Terk Leapfrog Wireless Video Distribution

Some products you can kind of tell aren't going to be around for the long haul, but sure are nice to have for awhile. That's how I think about the Terk Leapfrog wireless video distribution thingy that I have upstairs. One day the TV industry will get its act together with respect to video distribution --- but until then my Leapfrog unit does a pretty good job.

The deal is that you can take pretty much any audio/video input, plug it into the transmitter side and send it over a 2.4ghz (custom, not wifi or anything) wireless link to the receiver side, where it can plug into anything that will take a video input.

I bought the unit when I wanted to watch Red Sox games during the baseball season last year. I subscribed to MLB.TV (which for its cost was definitely worth it), but wanted to watch the games on my TV. Hooking up my laptop to the Leapfrog was pretty simple --- just needed S-Video and audio cables --- and shazzam, I was able to watch the Red Sox on the regular TV. Quality wasn't the best ever, but that had far more to do with bandwidth for MLB.TV than with the Leapfrog.

Since then I've used it to show slide shows at family gatherings, and sometimes the family all plays a video game (Harry Potter, woo hoo!) together. Using the TV is nice for that so we don't have to all crowd around a computer.

The big downside is that there are way too many cables to deal with. Power on both sides, plus video, plus audio --- bleah, it's a mess. Radio quality also isn't perfect, especially in a house like mine with lots of wireless devices all yammering at each other. Like I said, someday soon these things will all work together, and that'll be fantastic. But for now, I like my Leapfrog.