( 5 reviews )
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 18 2007
Okay, here's the deal. I originally went with Radio Shack's new product with the remote ($100), but the picture ended up slightly blurry, and after much screwing around, I discovered that I couldn't optimize the picture on my television, so I returned it. While chatting with local product support folks from Radio Shack, I learned that Radio Shack used to sell Grand Tec products -- a unit that was a step down from this one ($70), and that the unit was considered quite good. But because the 70-dollar unit didn't state "high resolution" support, I went with this more expensive unit. It works. I read reviews of the Hi-wire before ordering, and most of the reviews were thumbs down, but I went ahead and ordered it anyway. It seems to be best on 720P settings, although it supports higher settings. Product support sucks. The instructions are lame. You just have to play around with it, and while doing so, curse yourself for not purchasing a television with a VGA input. Refer to yourself as "genius" during the process -- it helps.
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Posted: Jun 28 2007
Worked as advertised for me. My application was getting PC VGA output to a 42" rear projection HDTV via component input. Can get 1080i HD at 1024 x 768 settings on the PC. I didn't rate it any higher because while it was easy to set up and performs as advertised, the resulting on screen legibility at 480p or 1080i is not much better than what you get with their cheaper unit at 480i output. My TV does not support 720p, so I can't say if the legibility would have been better at that setting or not. However, I have looked at most every option to get VGA output to my older (2004) model rear projection HDTV, and I think this is about the best you can do short of spending many hundereds of dollars for professional-grade gadgetry.
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( 4 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Dec 15 2005
After a lot of frustration, I managed to get my laptop to output a picture to my HDTV in 720p mode. But the highly touted 1080i mode just gave me a rolling series of colored bars. Now here's the catch: Your 4:3 laptop output is AUTOMATICALLY stretched to 16:9. On my HDTV there is no way to adjust the signal to stop this (I spent many hours trying.) Of course you can set the GRANDTEC to 480 mode, but then the screen becomes unreadable. So my plan to use the GRANDTEC to allow me to edit photos in my family room won't work, because the people look like they're standing in a front of a fun-house mirror. It's possible there is a work-around, but since GRANDTEC makes you pay long-distance charges for a call to customer service, I didn't bother to find out. I took it back to the store. PS to GRANDTEC: Your manual and Web site stink!
