For starters, everyone has their own preferences when it comes to which computer to use, what method of document storage to use, and which application to use for making a presentation. With a dizzying array of devices on the market, some prefer to present from their laptop, some from their tablet, and others will use their smart phone. Some prefer storage on memory sticks, others prefer local hard drives, and still others prefer cloud storage. Finally, there is the choice of presentation applications — with a wide variety of tools such as purpose-built programs, media players, and an endless array of apps.
Add to this the many ways that devices can get attached to displays and projectors. You can go old school, and have wires snaking out of the desk, or (in the case of a little company I know), you’ve got cables of every flavor attached to the boardroom projector itself — and that cable gets passed from participant to participant. Slightly newer school (and much more elegant), you can have a multi-connector panel installed at each position on the desk — yet someone in the meeting has to switch inputs.
To make matters more interesting, since we have all manner of physical connectivity types from VGA to DVI to HDMI to DisplayPort (and more), every PC manufacturer tries to one-up the next guy on the best connector and the best signaling platform.
So, given this complexity, what’s the best way to share your video and documents on screen? The key word here is “share” — not simply showing your laptop on screen, but effortlessly passing the connection to the next participant. And where does wireless fit into this equation? The answer to these questions created a micro industry of its own.
Bring Your Own
The concept of BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) is becoming increasingly important in video and business circles.
Wi-Fi, our ubiquitous local area wireless networking technology, has been around commercially since 1999, and it continues to evolve in quality, strength, speed and range. There is a strong standard for Wi-Fi and it is broadly understood and implemented uniformly by manufacturers. Wi-Fi’s ubiquity and standardization makes it valuable. But Wi-Fi was not originally designed for video sharing. So when each computer, smartphone, and tablet manufacturer implemented wireless tech for video sharing, everybody did it just a bit differently — and once again, you’ve got one-upmanship in protocols, reliability, latency, jitter, ease of use and security.
When you walk into a meeting room, the best thing would be that your own device (cell phone, tablet, PC or whatever), immediately and natively discovers the Wi-Fi receiver in the room, discovers the display device, sets up and authenticates a connection, enables you to push video to the display, and assigns a participant as the moderator. And the next time you meet in the same room, you’re logged on again. If only it was that easy.
Air Share and Beyond
Walk into a conference room today, and if you scan the airwaves, you’ll detect a wealth of access points. Here’s the challenge. Which network do you connect to? What’s the network name, the key and the password — and by the way, does the network know anything about available display devices?
So, along came Air Share from Apple, which solved the problem of automatic discovery and authentication, with auto-connection to a Wi-Fi network that in turn was connected to a display. This is a point-to-point “mirroring” solution, and a step in the right direction — but it was all Apple.
Then, along came DLNA, the Digital Living Network Alliance, an organization that defined standards for sharing everything from music to video across a network. The alliance has hundreds of members, and boasts thousands of DLNA enabled devices. Yes, there are issues, such as compatible file formats and setting up DLNA clients and servers, and oh yes — this sharing standard was everything but Apple.
Then, along came Intel with a technology called WiDi, which is a system for direct Wi-Fi connections for purposes of sharing displays. And sure enough, DLNA is built into their wireless protocol. So, if you buy a WiDi enabled network device and connect it to other DLNA-enabled things, your laptop can automatically find it and connect to it (with the right Intel chip set, of course.)
Good so far, but very complex — and one can start to see the layering of protocols on top of protocols as the various manufacturers duke it out.
But, what about the sharing portion? And how do I switch from me to you (since the boss wants your report, now that he’s done yelling at me).
Arbitration Solutions
At this point, we have Apple doing its thing, DLNA supporting Android devices, and Intel doing WiDi for Intel only devices.
Then, along comes Miracast, a standard for wireless device connection, provided that the device is Miracast enabled. Miracast solves the arbitration problem using a control applet that you load onto your PC, smartphone, or tablet — and it also provides remote control, desktop mirroring and a host of other capabilities. Your PC is now a remote control, telling other devices how to talk to the Internet. By the way, Miracast is cross-platform — well, except for Apple.
Then, along comes Chromecast from Google. With Miracast, you have to load applets and buy pre-enabled devices, but with Chromecast, you’re got an inexpensive thumb-sized dongle with HDMI built in. It has Wi-Fi, it talks to the Internet over your wireless provider, it talks to the giant Google Chromecast cloud, and you plug it into a target device such as a monitor or projector. Your display now registers as a destination address on Google’s cloud.
In the boardroom, you tell Google what device to send video to — from your phone, tablet or the Internet. In this configuration, Google is essentially inserted between your PC and the target device. It’s simple and inexpensive — ah, but now Google knows everything that you’re watching. And by the way, there’s no provision for security.
History, Not Endorsements
Perhaps, at the very top of these layers of protocols, we have EZCast, which combines both the Miracast and Chromecast ideas with cross-platform support — including Apple. It’s also an inexpensive HDMI-enabled dongle, with auto-discovery and arbitration. Users can send video from their desktop to a device with the attached EZCast dongle, which then acts as an integrated Wi-Fi access point.
In the conference room, you can mirror your screen, stream from the Internet, or connect to a webcam. EZCast becomes a remote control, a video transmitter, a desktop mirror — and by the way, it has 256-bit AES encryption.
This little history of BYOD is by no means an endorsement for any of these products, and by no means a recommendation for how one should conduct business in the boardroom. Instead, it’s short course in an industry’s evolution, and in my opinion, an industry in its infancy.
Yes, I didn’t forget — there are many seriously professional solutions out there, such as ClickShare from Barco and boardroom solutions from Polycom. These solutions are costly, and prior to making a decision, one has to diligently compare them to the equivalent features offered by a low cost dongle.
The BYOD industry is clearly evolving exponentially, and soon, more devices will be obsolete, replaced by others with more features and lower price points — and more layers will be added to the protocol onion.
Where is this headed? Towards the Internet of things.
