Dave's Favorites: Transmit Images Wirelessly With ShowTime

After seeing X10's annoying pop-up ads in my Web browser for years, curiosity finally got the best of me. I decided to try out X10's Showtime wireless image transmitter.

X10's bread and butter has traditionally been home automation tools that let you do stuff like turn the lights in your house on and off at predetermined times. In the last few years, the company has become involved in delivering wireless technologies for listening to digital music and transmitting digital images and video around your home. Showtime uses a pair of transmitters to pump audio and video from your PC to a television elsewhere in the house. In theory, this lets you use the Showtime software to create a slideshow of digital images, then watch them on a big television in the comfort of your living room.

Unfortunately, Showtime's reality doesn't quite live up to its promise. Technically, it all works: You simply connect X10's transmitter to your PC's USB port and use X10's VGA splitter cable to position the transmitter between the PC and the monitor. In the living room, the receiver plugs into any video input on your TV or VCR.

Once connected, the hardware transmits everything on your PC screen to the TV. In addition to Showtime's slideshow application, you can use any software you like to display images.

Problems crop up if your TV and PC are separated by a significant distance, such as if they're on separate floors. Interference rears its ugly head, disturbing the picture with slow-moving scan lines. When I could avoid that, my microwave zapped the signal, creating a horrible buzzing noise whenever someone heated a cup of coffee. This is the same problem I noted in X10's MP3 Anywhere package a year ago, and the problem is apparently still unresolved. And Showtime adds a new problem: The VGA connection makes your computer monitor display a slightly soft image.

Showtime is a nice concept, but wireless connectivity is hard to do well, and X10 needs to reengineer this gadget a bit. You may be better off with a device that plugs directly into the television, like Microsoft's TV Photo Viewer.

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