen many products pursue the market for wireless video streaming now let's do may need to competition with Smart TVs and the good old HDMI cable method wireless streaming in the way is still seen as a luxury based on the price comparison however it is exciting to see new devices being introduced to the market meaning HD TV streaming is shifting into a different wireless era so today we're testing out the sky vision ws 100 from gigabyte which is a nice compact package designed for the on-the-go user it is released at around $150 which makes it a really competitive product on the line with similar devices so let's quickly go over the specs this is aw HDI 1.0 compliant it is able to stream up to 1080p uncompressed video with 5.1 channel audio up to 48 kilohertz at 24-bit with latency of less than one millisecond and this is just ad range of up to 10 meters with a direct line of sight now the best part about Sky vision is its portability factor the receiver fits in the palm of your hand it is nice and stylish with the metallic finish it is also light and plastic but the build quality is fairly decent at the front we have three buttons to navigate through the sky vision menu on the side there is the HDMI out port along with a micro USB power input there is some ventilation in the back is this thing tends to get quite hot and at the top we have two LEDs to indicate link and the power now the receiver also stands on the rubber feet to prevent it from sliding now the transmitter is even smaller it almost looks like a USB key there's the top LED to indicate link and a side button to initiate link there's the HDMI connector a micro USB port for power and plenty of venting on each side as the transmitter also gets quite hot along with the package gigabyte includes an HDMI cable for the receiver only the power unit and the micro USB cable to power up the transmitter the micro USB cable must first be plugged in into a Mitter and the USB port on your host device then you can plug in and transmitter into your HDMI port and as soon as the link is established both LEDs on the devices should be solid now this is a plug-and-play device meaning no hassle with drivers the receiver recognizes a signal on its own and right away streams wireless video so let's check it out in action and in this case I'm using a laptop and a clone mode the laptop has a 1080p display and the monitor is a 1920 by 1200 so the transmitted video must be stretched accordingly and this is where we have a problem the video artifact for the bottom 120 pixels is evident and whatever inside that area is destroyed this is one limitation to this product is it's not able to stretch 1080p resolution accordingly on a higher resolution screen however this artifact is not evident on proper 1080p displays but I did manage to make it work on my larger screen with the transmitter connected into the gtx 570 and through Nvidia control panel I have chosen the 1080p resolution within the HD SD settings and not the PC settings and to my surprise that actually got rid of the artefact by choosing the resolution from the PC option brought back the artifact for the bottom 120 pixels now in terms of the connection distance it is always advisable to have a direct line of sight for these devices and sky vision performs quite well with reasonable distance without a direct line of sight there are artifacts when the signal gets weak but most of the time when the range gets too far the signal just gets lost but I can say comfortably that sky vision has no problem transmitting 1080p video with distances of up to 6 meters with two walls in between and you would still be able to get a signal with up to 10 meters but you do need a direct line of sight between the transmitter and the receiver one thing I did not like about sky vision is this strange artifact around text and graphics for example if you are scrolling down the page or moving the page around the screen this weird pixelation occurred which was quite annoying and it wasn't an issue with the signal but thing related to the latency of the streaming video and one last thing to mention before we conclude is the menu interface of the sky vision use the bottoms on the receiver for navigation and you can add multiple transmitters under different names in case you are using multiple devices for streaming in your home so overall the sky vision is a move into the right direction with wireless video streaming I really like how portable and compact the entire package is this is a plug-and-play device so no need for drivers or any additional downloads and the signal is quite strong up to 6 meters even with plenty of obstacles on its way and the price is fairly competitive to products of the same line however the sky vision does come with limitations like its inability to properly scale 1080p video on a higher resolution display and the strange pixelated artifact the streaming video produces so to conclude it is a nice device for wireless video streaming and paired up with a 1080p display at the reasonable distance users will not be disappointed and that concludes our review for the gigabyte sky vision ws 100 thanks guys for watching and we'll see you next time