Hot on the heels of CES, the research firm NPD In-Stat released research this week about the significant growth in integrated Wi-Fi support for everything from digital TVs and Blu-ray players, to game consoles, picture frames and set top boxes. The company’s VP of research claims that Wi-Fi has moved from a “nice-to-have” feature to a “must-have” feature for any new consumer entertainment device, because consumers expect to be able to move content from device to device, and Wi-Fi’s established market penetration — along with new uses made possible by innovations like Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display — makes it the obvious technology of choice.

As a self-avowed tech wonk (and longtime Internet nutjob), all of my network-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes (including an Apple TV) are connected to the Internet and are accessible to each other. But I’m a nutjob. And since I was ahead of the curve, I had to find ways to get Ethernet cables to each device, since they weren’t Wi-Fi enabled. But this ultimately created a much better content ecosystem for our family. How so?

We use Apple’s Remote application to play music and videos throughout the house on various available…