Philips Wireless HDTV Link (SWW1800) Review: Philips Wireless HDTV Link Review

Published: 2010-02-26 - 09:54:05

Philips Wireless HDTV Link (SWW1800) Review

By Rachel Cericola

Edited by Chris Boylan

Philips Wireless HDTV Link Review

Free to Be HD

Thanks to the ever-growing popularity of flat screens, your TV no longer needs a place to sit. Most HDTVs are designed to hang on the wall, where they can be ogled and admired, just like a piece of artwork.

Well, that's great. However, we have yet to see a shot of the Mona Lisa with a wire dangling behind the frame. The problem with being able to hang your TV is it's always tethered to some sort of box, whether it's for cable/satellite service, gaming, movies, etc. When you add in all of that cable clutter, your art, well... starts to look ugly.

Philips has created a solution in its Wireless HDTV Link. The product allows users to hook their high definition devices (up to four of them) into one box and transmit the content -- at up to 1080p resolution -- to an HDTV without any wires.

With the Philips Wireless HDTV Link, you can relocate HD devices up to 75 feet away from the TV.

Speedy Setup

Of course, as much as we want a truly wireless setup, there will always be some cable clutter to contend with. For the Philips system to work, you'll need to hook your HDTV to the included Wireless HDTV Link Receiver. Philips has supplied an HDMI cable, as well as the receiver's power supply. The receiver is small (7.7 x 1.1 x 5.8 inches) and easy enough to mount, which means you can hide that HDMI as well as the box. However, you will still have power cords for the receiver and the HDTV.

Assuming you have a way to hide those wires (like perhaps a handy power outlet behind your TV), the rest of the system is very easy to set up. The Wireless HDTV Link Transmitter can accommodate up to four HD devices, via two HDMI inputs and two component video inputs. Once everything is hooked up, the system takes care of itself. There's no syncing process, no software and no magic words.

How Does It Look?

We were pleasantly surprised at the Wireless HDTV Link's performance. Not that we went into the review expecting this device not to work. However, it was truly magical how we could add high-def sources into our mix, and not miss a beat (and not have to fiddle around in the back of the TV to find an available input).

The back features two digital HDMI connections and two component connections.

Our first device to test out was our Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player. For this test, we left our player in our usual spot on the equipment rack, with the transmitter about five feet away from the receiver. We hooked the player up to the transmitter via HDMI, and within seconds, we had Iron Man going on the big screen. There was absolutely no lag time and if the playback quality was diminished in any way, our twitchy eyes didn't seem to notice. In fact, the image was so good, we had to double-check that the player wasn't still hooked directly to the HDTV.

We then hooked up Sharp's BD-HP52U Blu-ray player, with the intent of moving it out of sight. First we tried one room over, a mere 20 feet away. The results were the same as having the device in the same room. To make things a little trickier, we took the Sharp player to our second floor, about 35 feet away. Again, the device streamed the content flawlessly -- for a while. Then, inexplicably, the system lost its signal. We ran upstairs and changed the disc, only to regain the same signal with the same awesome quality. The Philips setup uses the 5GHz spectrum, so it's highly possible we were getting a little interference. The remote does offer the option to change channels if you get any local interference.

Apparently, whatever was blocking us was gone after the disc change. We ended up playing a plethora of other Blu-ray titles, including Hitch, Iron Man and The Hangover. All played fine, with no signal loss or other hiccups. Philips says the Wireless HDTV Link is really only intended for use within a room, not through multiple walls to other parts of the home. But the unit survived our torture test and that's a very good sign.

It is important to note, though, that the published specs of the Philips Wireless HDTV Link state that while a 1080i device (like a cable set-top box) is supported with frame rates up to 60 frames per second (1080i/60), a 1080p signal is only supported up to 30 frames/second (1080p/30 or 1080p/24). This can be problematic if you have a Blu-ray player as a source.

The default output of most Blu-ray Disc players is actually 1080p/60 which is not supported via this device. If you enable 24p output on your Blu-ray Disc player (which is available on most players) and assuming your TV supports 24p input, then you'll be fine when playing back Blu-ray Discs. However, if you are watching standard DVDs upconverted to 1080p, you may be out of luck as the most common output format of upconverting DVD players and Blu-ray players with DVD upconversion is 1080p/60.

You might actually need to step your player's output down to 1080i for compatibility with this device. In fact, this is what happened for us automatically - the Blu-ray player figured out that the wireless link could not support 1080p/60 output (during the HDMI/EDID handshake) and so it set our player to 1080i output. It was then up to our TV to reconstruct the underlying 1080p/24 Blu-ray signal from the 1080i/60 connection. Still, the visual results were excellent, so we won't dwell too much on this point.

The only disappointing thing we observed during our review was that we couldn't control the source component (in this case, a Blu-ray player) or even the wireless transmitter itself from remote locations as our Infrared player remote and the IR remote for the Philips device do not work through walls - that would require RF control capabilities. That means if you've got a cable box and Blu-ray player stashed out of sight, in closet or closed cabinet, you're going to have some issues flipping between devices unless you have a fancy RF-enabled universal remote such as the Harmony 900 by Logitech. This is not necessarily a limitation in the product, though we would welcome an IR to RF to IR conversion option for remote control code passthrough as a future feature.

The Wireless HDTV Link does provide support for HDMI-CEC devices (High Definition Multimedia Interface-Consumer Electronics Control), which is a fancy way of saying that it can pass certain remote control commands over the HDMI interface. So if you happen to have an HDMI-CEC-capable display and source component (which we unfortunately do not), you actually will be able to control your remote devices via your TV remote control, even if they are not within line of sight. HDMI-CEC goes by many names: AnyNet+ (Samsung), VIERALink (Panasonic), AQUOSLink (Sharp) and BRAVIA Sync (Sony) just to name a few. This is becoming a fairly common feature on name brand TVs and source components.

Overall, we found the HDTV Wireless Link to provide a nice option to be able to continue a movie, TV show or other high-def experience in different areas of the house (e.g., start watching in the bedroom and finish in the living room via a wireless link), or simply, as intended, as a way of hiding your cables for an ultraclean installation.

Turn Ons

Streams 1080i/60 and 1080p/24 wirelessly, as advertised
Accepts up to 4 HD devices
Can be set up in seconds
Few to no hiccups
HDMI-CEC support allows you to operate remote source components from TV remote (requires HDMI-CEC-compatible gear)

Turn Offs

Insanely high price
Remote doesn't do IR/RF conversion
No love for standard-def devices (unless they have component video outputs)
Could use another HDMI port (or two)
No support for 1080p/60

Final Thoughts

There's no doubt that the Philips Wireless HDTV Link is a fun product. It adds extra high-def options for those in need of a few extra HDMI inputs, and even allows you to store them at a distance without any unsightly wires. However, that kind of convenience certainly doesn't come cheap. If Philips were able to price this product under $200, we're guessing stores would have a hard time keeping them in stock. That's not the case, however. Considering how long (and at what price) HD has taken to break into the mainstream, the $800 price tag should keep this product at a premium level, for true A/V geeks and well-heeled home theater owners only.

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