Gadget Review: Warpia StreamHD Wireless PC to TV Adapter

Getting your computer and television to work together can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Either you have to have a desktop computer permanently sitting in your A/V cabinet or you have to connect your laptop to your television every time you want to watch a movie on it…

Enter the Warpia HD. The goal of this product is to enable wireless streaming from your computer to your television. It comes with two wireless dongles: one that plugs into your computer and one that plugs into an HDMI adapter that is connected to your television. After you install some software, you can use your television as a second monitor and speakers for your computer. Anything that shows up on your computer’s screen will show up on the television: movies, Netflix streaming, and even music. That’s how it should work. Does it live up to the expectations given in the instructions?

For the most part, yes. While it took about an hour to get everything set up and two or three restarts, we did get the Warpia HD to work. Once you get it set up, it’s ridiculously easy to use. You simply go into the Control Panel and enable the new second monitor and then it will mirror all of the audio and video that appears on the monitor on the television. You can simply leave the dongle plugged into your computer and television from then on and it will be ready to go whenever you are.

Once you get it set up, it’s ridiculously easy to use.

For the more technically minded, you can also get a lossless digital audio signal via an S/PDIF output on the back of the TV connector. This is extremely useful if you have a dedicated audio receiver that is hooked up to a high quality sound system.

We tested out the Warpia HD by streaming shows over Netflix, Hulu and even a few YouTube videos. All of them looked and sounded just as good as they would if we had simply plugged the computer directly into the television. There were only one or two times when the signal dropped and the screen blacked out, but it was only momentary and we suspect it might have been the dog crossing between the two receivers.

There are some limitations, however. The biggest one is that the two receivers must have a “line of sight” connection. This means that they must be in the same room and have a clear path between them, much like a remote control and television do. This means that if you have a computer room or have your desktop in some other room, it won’t work reliably. In our testing, we managed to get a signal through a single wall, but the connection kept dropping and it was not stable enough to watch video on.

Another downside is that it only works with Windows computers. We tried running it with a virtual machine copy of Windows 7 on an iMac and it worked relatively well, but not well enough to stream HD. That’s another issue: you’re going to need a pretty powerful machine if you want to stream HD video, since HD video requires a hefty amount of processing power. That’s not a problem with the Warpia hardware, but more a limitation of the user’s desktop PC.

If you’re looking for a good way to connect your television and computer wireless, this is about as simple as it gets.

RATING: 3/5