Toshiba Media Controller Lets You Wirelessly Beam Media To Other PCs

Today, Toshiba announced several new software features for its consumer laptops, the most notable of which is Toshiba Media controller, an app that essentially turns your laptop into a server for your home network.

If that sounds technical, or unsexy, all it means is that using a drag-and-drop interface, you can take any music, videos, or photos stored on that computer, and wirelessly send them to another PC in the house so that they automatically begin playing on that other system. In our hands-on with the utility, the drag-and-drop interface was easy to use, if a bit crude. Unfortunately, too, when it comes to videos it doesn’t support Quicktime or MPEG4 files (the format of choice for Flip camcorders).

How fast this transfer happens depends on the speed of your router and your distance from it.

We noticed it took a few seconds for the media to start playing on the second PC, but that once it did the playback was smooth. That was even true for HD movies. Toshiba also announced Resolution Plus, a technology that will upscale standard-definition content for higher-resolution displays. This technology, which will come loaded on all Toshiba notebooks with discrete graphics and a DVD drive, upscales in real time, and works both on the notebook itself or in situations where users are outputting content to a larger display.