The handset is becoming an integral part of the home media network, and the latest extension to the Wi-Fi standard addresses this. Miracast ‘ which is based on the earlier Wi-Fi Direct – pushes digital media, including HD video, from a smartphone or tablet to a large screen, and is increasingly being integrated into mobile processors. Nvidia is the latest, joining Marvell, Broadcom and others in promising Miracast in its quad-core Tegra 3 platform within a few months.
But there is a long way to go before Miracast is the standard way to support peer-to-peer streaming in the living room. There are vendor specific equivalents, notably Apple AirPlay and Intel WiDi, and some big names in streaming remain on the sidelines, like Google. Even worse, Intel could even back WiGig as an alternative route in future, sparking yet another Wi-Fi schism.
Miracast will be helped by the start of a Wi-Fi Alliance certification testing programme this quarter, and by the support of many major WLan chip providers. Nvidia is keen because it says it will simplify the streaming of media to Miracast certified TVs and other displays, by supporting the standard directly in its silicon. There will be minimal set-up and configuration for the various devices on the WLan, and a tablet can be mirrored to a TV or to console games. The device combines Tegra 3, the Wi-Fi chip and Android, but the TV also needs to have Miracast support at hardware and software level. As in other areas, gaming is Nvidia’s particular focus as it seeks to differentiate from other Miracast supporting processes like TI’s OMAP, and draw on its reputation in graphics.
More broadly, adoption of Miracast could reduce HDMI cables in the living room and is being pushed by Qualcomm and others ‘ and may well be incorporated in Google TV. Intel offers the competing WiDi (Wireless Display) technology, which cannot be dismissed because of the firm’s influence at the PC end. It has been criticized for latency in receiving the signals for playback on TV, but the chip giant says it is enhancing WiDi and hopes to bring it to mobile devices soon.
Many also expect Intel to replace WiDi with the 60GHz Wi-Fi variant, WiGig, over time. This can support peer-to-peer transmissions at 7Gbps, but is currently not compatible with Miracast, which runs over the 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi implementations. Although Intel will support Wi-Fi Direct/Miracast too, it prefers standards over which it has more direct influence, and WiGig is currently fulfilling that function, hence its recent intense activity in targeting the Intel-backed Ultrabook form factor for slim notebooks. This could herald a standards battle in future, though Miracast could be ported to 60GHz to run on top of WiGig, should demand warrant.
Other vendors have their own approaches to streaming audio and video directly from a mobile device to a large screen, without a router involved. As well as the well established AirPlay, Microsoft and Nokia are working on an application called ‘Play To’, which will let Windows Phone gadgets stream to DLNA TVs. The real breakthrough that Miracast needs is to be incorporated into Google TV. The search giant’s content streaming activities have run into problems lately. It introduced its Nexus Q media player, which streams from the cloud and is controlled by an Android handset, but this has been withdrawn before it shipped, following bad reviews.
A more standardized approach could help boost support for Google’s media efforts, especially as Android 4.0 does support Wi-Fi Direct – and Miracast does offer a far better user experience than vanilla Wi-Fi Direct. The latter allows certified devices to discover one another and connect securely without an access point, but Miracast adds the ability to negotiate the particulars of streaming audio and video, as the Wi-Fi Alliance puts it – common codecs, resolutions and other features which the participating devices can support. That makes the experience more seamless without the user having to know about the codecs or other details.
As the certification program kicks off this quarter, public support has already been voiced by TI, Qualcomm Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell and Cavium. In most cases, Miracast can be implemented in software alone.