Hi Joe_Intel, just got around to testing your suggestion. downloaded and installed the generic driver directly from those two links. same issue. unchanged.
on a separate but related issue, please with in mind that my notebook display will automatically force-switch to lower resolution the moment a WIDI connection is attempted but not successfully established with the screen mirroring screen stuck at "Loading......" the mouse cursor can be seen but the rest of the display is not. sometime WIDI will work on first attempt at the lower resolution, no less, but at times, it will stuck at the "Loading....." with only the mouse cursor visible and the connection need to be terminated and re-attempted again. I have a gut feeling this has to do with the SAMSUNG TV screen mirroring firmware being incompatible with the Intel WIDI driver on Windows 8.1, as was the same with many other issues raised in this forum that arose on installation of Windows 8.1. The TV itself is bought brand-new but it was a two-year old model. Firmware is updated to latest version and I believed it would work beautifully with Windows 8.
beside this inconsistency, there is one other WIDI issue which is very consistent. everytime a successful WIDI connection has been established and a SAMSUNG LED TV icon has been added to DEVICE list, the same icon CANNOT used to establish WIDI again anymore. It will fail immediately. In order to have a chance to make a successful WIDI connection subsequently, the SAMSUNG LED TV entry has to be REMOVED from the DEVICE list and then the whole ADD WIRELESS DISPLAY process need to be started again. I believed I am not alone i facing this problem as I have read posts about this similar problem.
there is clearly some inconsistency, instability issue with WIDI on Windows 8.1 that are very consistent and need to be hammered down by Intel engineers doubly quick.