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Without a doubt, digital cameras have revolutionized photography, and will continue to grow in popularity. While the benefits of digital photography are obvious—you don’t have to buy film or wait and pay for your shots to be developed—there’s that practical shortcoming: You have to print out the pictures that you want to share with others, or make everyone crowd around a desktop or notebook PC to view them.

It’s ShowTime

To remedy this, X10’s ShowTime Photo Video Sender (www.x10.com, $149.99, or $199.99 with ShowCAM digital camera) offers an easy way to view digital photos that reside on a computer’s hard drive by displaying them on a television set. The system, which is a combination of hardware and software, is quite impressive. ShowTime may appeal more to gadget freaks than mere mortals, but it does exactly what X10 says it will—and does it well.

ShowTime is a 2.4GHz wireless system that consists of a transmitter and receiver, USB video-capture adapter, power supplies, various cables, and PC software. There are no cables that connect the PC with a television—the device transmits the video signal through wireless means. With the system installed, you can effectively leave your PC on in one room and view the digital pictures and videos that are stored on its hard drive on a television in another room. ShowTime also works as a wireless video converter that lets you display a computer’s screen on any television. For this, the system supports desktop resolutions of up to 2,048¥1,536 pixels.

ShowTime does a good job of transmitting high-resolution desktops and images, but the final image that displays on a television is inferior to what you’d see on a computer monitor. It’s not that ShowTime does a poor job; it’s just that an average television set displays a picture that’s poor when compared to a picture viewed on a computer monitor.

ShowTime’s RF remote lets you browse groups of photos (“albums”) and select pictures to view, and even zoom in and out of pictures—an impressive feature. Using the remote, you can sit in an easy chair and effortlessly select the images that you want to display on the television.

The accompanying PC software automatically recognizes digital photos in the My Pictures folder, and offers a wizard that lets you easily add other folders that contain digital photos. This way, you can browse other folders, and select and view the images that reside in them. The software also lets you add captions to photos to better identify them. ShowTime reads a decent variety of formats, including JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG and WMF still formats, and AVI, MPEG, ASF and WMV videos.

Hardware Information

If you don’t already own a digital camera, X10 will sell you its first-rate ShowCAM digital camera for an additional $50. While the camera lacks a flash and an LCD for previewing pictures, and takes pictures only in a relatively low 640x480 resolution, it’s a good deal. You won’t get a top-flight, mega-pixel digital camera at this price, but it’s good enough for taking snapshots that you aren’t planning to enlarge. By comparison, BenQ’s 300mini camera, which I reviewed a couple of columns back, has comparable features and costs about $100.

The hardware setup is straightforward, but involved. ShowTime consists of a send unit that connects to a PC, and a receive unit that connects to a television, and both have AC power supplies and their own cables. The PC send unit is more complicated to connect. You have to attach a video cable between the video-out port of the PC and the computer monitor, as well as a USB cable and an audio cable. (The system comes with an adapter that lets you use the system with a notebook.)

The software is straightforward to install; however, unlike most manufacturers, X10 doesn’t give you a CD that contains the software and drivers on it. Instead, you have to connect to a specific Web address that is listed in an e-mail the company sends you (the computer that uses ShowTime must have Internet access). While I would have preferred a CD, the software delivery was only a minor inconvenience.

Overall, I was impressed with the ShowTime Photo Video Sender—it did exactly what the company said it would do. Using ShowTime, I viewed the many digital pictures that were stored on my PC on a nearby television, and could control the images that I viewed using a handy remote. On the other hand, ShowTime feels much like a cool technological gadget that may have more “gee-whiz” value than practical use. But if you want an easy way to view and show off those reams of digital pictures on your computer’s hard drive, X10’s ShowTime can do the job.