Alternatives to Microsoft Wireless Display Adapters V2

[kdahl-pettersen]

Hi All,

 

We have currently been looking into Alternatives for the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapters V2,

As they have been messing with the wireless and creating all sorts of issues, with the multiple devices,

Has anybody got any other wireless display solutions currently in place?, and does this work well with multiple devices in the room / multiple displays streaming close by.

 

Any suggestions would be helpful

 

Thanks,

 

Kris

Edited November 18, 2019 by kdahl-pettersen

[bald_pig]

I believe @BKGarry uses these site-wide without issue, he may be able to provide some help.

[RobFuller]

If you want to stick to Miracast as your display technology of choice you'll need something and devices that support the 5GHz band rather than the limited 2.4Ghz range which I think the Microsoft adaptor only support. We use ActionTec as they support touchscreens wirelessly which was a game changer for us but you'll need the 960 series or better to have 5GHz. https://www.screenbeam.com/products/screenbeam-960/

[jtotheb]

If you want to stick to Miracast as your display technology of choice you'll need something and devices that support the 5GHz band rather than the limited 2.4Ghz range which I think the Microsoft adaptor only support.

 

The Microsoft adapters support both for communication, but 2.4ghz has to be enabled on the wireless NIC to pair initially.

[RobFuller]

The Microsoft adapters support both for communication, but 2.4ghz has to be enabled on the wireless NIC to pair initially.

 

That's good to know! I was of the understanding it used the alternative band that your device was connected to for infrastructure mode?

[BKGarry]

What is wrong with your adapters, ours are fine.

 

There has been an issue on LTSB 2017 (i think it is 2017) where a Cumulative update has caused the laptop to label all as a default name and you have to remove them from the known devices in settings, but any laptop on the main windows 10 channel is fine

[Rob_D]

A little while back we tried a bunch of wireless display units :

 

Barco WePresent: Was great for just displaying but had really bad latency for touch feedback.

Screenbeam: We had lots of connection issues with. It wold either take ages to connect, not connect at all, or keep dropping out.

Via-Connect: Looked the most promising but we only ever had a hands off demo with the salesman.

[jtotheb]

That's good to know! I was of the understanding it used the alternative band that your device was connected to for infrastructure mode?

 

Yeah, usually that's the way the DIRECTxxx dynamic connection works. If the infrastructure is 2.4Ghz and it's a single band wireless NIC then it could be grim.

[dazza007]

replying on behalf of the OP

@BKGarry What devices are you connecting with, we have Surface Pros with the Marvel Avastar latest version on the Surface Pro laptop but cannot get the latest version of the driver on the Surface Pro tablet to connect.

We are having issues when the device cannot connect a restart of the Wireless Display Adapter and the laptop resolves this but you can imagine this is not great to start the lesson.

There is an issue as the SP laptops can display greater than 1080p and when set to display nicely on the laptop/tablet these devices then are connected to the WDA and DVD playback becomes buggy.

I think we can script the change of display rate.

We are having issues where I inherited a situation where WAPs are cited too close to the device too, so not complex

[BKGarry]

On the topic of not connecting, we sometimes get that, but discovered a full restart is not needed, you just need to restart the wireless card on the laptop (airplane mode on and off doesn't work, you have to disable and enable the Wireless card in network connections)

 

Our work around solution for this, is a shortcut to a powershell script in the start menu of staff with the following in it. Performs it in under 5 seconds, so no need to restart the laptop

 

$adaptor = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter | Where-Object {$_.Name -like "*Wireless*"}
$adaptor.Disable()
$adaptor.Enable()

[BKGarry]

forgot to add, check the Graphics drivers for updates, find sometimes it is actually the intel graphics driver that get's buggy rather than the wireless card (although they both work together)

[dazza007]

and cannot get 11MBps data rate transfer... time to get out wireshark.

[BKGarry]

I know it sounds like a long shot, you said that the WAPs are a bit close in the rooms (we do not have that issue thankfully)

 

What would the negative effects be on your wireless network is you disabled the 2.4ghz radio transmissions on those WAPs to see if it is them interfering, in theory cutting out any interference. I am not saying it is a permanent solution, but could help you narrow it down, before you go and end up physically moving APs

[TRS-80]

We use airtame for wireless presentation, currently it needs an application, but they're embedding airserver next year, which will give native Miracast, Google Cast and Airplay support.

 

BKGarry, I've sent you a pm about the surface wireless issues.

[dazza007]

Thanks for you input on this, indeed the graphics card adapters need updating to resolve the bugs.

We are coping with a restart of the wireless display box, which gets hot and freezes and unresponds, microsoft does not want to know. Lots of education to the teachers.

Reducing the resolution on the Surface Pro laptops to 1080p as the default is insane, especially with the pro laptop (tablets) as they only have 4gb of ram.

 

Two issues going forward, I am stuck with getting any connection for the wireless display adapters on the later versions of windows 10 I have managed to get 1809 working, when I was working on this a few months ago later versions of OS and driver combinations would not work!