WIFI LCD TV's

[lamby]

Hi I am looking for a WIFI LCD 40inch or above TV that I can stream movies to. Anyone got any ideas, I am looking at the Samsung LE40A856 but it only as DLNA ( CAT5 RJ45 ) and USB2 support. I have been told that I can use a WIFI USB device but I cant see how ?.

[freefa11]

dont be silly get a plasma or wate a few months till the new led tvs get cheeper as thay are truly amazing the first samsung led i seen was almost as good as a top of the range Pioneer plasma witch are genraly regarded as having the best picture quality when price is not a problem
if you cant wate for an led with wifi to come to the market

panasonic has 1 or 2 plasma's with wifi on the market now
and a new 1 coming soon Viera TX-P46Z1

hope this helps

[ianmac]

How would you be able to stream to these tv's then?

would they have an ip address or built in hard drive or something...

Thanx- Ian

[grex]

I had a look at DLNA TV's a while back and at that time the only part of the DLNA spec they supported was the still image playback, making them a big digital picture frame! :-(

For a good list have a look at the DLNA site:
Home - DLNA (http://www.dlna.org/)

and particularly the 'search & match' part:
Search & Match - DLNA (http://www.dlna.org/products/)
This is a list of all the devices that have been certified against the DLNA standard and what features they support (look at the devices certification certificate for the list).

The trouble I had was finding a TV that did what I wanted and was available outside Japan!!! Hopefully things are better now.
Would be really interested to hear if you find any in the UK.

[grex]

How would you be able to stream to these tv's then?

would they have an ip address or built in hard drive or something...

Thanx- Ian

Yes the TV would have an IP address.

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) defines a standard for devices to share media over an IP network, it defines 3 major players in the network:


* The Media Server

This is the device that stores all the data, videos, MP3's, pictures etc. This can either be a dedicated box like a Network Attached Storage (NAS) that runs the DLNA server or a PC running the server.
Have a look at TwonkyMedia ? Media server software and media manager for the digital home (http://www.twonkymedia.com/) it's the server I run on my NAS box
* The Media Renderer
This is the device that actually turns the data stream into a TV picture or music.

* The Media Controller
Does exactly what it says on the tin ;)
This is sometimes on the same device as the renderer, I have a popcorn hour video player that lets me browse the files on the media server and play them directly.
It can also be a separate device, there are several new mobile phones/internet tablets that have the controller software on them. The controller can browse the servers media list and then queue files on the remote renderer devices.
All the devices run over IP but are auto configuring, as in you don't need to tell the controller the IP addresses of the renderers or the servers. The standard manages all the device discovery so you should just be able to put a new device on to your network and the DLNA devices will find it (as long as it has an IP address that is!)

The DLNA site has a good overview of the system here: How It Works - DLNA (http://www.dlna.org/digital_living/how_it_works/)