Thanks but I ended up going
LowTechThanks but I ended up going with the Imation Link.
Over all I’d say that the Link isn’t too bad of a solution. The set up was guided so it was real easy to set up. The quality of the streaming web content (Hulu, YouTube, etc) isn’t that great when sent to a 55″ display but the folks don’t have HD anyways so this isn’t a big deal. Part of the problem is that their high speed internet connection is not so high speed so this is a case of garbage in – garbage out. I did not get a round to trying out a DVD (it’s supposed to send up to 720p quality video) to see how that looks but judging from the still photos from the laptop the quality was really good so I have a good feeling that a DVD would look nice as well. No BD player in the laptop so standard def is all we’ll try.
The receiver portion which is Velcroed to the flat panel is made of a high gloss plastic similar to the bezel and it’s fairly small, about 7″ l X 3″ w X 1/2″ d except where it comes to a point in the middle (this is the antenna?). It kind of looks like a car’s rear view mirror in a way when just laying on a table in any case it doesn’t really look out of place the way I’ve attached it. Into the laptop goes the USB dongle which is similar in size to some of the smaller style laptop dongles that you get from your cell phone provider for an internet connection. Although I don’t recall reading it specifically the dongle requires a powered USB port and I say this only because the dongle got fairly warm IMO. I have an IOU to check with Imation and make sure that this is normal.
Al in all I’d have to say that so far the Link seems to do exactly what I wanted it to do and is easy enough for a senior (with some computer savvy) to utilize without calling me up every time they want to use it. That’s a big gold star right there.