Nyrius’ $169.99 WS54 is an innovative solution that unlocks the restraints of traditional home entertainment systems by displaying content wirelessly to any of your TVs. It’s great for those of us who own several home entertainment products, such as an Apple TV, Roku, cable boxes and/or Blu-Ray players.
Basically, the Nyrius — which I’ve heard described as an “invisible HDMI cable” — creates a centralized media hub, allowing users to keep home entertainment products in one location, but able to access them from a bedroom, personal computer, living room, kitchen — virtually any distance up to 60 feet away. Walls, floors, and ceilings don’t block its high speed, low latency signal. Neither do Wi-Fi or BlueTooth devices, so it’s convenient to use the Nyrius WS54 to stream movies and TV shows in 1080p high-def and Dolby Digital surround sound.
With loop-through HDMI, you can set up two separate viewing environments, so you can view through one wired connection in your living room and watch the same HD content wirelessly in, say, your man cave (or woman cave, as the case may be). You can add additional receivers (sold separately) to the system and transmit wireless audio and video to even more TVs. You can add up to four additional receivers without installing wires or downloading software. An additional WS54RX receiver costs $99.99.
To use the Nyrius, you plug the transmitter into your device’s HDMI port and the receiver into your HDTV and you’re immediately connected. The transmitter and receiver are powered by the included AC adapter. No software or Wi-Fi connection is required.
Of course, one problem with this is that some Macs, such as my iMac, have no HDMI cables. You’ll have to use an adapter, which means more cable clutter.
An included IR extender with the Nyrius lets you change channels, pause movies or adjust volume from any area of a home. You can change channels, pause/play content, and adjust the volume with a remote control, even if their cable box is in another room.
Why not Apple’s AirPlay? It’s not as flexible as the Nyrius. To stream to multiple devices, you have to use your computer-based iTunes music collection as the audio source with AirPlay. You can’t stream different music to different rooms. AirPlay’s streaming limit is the distance from each device to the wireless access point or router you are using for your wireless network.
If AirPlay works perfectly well for you, congratulations. The Nyrius is a solution to consider if yet doesn’t or if you have multiple TVs in your home and don’t want to buy an extra cable box or Apple TV.
